René Rémond’s notion of contemporaneity as a phenomenon linked with the lifetime experience of the last witness of a past event is questioned by the author. He argues that one needs to understand the specific nature of contemporaneity and then identify the major turning points in the period. The author then states that the decline of rural civilization at the mid of the 18th Century is the corner stone of the initial process of modernization. This is the main cause of the end of ten thousand years of rural civilization in our world. If this approach is accepted, then contemporaneity will span two and half centuries, with a likely need of further partitions.

Piero Melograni, in "MONDO CONTEMPORANEO" 2/2005, pp. , DOI: