Key assumptions of postmodernism

• Postmodernists claim that contemporary western societies have moved from the modern to the postmodern age.
• Postmodernity is characterised by an unstable, fragmented, media saturated global village, where we define ourselves by what we consume. For postmodernists, society today is not a continuation of modernity but a fundamental break from it.
• Wright – “in the post-modern world, all ultimate beliefs, meta-narratives and claims to be able to understand the actual structure of reality are deemed invalid”.
• However, some leading sociologists question the claim that we have moved as far as postmodernity, suggesting instead that we are in late or high modernity, although they accept that major social change has occurred in the developed world.

Modernity

• To understand this shift, it first requires an understanding of modernity.
• The modern period was characterised by six key features:
  • Industrialisation organised along capitalist lines gave rise to modern society, with an economy based on mass production in factories, and heavy industries such as coal, iron and steel.
  • This resulted in urbanisation, as industrialisation saw mass migration to the urban centres in such of factory work.
  • Social class was the major source of most people’s identity (capitalist ruling class owned the factories and the working class worked in them), and people were generally proud to identify themselves using class labels, and differences in values and lifestyles were clearly class differences.
  • The state and government extended its influence over a range of aspects in people’s lives such as education and welfare.
  • Scientific or rational thinking became more important that irrational belief systems such as religions. Modernity therefore went hand in hand with secularisation as a result of a technological world view, as suggested by Bruce, and rationalisation as suggested by Weber.
  • Meta-narratives developed – political theories such as Socialism, as well as sociological theories such as functionalism, Marxism and feminism, in order to explain how society works.

Postmodernity

• However, postmodernists believe that the modern world is dissolving and being replaced with postmodern ideas and institutions. This postmodern world has various characteristics that distinguish it from the modern world:
  • The postmodern world is globalised (interconnected) because of:
    • Technological changes – satellite communications, the internet and global television networks have created space-time compression, closing the gap between people. However, this also brings risks on a global scale e.g. greenhouses gasses produced in one place contribute to global climate change, and terrorist organisations such as ISIS can now communicate with and recruit people from all over the globe. Beck therefore argues that we live in a ‘risk society’ of man-made risks. However, technology has been used in the control of crime, but we now live in a surveillance society as a result.
    • Economic changes – global markets and networks dominate economic activity (the financial crisis in the USA in 2008 had global repercussions) with transnational companies carrying out production, which drives globalisation forward.
    • Cultural changes – we live in a global culture dominated by the spread of western culture, which undermines traditional sources of identity such as class and nationality. Identity is now shaped by popular culture as a result of a media saturated society that is central to the way we live our lives. Culture has become fragmented and unstable, with no commons set of shared values and a pick and mix culture where people form their identity from a range of structures such as ethnicity, sexuality and gender. For example, religion has become a form of consumption, as illustrated by Nanda’s study of Hinduism in India and Hindu ultra-nationalism.
    • Modernist meta-narratives such as science, socialism and feminism have lost their power and influence. For example, people became sceptical about the power of science to change the world, since many of the world’s problems are seen to have been caused by it e.g. nuclear disasters. The postmodernist Lyotard claims that there is no such thing as the truth and that all knowledge is relative and uncertain (for example, Marxism is just someone’s version of reality). In society we are left with competing meta-narratives, each as equally valid as each other, and we should celebrate the diversity of choice rather than seeking on version of the truth.
    • Hyper reality – we can no longer tell the difference between reality and fiction with news stories and soap operas becoming more significant than the events we actually experience.
    • Individuals have more freedom and choice on how to live their lives. For example, education has become diverse with a range of specialist schools and even free schools, and there is no longer one family type that is dominate. Family structures are fragmented and individuals have more in choice in the lifestyle and type of relationship that they choose e.g. same sex couples.

Positive Evaluation

• Postmodernists have raised new and important questions about cultural change, particularly in the areas of the media, culture and identity.

• Postmodern theories highlight how modernist theories are out of date. For example, many of the founders of sociology such as Marx focussed on social class to the neglect of gender and ethnicity. Postmodernism offers a theory which recognises the complexity of contemporary societies.

 

• It is useful in that it explains the differences between the postmodern and modern world as well as the causes and effects of the change.

Criticisms

• Postmodernists contradict themselves. They claim that there is no such thing as the truth, yet they have made their own truth claims. Why should we accept their own meta-narrative over the other grand theories?
• Postmodernism exaggerates the amount of social change that has happened. For example, nation states are still strong, mass production still takes place to supply the consumerism that we use to create our identities and social class remains a major detriment of life chance, culture and consumption.
• Postmodernists ignore the fact that the nature of people’s consumption still very much depends on their income and thus their social class, meaning that class is still significant in forming identity. Those who lack the means may not be able to adopt the identity that they wish to possess.

Marxist theories of postmodernity

• Marxists Jameson and Harvey agree that we have moved into postmodernity BUT regard it as a product of the most recent stage of capitalism. Harvey says that capitalism is constantly developing new technologies as a way of organising production and so globalisation, cultural changes and the growth of consumerism just reflect a new phase of capitalism, and postmodernity is just a result of periodic crises of profitability.

Theories of late modernity

• Theories of late modernity argue that society’s rapid social change is not a result of a new postmodern era, but a continuation of modernity, where the key features of modernity have intensified.
• Giddens believes that the defining changes in modernity are reflexivity and disembedding.
  • Reflexivity is where we change our actions in light of information about risks and opportunities provided to us in society, meaning we are continuously re-evaluating our ideas and thus society becomes unstable. This is a result of not having traditions to tell us how to act, causing us to become reflexive.
  • Disembedding is where geographical barriers have been broken down, meaning that traditions and customs have become less important and society and communication is more impersonal.
  • Giddens concept of reflexivity can be criticised because it suggests that we reflect on our actions and then are free to reshape our lives accordingly to reduce exposure to risks. However, not everyone has this option e.g poor people who lived in a polluted area cannot afford to move to somewhere healthier.

Conclusion

• Postmodernists have highlighted many important changes in contemporary western societies, such as globalisation and the potential dangers it creates e.g. global warming, wars and global crime. However, postmodernism has serious weakness, in that choice is not equal for everyone, and is still heavily dependent on class, ethnicity and gender.
• The central question in which sociologists are engaged in seems to be the degree in which developed societies have shift from the modern – whether we have reached modernity or are not quite there yet and are in a stage of high modernity.
• Perhaps the debate is just a language game (an idea suggested by Lyotard to explore the many narratives that exist) played out by sociologists. There is after all much common ground in the thinking of postmodernists and Giddens about contemporary society, such as space-time compression and disembedding.