Globalisation, Modernity And Postmodernity Flashcards
What is meant by globalisation?
‘Globalisation’ refers to several connected changes that have made the lives of people around the world more global. These include faster and more frequent communications, more travel, more trade and the development of global organisations and of a global infrastructure supporting them.
Sometimes, however, globalisation is used to mean the globalisation of capitalism or the free market, accompanied by democratic freedoms and greater consumerism. Supported by neo-liberals but opposed by dependency theorists and radicals.
Alternative globalisation includes global movements and developments such as Fair Trade, gender equality and human rights.
Globalisation can be seen as having cultural, political and economic dimensions.
Started in the 1980s.
What are the characteristics of globalisation?
- Technological changes
- Economic changes
- Political changes
- Changes in culture and identity
What are technological changes?
We can now cross continents in a matter of hours, or exchange information across the globe with the click of a mouse. Satellite communications, the internet and global television networks have helped to create ‘time-space compression’, closing the distances between people.
Technology also brings risks on a global scale. For example, greenhouse gases produced in one place contribute to global climate change that leads to a rise in sea levels and flooding in low-lying countries. Beck argues that we are now living in ‘risk society’, where increasingly the threats to our well being come from human made technology rather than natural disasters.
What are economic changes?
Economic activity now takes place within a set of global networks that are creating ever-greater interconnectedness.
The global economy is increasingly a ‘weightless’ or electronic economy. Instead of producing physical goods, much activity now involves the production of information, such as music, TV programmes and data processing. These commodities are produced, distributed and consumed through global electronic networks.
In the electronic economy, money never sleeps. Global 24 hour financial transactions permit the instantaneous transfer of funds around the world in pursuit of profit. This too contributes to risk society.
Another major economic force pushing globalisation forward is trans-national companies. These companies operate across frontiers, organising production on a global scale. Most TNCs are Western-based. Some, such as Coca-Cola, are colossal enterprises, and the largest 500 together account for half the total value of the commodities produced in the whole world. So powerful are the small elite who control these companies, that Leslie Sklair argues they now form a separate global capitalist class.
What are political changes?
Some sociologists claim that globalisation has undermined the power of the nation state. For example, Kenichi Ohmae argues that we now live in a ‘border less world’ in which TNCs and consumers have more economic power than national governments. States are now less able to regulate the activities of large capitalist enterprises, a situation Lash and Audrey describe as ‘disorganised capitalism’.
What are changes in culture and identity?
Globalisation makes it much harder for cultures to exist in isolation from one another. A major reason for this is the role of information and communications technology (ICT), especially the mass media.
Today we find ourselves living in a global culture in which Western-owned media companies spread Western culture to the rest of the world. Economic integration also encourages a global culture. For example, TNCs such as Nike, selling the same consumer goods in many countries, help to promote similar tastes across national borders. In addition, the increased movement of people as tourists, economic migrants, refugees and asylum seekers helps to create globalised culture.
Globalisation also undermines traditional sources of identity such as class. For example, the shift of manufacturing from the West to developing countries has led to the fragmentation and decline of working class communities that previously gave people their class identity.
What was Modernity based around?
Modernity is a period which began in the late 18th century in Western Europe. It was based around:
The Nation State - Countries were especially important in this period, as they were powerful, and different from each other. A key feature of a modern state is the creation of large systems, e.g. administrative bureaucracies, education, welfare and legal systems, and economies to govern and regulate people’s lives. A national identity is often represented with symbols such as a flag.
Capitalism - This period saw economic change completely, with industrialisation leading to increasing wealth for those who owned the means of production. Led to unequal wealth distribution and conflict between the classes.
Individualism - People had more freedom to choose their course in life. Previously, customs, traditions and ascribed social status shaped people’s identity and, of course, life chances. However, in modern societies this has become less important, as people move towards individualisation; this means they now experience greater personal freedom and can increasingly choose their own life course and define their own personal identity. However, structural inequalities such as class still exist in shaping identity and restricting life choices.
Meta-narratives: Rationality and science. The Enlightenment period saw religion become less important, with science replacing it as the provider of the truth.
What are the characteristics of Modernity?
- Industrialisation and the use of technology for the manufacture of standardised goods for a mass market, usually produced by manual workers in full-time
- Central importance of work and social class as the main form of social division and source of identity. Bradley saw identity as fairly predictable, unchanging and stable, formed by social structural factors, like family life, work, social class, gender, ethnicity and community.
- Culture reflects the class structure, with clear distinctions between high and low/mass/ popular culture.
- Politics centre around social class interests, focused on political parties and government.
- Nation-states, national economies and national identities predominant.
- Mass media concerned with one way communication, more or less reflecting or mirroring a basic social reality, through media like terrestrial TV, newspapers and magazines.
- Tradition, religion, magic and superstition are displaced by rational thought and scientific theories which are seen as superior forms of knowledge for discovering the truth about and understanding the world and therefore improving it.
- Scientific knowledge and scientific and technological progress are forces for good, providing the means to understand and solve the world’s problems and make the world a better place.
- Sociology developed to try to understand and explain society in a scientific way, with rationality and scientific methods providing the tools to understand the workings of society in order to improve it. The development of positivist structural theories like functionalism and Marxism reflected the modernist concern with using the same scientific methods used in natural sciences to explain society.
What is postmodernity?
Postmodernists believe we are in a period of postmodernity, where scientific knowledge is no longer the truth and therefore cannot be used for making society better.
They believe that science is on of many possible truths, so someone who believes that the earth is flat is equally as right as someone who believes it is round. The Enlightenment project is dead. They also believe metanarratives (grand theories) also do not provide the truth, so also cannot improve society.
What are the features of postmodernity?
- Rapid and continuous introduction of new goods and services, with much wider consumer choice. Manual work and mass manufacturing replaced by service economy, like finance, telecommunications, various kinds of information processing, and customer service. Jobs for life disappear, with more job changes, job-sharing, more flexible, 24/7 and part time working.
- Media images, consumption and lifestyle become the major sources of identity. Bradley suggests identities become less certain and less predictable, more fluid and fragmented, and based more on choice than constraints of social structural factors. People can now pick ‘n’ mix multiple identities and change them at will. There is a fragmentation of identities even among people in the same social groups, reflecting the fragmentation of classes and other social structures. Bauman suggested lives now gain meaning through consumption choices, influenced by designer labels, lifestyles and images gained from the global media in a media-saturated society.
- Culture becomes more diverse and fragmented, and people pick ‘n’ mix elements from an increasingly diverse global culture which becomes just another product to consume. The distinctions between high and low/mass popular culture dissolve.
- Politics become more personalised and linked to the diversity of consumer, lifestyle and identity choices. Party politics are displaced by identity politics, such as gay, lesbian, feminist, ethnic and religious (e.g. Islam) politics. New social movements emerge based on personal concerns rather than structural influences, such as the peace movement and environmental campaigns. The macro politics of political parties and government decline, and are replaced by micro politics of single-issue more localised campaigns in locally-based transnational, global campaigns.
- Nation-states and national identities are displaced by globalisation. Super national bodies, like the European Union and the United Nations, and multinational companies producing global products, like Apple, Google, Starbucks, McDonalds, eclipse national and local identities. Global media and global marketing in a media-saturated society turn the world into a global supermarket.
- Society becomes dominated by global interactive digital media, social networking and electronic communication, including the internet. Media becomes more removed from reality. Strinati suggests media imagery becomes a source of individual identity, and the media now dominate and create our sense of reality, generating what Baudrillard called hyperreality in a media saturated society.
- Objective truth is undiscoverable. Lyotard argues that individuals have lost faith in progress and in meta narratives - the all-embracing ‘big stories’ like the national and social sciences which try to produce all-embracing explanations of the world. Meta narratives are just myths, and there are no certain or absolute truths about the world. Every question has an infinite number of answers, and all forms of knowledge are equally valid. For example, scientific theory is no more valid than knowledge provided by New Age beliefs and religions. There is a loss of faith in the certainty, rational thought, and scientific and technological progress of modernism. These are replaced by risk, doubt, uncertainty and anxiety.
- Science and technology often cause rather than solve problems, such as climate change, pollution, nuclear weapons and nuclear accidents, and antibiotic resistant superbugs. There is a growing scepticism about the idea of progress, and science is a force for good and its ability to explain and improve the world. Science is no longer a source of truth and progress, but just another failed meta narrative.
- Everything is in a permanent state of flux. Society is changing so constantly and rapidly, with social structure breaking down, that there is chaos and uncertainty. Societies can no longer be understood through the application of metanarratives like Marxism or functionalism which seek to explain society as a whole. Such metanarratives are inadequate to explain the changing world, because society has become fragmented into so many different groups, interests and lifestyles that are constantly changing that society is essentially chaotic. There are few of the social constraints on people that structuralist approaches identify, and society and social structures cease to exist - there is only a mass of individuals making their own personal lifestyle choices. Sociological theories are just one set of ideas competing against other equally valid ideas, and provide no basis for improving society.
What is simulacra?
Baudillard argues that those of us in developed countries live in a post-industrialised society that is no longer based on the production of goods. Instead, in post modern societies, the emphasis is on the production and consumption of media images. In a postmodern world, media images stand for nothing other than themselves - they do not reflect real life, media images now dominate and distort the way we see the world. Baudillard suggests the media presents what he calls simulacra, images which appear to have no basis in reality. The real images of war are not shown to the viewer but instead a simulacrum of the real event. The media sanitise it. ‘The Gulf War never happened’. Baudillard is pessimistic about the postmodern condition. This is because media-created hyper-reality leaves us unable to distinguish images from reality. This means we have lost the power to improve society; if we cannot even grasp reality then we have no power to change it.
What is the Marxist theory of postmodernity?
Flexible accumulation. According to Harvey, post-modernity arose out of the economic changes and the capitalist crisis of the 1970s and how capitalists responded to these changes. The 1970s saw rising oil prices and economic recession which led to the fall of capitalist profits. Responding to these changes coupled with the development of globalisation, capitalists have sought new ways of achieving profitability, which Harvey calls FA. FA saw the move away from manufacturing goods towards commerce, media and retail, producing massive changes in capitalism. FA turns leisure, culture and identity in to commodities produced for profit. If people can be persuaded they must constantly reinvent themselves and change their identity by buying new fashionable products and services, the capitalism has created an unlimited demand for products. Also leads to compression of time and space, and it brings political changes, especially the weakening of the working class movement. In its place, oppositional movements emerge e.g. women’s liberation, environmentalism, and anti-racism, etc. New phase of capitalism.
Evaluation of postmodernity
Strengths:
- Highlighted important cultural changes, particularly in the areas of the media, culture and identity.
- Emphasises that the construction of identity has become a more fluid and complex process, with people having more choices to pick ‘n’ mix identities based on consumer lifestyles and global media imagery - and cannot be reduced of simple a response to social structural factors.
- Insight into most contemporary social changes, such as growing risk and uncertainty, globalisation, and the growing power of the media.
- In challenging sociological metanarratives, it has perhaps encouraged sociologists to reflect more on some of their assumptions, how they set about their research, and the meaning of some contemporary social changes
Criticisms:
- All criticism, and since it sees no knowledge or vision as any better than any others, it lacks any values or vision for improving society; it undermines any idea of progress, and in a world with widespread poverty, inequality and injustice, this is in effect ignoring a range of diverse and serious social problems.
- Postmodernism is itself a metanarrative.
- Economic determinism. Marxists believe they have over-emphasised the influence of the media (assumes audience to be passive and not know what’s real or be able to make judgements), and ignores economic factors which can still shape people’s identity. Ignites the fact that capitalism continues to cause massive social inequality across the globe and how it still defines our identity.
- Exaggerates change. Some critics argue we live in a late modern society in which society has changed to some degree, but not as much as postmodernists have claimed. The traditional sociological issues still exist and remain important, such as class, gender, and ethnic inequalities which remain significant issues in determining our social experiences.
- Relativity of truths. Steve Bruce is critical of relativism which is at the heart of the postmodernist theory. He argues it is wrong to assume we have entered an era of the relativity of truths and holding such a view is potentially dangerous. If all knowledge is relative, and nobody has access to the absolute truth, it becomes impossible, for instance, to judge. Therefore, nonsensical theories become just as valid, e.g. the denial of the Nazi holocaust. He also sees science as not being a ‘relative truth’ - most people will still seek a qualified medical practitioner for serious illnesses rather than contemplate a complementary medical therapy such as aromatherapy.
- Postmodernism is ‘intellectually bankrupt’ as Westergaard would say. If we can only access subjective, partial and one-sided truths, what is the point of seeking out these understandings of the physical and social world?
What is Late modernity (criticism of postmodernity)?
Late modernists believe that, since globalisation, we are in a new phase of modernity. In this new phase, certain elements have been intensified. They also still believe the enlightenment project is still continuing. In other words science is still proving the truth. Late modernity is sometimes referred to as high modernity.
What did Giddens believe about late modernity?
Giddens believed that there were two main features of late modernity:
- The process of disembedding in which social relations are being lifted out of local contexts of interactions. In the pre-modern stages of social life Giddens argues, social interactions were constrained by space and time. If a person wanted to talk to a friend or relative in another town, for example, they had to travel to that town across a definite amount of physical space, and such travel took a particular amount of time. In modernity and late modernity, however, social interactions have become disembedded from such local contexts, as electronic communication, advanced transportation systems, and globalised economic and cultural systems have made it possible to interact with others with limited time-space constraints. In the late modern world, the lines separating the local from the global and the past from the future become blurry.
- Also, reflexivity is occurring, which means that tradition and custom no longer guide to how we behave. We are in a time where our behaviour is no longer defined by traditional values. We have become more individualistic e.g. men are no longer required to give up their seat for a women but are free to make their own decision or choice. Because tradition no longer tells us how to act we are forced to reflect, evaluate and monitor what we do and what we think and potentially change our thoughts and actions. As a result, culture becomes increasingly unstable.
