Social theorists in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries emphasised the emergence of industrialisation, urbanisation, secularisation and bureaucratisation as hallmarks of:

Classical social theorists such as Karl Marx, Max Weber and Émile Durkheim characterised modernity by structural changes including industrialisation (rise of factory production), urbanisation (large-scale movement to cities), secularisation (declining authority of religion in public life) and bureaucratisation (rational-legal administrative organisation, especially in Weber's analysis). Feudalism, kingship and medievalism describe pre-modern social formations characterised by personalised authority, agrarian economies and religious dominance. Hence these four processes are hallmarks of modernity.