Post-modernity and post-modernism

Definitions

Glocalisation = tailoring products to local areas

Nation-state = political unit in modern society, ruled by a powerful centralised state.

Capitalism = an economy of modern societies which bought about industrialisation and huge increases in wealth

Dadaist/ism = crazy art in reaction to crazy events

Relativism = there’s no such thing as valid or invalid knowledge

Meta-narrative = a worldview that explains everything

Space-time compression = the metaphorical shrinking of our world due to developments in technology, communications, transport, and capitalist processes.

Modern society

Postmodern society

Approx. 1900-1980

1980-present day

Identity fixed

‘Pick’n’mix’ identity

Stable nuclear family structure

Family diversity

Traditional family roles fixed and stereotypical

Increasingly negotiated roles within the family

Limited access to technology

  • Wide advances in and access to technology

  • Consumerism

  • Commodity fetishism

  • Less developed media

  • One-way media

  • Huge array of media

  • Two-way media

  • Time-space compression

  • Science and religion important and contain the answers to all of life’s questions

  • In the process of secularisation influencing society

  • Understanding we will never have all the answers- truth is relative

  • Secular society

  • Science very far developed

  • Uncertainty

  • Disillusionment of the idea of progress

  • Less faith in science

  • New religions and ideas

Social change

Rapid global social change

  • Work is physical and tiring or involves writing

  • No geographical mobility- working locally

  • Office/factory/professional sector

  • Work becomes reliant on IT skills

  • Working all over the world

  • Virtually or face to face working

  • Huge rise in service industry and multinational companies

Nationality important and stable

  • Globalisation leads to less isolation

  • Hybrid identities

  • Cosmopolitan

  • Close connection to ethnicity

  • National identity less important

Greater expectation to conform to shared social expectations

  • Lack of social expectations

  • Increased individualism

  • More exposure to peer review via social media

  • More likely to act in own interests as opposed to expectations

17th- 19th Century ‘Modernity’

Political: nation state

Economic: capitalism

Cultural: enlightenment

  • Life was predictable

    • Structured

    • Clear identity

    • Firm beliefs

  • World made up of a series of separate societies, each with it’s own state (nation states).

    • French and American revolution

  • Capitalism, and therefore industrialisation changed the way we see time. Idea of Bristol and London time- before the railroads came, there was no particular reason why people in  Bristol should keep the same time as people in London- time meant local solar time. The railroads needed standardised time, so when trains became more common, the idea of GMT was introduced.

  • Capitalism, and therefore huge increases in wealth, lead to unequal distribution of wealth, leading to class conflict.

The Enlightenment- The ‘Age of Reason’

Newton, Voltaire

‘If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants’

  • Rationality, science and technology

    • Secular thinking dominated the influence of macro-religious explanations of the world

  • Traditions, customs and status began to have less importance

    • More personal freedom to choose own course in life and define own identity

‘Liberté, égalité, fraternité’ ou la mort’

20th Century

19th Century seen as peak of invention- hubris

  • 1912- The ‘Unsinkable Ship’ sinks

    • Idea that humans have ‘conquered nature’ promptly shattered

    • Changes the way with think about possibility

  • 1914-18- WW1 kills 16 million people

    • Industrialism leads to the use of trench and chemical warfare

    • First day of Battle of the Somme

      • 58 000 wounded

      • 20 000 of these wounded died

Makes Enlightenment look absurd

  • Rise of dadaism

  • Holocaust

    • Shows hatred of others

    • 6 million of the 12 million killed are Jewish

    • The Final Solution

      • Industrialisation/modernisation of death

    • Zygmunt Bauman

Hubris = self-destructive → tragedy → rejection → development

21st Century- Post-Modernism

  • Rise of relativism

  • Disillusionment with the idea of progress

  • Fragmentation of social life

    • Impact of technology on social lives

  • Truth is relative

  • Consumerism is all commodity fetishism

  • Transformation of self- ‘pick’n’mix’

  • Uncertainty

  • Incessant choice

  • Globalisation

  • Death of sociology

    • Sociologists only produce a possible version of events

    • There is no objective knowledge that is true for everything

  • Grand theories are no longer applicable in such a diverse society

    • Rejection of the meta narrative

  • Globalisation creates…

    • Technological changes

      • Create time-space compression that closes the distance between people

    • Economic changes

      • Electronic economy

      • TNCs- transnational companies -(Apple, Google, Shell)

    • Political changes

      • Globalisation has undermined the power of a nation-state

    • Changes in cultures and identities

      • Globalisation means cultures cannot exist in isolation from one another

  • Adidas and Puma- Nazi brothers