1. PostModern Theory Deana Van Brocklin

2. Many social theorists have grown tired of the mainstream and traditional sociological theories of functionalism, conflict, and symbolic interactionism. This discontent led to the development of alternative sociological theories and mirrored Western societies’ transition from “modernity” to “postmodernity.”

3. The roots of modern and postmodern theory Many disciplines use the term modernism and postmodernism, for vague concepts and are arbitrarily applied to social phenomena. Stephen Feldman (2000) applied the terms to his study of the legal profession. He stated, “To travel from premodernism through modernism and into postmodernism might take several centuries and even millennia.”

4. Continued.. When scholars think beyond present (modernity), they allow for both a future (postmodernity) and, consequently, a postmodern thought. According to Alexander Riley (2002), “The history of postmodern thought begins in the French Third Republic, roughly during the second half of the life of the Republic, from about 1900 to the outbreak of World War II in 1939. In the aftermath of the fall of the second Bonaparte Empire and of the Paris Commune’s rise and demise, the late nineteenth century saw the emergence of a great number of political and cultural debates that would touch on the entire French society.” The social force that would change French society was secularism.

5. … C. Wright Mills (1959:166) simply states that modern age was being succeeded by a postmodern period. John Deely (1994), agreeing with the simplicity of the term postmodernism, argued that there is a “nearly indisputable consensus that the word ‘post’ can only exist in opposition, continuity, or complementarity with the universe which it presupposes, that is, the world of modernity.”

6. … As you can see, there is a lot of debate on postmodernism and its roots, however, for American sociological theory, postmodernism followed the dominancy of functionalism in the 1950s and the prevalence of neo- Marxist and conflict theory in the 1960s and 1970s. Many social theorists point to Thomas Kuhn’s book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) as a significant indicator that a reliance on science and scientific analysis was not a criterion shared by sociologists. Horwich (1993:1) states, “Kuhn’s critique called into question many of the central elements of the traditional picture– the concept of absolute truth, the observation/theory distinction, the determinacy of rational choice, and the normative function of philosophy of science– and it provided an alternative model of scientific change that dispensed with these notions altogether, Kuhn’s radical views have been the focus of much debate not only by philosophers, historians and sociologists but also by large numbers of practicing scientists.”

7. Defining Postmodernism theory Postmodernism is a late 20 th century movement in the arts, architecture, and criticism that was a departure from modernism. Postmodernism articulates that the world is in a state of perpetual incompleteness and permanent unresolve. Many postmodernist theorists disagree with one another about what are the parameters of postmodernism and that is what makes defining postmodernism so difficult.

8. Continued.. For example, Norman Denzin (1991:vii), a sociologist whose thinking has made the postmodern turn, provided a definition of postmodernism as it being “undefineable.” On the other hand, George Ritzer (2000c) shared his view on the difficulty of defining postmodernism. His thoughts were that there is great diversity among the generally highly idiosyncratic (peculiar or individual) postmodern thinkers, so it is difficult to offer generalizations on which the majority would agree. For clarity the terms are distinguished between “postmodernity” and “postmodernism”. Postmodernity referring to a historical era that is generally seen as following the modern era. Postmodernism is cultural products and postmodern social theory is a way of thinking that is distinct from modern social theory. Thus, the postmodern encompasses a new historical era, new cultural products, and a new type of theorizing about the social world.

9. Jacques Derrida Wallace and Wolf (1999) stated that two famous names in postmodernism are Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault. Jacques Derrida was born in El-Bair, Algeria, in 1930. Derrida is a French philosopher and essayist, rather than sociologist. His works utilize a deconstructive approach. (Deconstruction is a strategy of analysis that has been applied to such areas as literature, linguistics, philosophy, law, and architecture.) Derrida’s deconstructive approach is illustrated in his three books; Speech Phenomena, Of Grammatology, and Writing and Difference. His publications are focused on the deconstructive analysis of language. The concept of discourse is derived from his works. In using the term discourse, “Derrida and other postmodernist mean to emphasize the primacy of the words we use, the concepts they embody, and the rules that develop within a group about what are appropriate ways of talking about things. They mediate between us and reality.” (Wallace and Wolf, 1999:407)

10. Jacques Derrida on Logocentrism Derrida was critical of grand narratives and viewed their construction as the product of what he referred to as logocentrism. Logocentrism are modes of thinking that apply truth claims to universal propositions. In other words, our knowledge of the social world is grounded in a belief that we can make sense of our ever-changing and highly complex societies by referring to certain unchanging principles or foundations. The postmodernist stance articulated by Derrida calls for a repudiation of logocentrism, which entails taking what postmodernist refer to as an antifoundational stance. In its most extreme versions, postmodernism constitutes a profound reputation of the entire Western philosophical tradition and represents a form of extreme skepticism about our ability to carry on the sociological tradition as it has been conceived since the 19 th century.

11. Michel Foucault Michel Foucault was born on October 15, 1926 in Poitiers, France. Foucault led a very interesting life that was cut short when he died of AIDS in 1984, at the age of 57. There is some debate as to whether Foucault was a postmodernist, a functionalist, or something else. He uses Marx’s terms; class, political economy, commodity, capital, labor power, and struggle. However, the labels of Marxist, structuralist, semiotician are those of his readers, not his. Foucault’s work is difficult to understand because of his wide range of historical references and his use of new concepts, but perhaps most of all because his theories do not fit very well into any of the established disciplines.

12. Continued.. In his book Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1977), Foucault described how prisons are examples of coercive social institutions found in all societies and throughout most of human history. Institutions such as prisons and asylums are highlighted by regularized routines designed to control and repress human behavior. Foucault examined the last three centuries of the history of prisons and found that one form of torture had been replaced by another. Foucault’s structural analysis of total institutions led him to conclude that modern prisons reflect modern views of appropriate forms of discipline, especially as determined by those who posses power.

13. Foucault on Punishment and discipline Punishment became “gentle”, though not for humanitarian reasons, suggests Foucault. He argues that this theory of “gentle” punishment represents the first step away from excessive force of the sovereign, and towards more generalized and controlled means of punishment. This involved putting convicts on display in a more controlled and effective spectacle. Prisoners would be forced to do work that reflected their crime, thus repaying society for their infractions. This would have allowed the public to see the convicts’ bodies enacting their punishment, and reflect on crime. The emergence of prison as the form of punishment for every crime grew out of the development of discipline in the 18 th and 19 th centuries, according to Foucault. He looks at the development of highly refined forms of discipline and of discipline concerned with the smallest and most precise aspects of a person’s body.

14. Continued.. Foucault’s argument is that discipline created “docile bodies” (people willing to cooperate). Which is ideal for the new economies, politics and warfare of the modern industrial age. But, to construct docile bodies the disciplinary institutions must be able to constantly observe and record the bodies they control and ensure the internalization of the disciplinary individuality within the bodies being controlled. Discipline must come without excessive force and through careful observation; molding the bodies into the correct form through this observation.

15. David Riesman David Riesman was born in Philadelphia in 1909. Riesman graduated from Harvard College in 1931 and earned a degree from Harvard Law School in 1934. He served as a clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis and later taught at the University of Buffalo Law School. In 1949 he joined the social science faculty of the University of Chicago. Then, The Lonely Crowd was published in 1950 and became a best seller, as well as winning the admiration of his academic peers. He co-authored the book with Nathan Glazer, professor emeritus of education and social structure, and Reuel Denney. But, according to Glazer, Riesman was the real author of the work.

16. The Lonely Crowd The Lonely Crowd (1950-2001) can be viewed as a modern to postmodern discourse in that Riesman discussed dramatic social changes that were reshaping American society. The Lonely Crowd was jargon-free, so it was easier to understand. In the preface to Faces the Crowd (1952) Riesman spelled out his intent for The Lonely Crowd as a “wholly tentative effort to lay out a scheme for the understanding of character, politics, and society in America.”

17. Continued.. The postmodern approach is illustrated by Riesman’s attention to the challenge in America’s social character from the 19 th century to the mid 20 th century. Riesman defined social character as that part of “character” which is shared by significant social groups and is the product of the experience of these groups. He explains this by saying, “The link between character and society is to be found in the way in which society ensured some degree of conformity from the individuals who make it up. In each society, such a mode of ensuring conformity is built into the child, and then either encouraged or frustrated in later adult experience.” In other words, the agents of socialization, beginning with the family and extending to the media, employers, religion and so on, attempt to make individuals conform to the expectations of specific social groups of society in general.

18. … Riesman used a number of significant terms in The Lonely Crowd. Among them are; tradition-direction, inner-direction, other-direction, the oversteered child, bohemia, and the self-consciousness. In tradition-directed societies, social change is at a minimum. Conformity is ensured by incorporating a near-automatic obedience to tradition. The concept of inner-direction is intended to cover a very wide range of social types. Riesman applied the term other-direction especially to upper-middle class persons in large cities. The other-directed person is shallow, freer with money, friendlier, and more demanding of approval. Individuals who attempt to meet the standards of significant other risk being “ oversteered.” This is especially true of children. There is a danger for children who are born to and raised by exemplary persons to be oversteered, that is, to find themselves set on a course they cannot realistically follow.

19. … An aspect of any “modern” society is the fact that some individuals do not wish to conform or blend into the mode dictated by other-directed forces. Such people attempt to find autonomy or harmony. Riesman called this “place” Bohemia. Riesman believed that self-consciousness constitutes the insignia of the autonomous in an era dependent on other-direction. He has a very profound idea regarding self-consciousness; achieving self-consciousness is undoubtedly difficult, and even those who attain it often fail to mold it into the structure of an autonomous life and succumb to anomie.

20. Jean-Francois Lyotard Jean-Francois Lyotard was born in Versailles, France in 1924. He was once one of the world’s foremost philosophers and noted postmodernist. His interdisciplinary discourse covers a wide variety of topics, including the postmodern conditions, modernist and postmodernist art, knowledge and communication, language, metanarratives, and legitimization.

21. Jean-Francois Lyotard on Legitimation Lyotard’s definition and usage of postmodernism are linked to the three concepts of legitimation, language, and narratives. According to Lyotard, narration is the quintessential form of customary knowledge in at least five ways: 1. Popular stories recount the successes and failures of the hero’s undertakings. These failures successes bestow legitimacy upon the hero (which may be an individual or a social institution). Thus, the narratives allow the society in which they are told, on the one hand, to define this criteria of competence and, on the other hand, to evaluate according to those criteria what is performed or can be performed within in.

22. Continued.. 2. The narrative form, unlike the developed forms of the discourse of knowledge, lends itself to a great variety of language games. 3. The pragmatic rules that constitute the social bond are transmitted through these narratives. 4. Rhythm, time, and metrical beat are emphasized because they make narratives easy to remember. 5. A culture that gives precedence to the narrative form doubtless has no more of a need for special procedures to authorize its narratives than to remember its past. It is even harder to imagine a society handing over the authority for its narratives to some opposing narrator. Narratives are an integral aspect of culture and directly affected the language of any given society.

23. … Lyotard utilized the methodology he called language games. In The Postmodern Condition he uses the method of language game analysis to contrast the pragmatics of narrative and scientific knowledge. He defines modernism as the attempt to legitimate science by appeal to ‘metanarratives,’ or philosophical accounts of the progress of history in which the hero of knowledge struggles to ward a great goal such as freedom, universal peace, or the creation of wealth.

24. … Language exemplified the first efforts of legitimacy. Rulers of past societies utilized language constructs when they formed governments and regimes. Kant referred to this as the legitimation of the normative instance. Each human who is born into the world comes to a place that has been previously labeled, or constructed. These labels have been legitimized by past events, and by those in power.

25. Relevancy Modern and postmodern theories are promoted as alternatives to the more traditional sociological theories. The terms modern and postmodern are themselves problematic, in that they are vague and have been applied to a wide variety of phenomena over a period of many centuries. The concepts of modernism and postmodernism are usually used in connection with technological advancements and new modes of thinking (such as preindustrial, industrial, and postindustrial.) Every era has considered itself “modern.” When social thinkers and policymakers think beyond the current era, they may be thought of as postmodernists. Thus, in order to think like a postmodernist, a social theorist must break from the taken-for-granted world, the given rules, and the claims to authority found in a society.

26. Continued.. Modern and postmodern theorists have disdain for positivism and the scientific methods of data collection and analysis. They reject the grand theorizing and narratives that are common in the more traditional sociological theories. There are those who wonder whether modern and postmodern theories are actually theories at all. Sociological theory has traditionally consisted of grand narratives and “big ideas.” Consequentially, rejecting grand theorizing is similar to rejecting sociological theory. Sociological analysis is the examination of large social events: societies, organizations, cultures, and so on.

27. … Successful sociological analysis is, for the most part, dependent on a broad and macro approach. With this reality in mind, it is easy to understand why a large number of criticisms are levied against modern and postmodern social thought. The first criticism directed toward modern and postmodern theories is aimed at their refusal to employ empirical studies with statistical analysis. It is difficult to examine whether their observations and theories are accurate because “there are no systematic tests of these assertions” (Tuner, 2003:246). In this regard, modern and postmodern theories offer no more to social theory than do the critical theorists; they question existing sociological interpretations of events, but offer little concrete evidence that their perspective is any better. Sociological theory must be, at the very least, falsifiable; otherwise we are no better then philosophy.

28. … It may be that modern and postmodern theorists are indeed onto some new revelation and insight regarding society and social interaction. However, if it remains unsubstantiated with proof we will never know its validity. Free and unconstrained by the rules of science and the dispassionate rhetoric of the modern scientist, postmodernists have allowed themselves to create broad generalizations without qualifications (Ritzer, 2000c484).

29. Conclusion Since every society has considered itself “modern,” the term is too vague to apply to a theoretical approach. Within a short period of time (50-100 years) from now, future generations will look back at this era and laugh at claims of modernity and postmodernity just as we do to past generations. Postmodern discourse is itself vague and abstract, so it is difficult to connect to the social world. Thus, modern and postmodern theory may not really be a theory at all; it may more accurately be viewed as an ideological belief system.