This article discusses the challenges posed to the modern social theories and generated by the crisis in development planning theories in view of the formation of a risk society - individual, social and environmental. In this sense, the theses formulated within the scope of the theories of development, that promised to accomplish happiness for humanity, became a normative and theoretical project of modernization-rationalization based on the certainty of its results through planning. However, as opposed to this perspective conceived under the Enlightenment, the article finally presents the idea of progress parallel to an imminent situation of social risks arguing against the modern social theories and their perspective of global analysis.
theory of modernity; development planning; risk society; modernization; sustainable development