1. POSTMODERNISM

2. Changes
MODERN SOCIETY
POSTMODERNITY
POLITICS
Rule by the nation state with large administrations to rule people’s lives
Greater interconnectedness across the globe, have led Ohmae to argue that people now live in a borderless world, where transnational corporations and consumers have more power than governments

3. MODERN SOCIETY
POSTMODERNITY
ECONOMIC
Economy of modern societies was capitalism with an unequal distribution of wealth.
Cheap mass production has led to a rising standard of living
Global economy is an increasingly weightless/electronic 24 hour economy. Instead of processing physical goods, the activity now involves the processing of information.

4. MODERN SOCIETY
POSTMODERNITY
TECHNOLOGY
Rational, secular and scientific ways of thinking produced technologically efficient forms of organisation. Science has been increasingly important in industry and medicine.
Satellite communications, the internet, and global television networks have helped create time-space compression. Technology also brings risks, e.g. global warming

5. MODERN SOCIETY
POSTMODEOCIETY
CHANGES IN CULTURE and IDENTITY
Tradition, custom and status became less important as a basis for actions. However inequalities such as class remain.
Globalisation makes it harder for cultures to exist in isolation, and there is increasingly a global culture. This undermines traditional sources of identity such as class

6. PostModernism
PostModernity is seen as an unstable, fragmented, media-saturated global village where image and reality are undistinguishable; people are defined by what they consume.
Knowledge
Drawing on the ideas of Foucault, PostModernists argue that there are no sure foundations to knowledge, it is impossible to know whether a theory is true or false. For example the theory that it is possible to create a better society, i.e. Marxism’s metanarrative (‘big story’) is just someone’s version of reality not truth. .

7. PostModernists also reject meta-narratives such as Marxism on the grounds that they have helped create oppressive totalitarian states that impose their version of the truth on people. E.g. in the former Soviet Union, the state’s attempt to remould society on Marxist principles led to political repression and slave labour camps.
Rejecting meta-narratives that claim absolute truth, PostModernists take a relativist position. They argue that no-one has a special access to the truth – including sociologists. All accounts are equally valid.

8. For PostModernists, sociologists should therefore celebrate the diversity of views rather than seek to impose one version of the truth on everyone. Lyotard argues that knowledge is just a series of different language games or ways of seeing the world.
ACTIVITY
Look at the following slides – what do you see? Do you agree with Lyotard or is there such a thing as the truth?

9. Jean Baudrillard
Baudrillard argues that knowledge is central to PostModern society. Rather than focusing on the production of material goods, instead society is based on the buying and selling of knowledge in the form of images and symbols. However unlike signs in the past, those today bear no relation to physical reality.
Baudrillard introduced the concept of simulacra (singular – simulacrum). Signs stand for nothing than themselves – they are not symbols of some other thing.

10. Simulacrum
A simulacrum is a representation or imitation of a person or thing. The word was first recorded in the English Language in the late 16th century and used to describe a representation, such as a statue or a painting, especially of a God. By the late 19th century, it had gathered a secondary association of inferiority: an image without the substance or qualities of the original. Philosopher Fredric Jameson offers photorealism as an example of artistic simulacrum, where a painting is sometimes created by copying a photograph that is itself a copy of the real.

11. For example, tabloid newspaper articles about fictitious opera characters are signs about signs rather than an underlying reality.
Baudrillard argues that a simulacrum is not a copy of the real, but becomes truth in its own right: the hyperreal or hyperreality, i.e. where the signs appear more real than reality itself and substitute for themselves reality
For example, consider the Disney Castle
What is it a sign of?
How has it become reality?

12. Culture, Identity and Politics
PostModernists argue that culture and identity in PostModern society differ from modern society because of the role of the media in creating hyper-reality. The media produces an endless stream of ever-changing images, values, and versions of the truth.
As a result culture becomes fragmented and unstable, so there is no longer a coherent and fixed set of values shared by members.
Confronted with so many versions of the truth, people cease to believe whole heartedly in any one version. Given the failure of Marxism to deliver a better society, people lose faith in the possibility of rational progress.

13. In the past people had fixed identities, but today they are able to construct an identity from the wide range of images and lifestyles in the media
Conchita Wurst – winner of the Eurovision Song Contest

14. Evaluation of PostModernism
PostModernists make some important points about today’s society such as the significance of the media for culture and identity.
However it has been widely criticised by Marxists Philo and Martin
It ignores power and inequality. E.g. the media is a tool of ruling-class domination
Not everyone can construct their identities through consumption; it overlooks the effect of poverty.
PostModernists wrongly claim that people cannot distinguish between reality and media image.
By assuming that all views are equally true, it becomes just a valid to deny that the Nazi’s murdered millions as it does to affirm it. It is a morally indefensible position.

15. e. They are criticised on logical grounds
e. They are criticised on logical grounds. For example, Lyotard’s theory is self-defeating; why should a theory be believed that claims that no theory has the truth?
f. PostModernism fails to explain how the importance of the media and consumption came about
g. They are also criticised for their view that objective knowledge is impossible and that nothing can be done to improve society. David Harvey argues that political decisions do make a real difference to people’s lives and knowledge can be used to solve human problems.

16. Theories of Late Modernity
Unlike PostModernity, theories of late modernity argue that rapid changes are not the dawn of a new postmodern era
However theories of late modernity do recognise that something is happening. Some of the key features of modernity have intensified, i.e. society is now in the ‘late’ phase of modernity.

17. A defining characteristic of modern society is that it
Giddens Reflexivity
A defining characteristic of modern society is that it
experiences rapid social change – often on a global level. This is because of
DISEMBEDDING- no need for ‘face to face interaction’
This breaks down geographical barriers and makes interaction more impersonal.
Tradition and custom become less important. People are more individualistic
B. REFLEXIVE – Given that tradition no longer tells people how to act they have to constantly monitor, reflect on and modify actions in light of information about the possible risks and opportunities that they might involve.
Nothing is fixed and everything is up for challenge.

18. Beck and the Risk Society
How many of these are man-made? Giddens rejects the PostModern view that society cannot intervene to improve things, instead he suggests that rational plans can be made to reduce risks and achieve progress.
Beck and the Risk Society
Like Giddens, Beck is of the Enlightenment tradition and believes
in the power of reason to create a better world. However, he feels that society, which he calls ‘the risk society’ faces new dangers.
In the past society faced dangers because they could not
control disease, famine etc, but today Beck sees that there are manufactured risks. He argues that ‘risk consciousness’ has become increasingly central to most cultures.
E.g. what happens when many people go to buy food at a supermarket. What influences their decision to buy a product?

19. Beck suggests that late modernity is a period of growing individualisation, in which people become increasingly reflexive. They reflect on the possible consequences of their choice of action, and the potential risks associated with it.
Beck rejects the work of Baudrillard and his argument that it is not possible to achieve progress through action based on rational knowledge. Beck still argues that people have the ability to rationally overcome risks by taking action. He sees environmentalism as challenge the future of technological development.

20. Evaluation of Late Modernity
This view does provide a sociological alternative to PostModernism, and that a rational analysis of society is possible.
This approach fails to recognise that not everyone has the ability to reflect on their actions and re-shape their lives to reduce their exposure to risks.
Ruskin argues that it is capitalism and not technology that is the source of all risk.
Hirst suggests that environmentalism is too fragmented to bring about change.

21. Marxist Theories of PostModernity
Marxists believe in the Enlightenment project of achieving objective knowledge and using it to improve society. For example, Marx claimed that a working-class revolution could overthrow capitalism. And bring to the end exploitation.
However unlike Beck David Harvey and Frederic Jameson argues that today’s society has moved from Modernity to PostModernity. They see major changes, emphasising the importance of media images and instability.
However rather than seeing PostModernity as a break with the past, they see it as next stage of capitalism. For Harvey, PostModernity arose out of the economic crisis of the 1970s (which followed the longest economic boom since 1945)

22. Flexible accumulation
This crisis gave way to a new regime of accumulation – a new way of achieving profitability which Harvey describes as ‘flexible accumulation’ or Post-Fordism.
This involves the use of information technology, an expanded service and finance sector, job insecurity and the requirement for workers to be flexible to fit their customer’s needs.
It permits the production of customised products for small, ‘niche’ markets instead of standardised mass markets, and easy switching from one product to another.

23. These characteristics may have brought about changes such as diversity, choice and instability.
It has also turned leisure, culture and identity into commodities. It is a more developed form of capitalism because it commodifies virtually all aspects of social life, including identity.
It also involves the compression of time and space, i.e. foreign holidays, worldwide financial markets, communication technologies, all serve to shrink the globe.

24. Political Changes
Harvey and Jameson argue that the flexible accumulation has also brought political changes characteristic of PostModernity. In particular, it has weakened the working-class and socialist movements. More oppositional movements have emerged e.g. environmentalism, anti-racism etc.
To bring about change, it is hoped that these organisations can create a rainbow alliance. What is seen as beneficial about this theory is that it retains a faith in Marxism, and that the goals of the Enlightenment project –change for the better can be achieved.

25. Evaluation
Marxist theories appear to abandon the concept of a working-class revolution by suggesting that political opposition to capitalism has fragmented into different social movements.
However the strength of these theories are that by relating the recent changes to capitalism, they are able to offer a sociological explanation for them which is something that PostModernists have failed to do.