Postmodernism Flashcards
Theories of Late Modernity
Giddens and Beck
Theories of Postmodernism
Baudrillard
Lyotard
Modern society characteritsics: the nation state
The nation-state state is the key political unit in modern society
- a bounded territory ruled by a powerful centralised state, whose population usually shares the same language and culture. We tend to think of the modern world as made up of a series of separate societies, each with its own state.
The state is the focal point of modern society, organising social life on a national basis. Modern states have created large administrative bureaucracies and educational, welfare and legal institutions to regulate their citizens’ lives. The nation-state is also an important source of identity for citizens, who identify with its symbols such as the flag.
modern society characteristics: capitalism
Capitalism The economy of modern societies is capitalist
- based on private ownership of the means of production and the use of wage labourers. Capitalism brought about the industrialisation of modern society, with huge increases in wealth. However, wealth distribution is unequal, resulting in class conflict. The nation-state becomes important in regulating capitalism and maintaining the conditions under which it operates. Scott Lash and John Urry (1987; 1994) describe this as ‘organised capitalism’.
In modern industry, production is organised on Fordist principles (after the Ford Motor Company’s system): the mass production of standardised products in large factories, using low skilled labour. Cheap, mass produced consumer goods lead to a rising standard of living.
modern society characteristics: rationality, science and technology
Rationality, science and technology Rational, secular, scientific ways of thinking dominate and the influence of magico-religious explanations of the world declines.
Technically efficient forms of organisation, such as bureaucracies and factories, dominate social and economic life. Science becomes increasingly important in industry, medicine and communications.
modern society charactertsics: individulaism
Individualism Tradition, custom and ascribed status become less important as the basis for our actions. We experience greater personal freedom and can increasingly choose our own course in life and define our own identity.
However, structural inequalities such as class remain important in shaping people’s identity and restricting their choices.
Globalisation
Until recently, the nation-state provided the basic framework for most people’s lives. However, many sociologists argue that we are now increasingly affected by globalisation - the increasing interconnectedness of people across national boundaries. We live in one interdependent ‘global village’ and our lives are shaped by a global framework. Four related changes have helped bring this about.
technological changes
economic changes
political changes
changes in culture and identitgy
1.
Globalistion: 1 Technological changes
We can now cross entire 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. Ulrich Beck (1992) 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.
Globalistion: 2 Economic changes
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 the ‘risk society’.
Another major economic force pushing globalisation forward is trans-national companies (TNCs). 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 (2003) argues they now form a separate global capitalist class.
Globalisation: 3 Political changes
Some sociologists claim that globalisation has undermined the power of the nation-state. For example, Kenichi Ohmae
(1994) argues that we now live in a ‘borderless 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 Urry describe as ‘disorganised capitalism’.
Globalistion: 4 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.
Postmodernism
Postmodernism is a major intellectual movement that has emerged since the 1970s. It has been influential in many areas, including sociology. Postmodernists argue that we are now living in a new era of postmodernity. Postmodernity is an unstable, fragmented, media-saturated global village, where image and reality are indistinguishable. In postmodern society, we define ourselves by what we consume. It is not a continuation of modernity, but a fundamental break with it. For postmodernists, this new kind of society requires a new kind of theory - modernist theories no longer apply.
Knowledge
Drawing on the ideas of Michel Foucault (see Box 3.12), postmodernists argue that there are no sure foundations to knowledge - no objective criteria we can use to prove whether a theory is true or false. This view - known as anti-foundationalism - has two consequences:
- The Enlightenment project of achieving progress through true, scientific knowledge is dead. If we cannot guarantee our knowledge is correct, we cannot use it to improve society.
- Any all-embracing theory that claims to have the truth about how to create a better society, such as Marxism, is a mere meta-narrative or ‘big story’ - just someone’s version of reality, not the truth. Therefore there is no reason to accept the claims that the theory makes.
Postmodernists also reject meta-narratives such as Marxism on the grounds that they have helped to create oppressive totalitarian states that impose their version of the truth on people.
For example, in the former Soviet Union, the state’s attempt to re-mould society on Marxist principles led to political repression and slave labour camps.
Rejecting meta-narratives that claim absolute truth, postmodernists take a relativist position. That is, they argue that all views are true for those who hold them. No one has special access to the truth - including sociologists. All accounts of reality are equally valid. We should therefore celebrate the diversity of views rather than seek to impose one version of the truth on everyone.
But if knowledge is not about the truth, what is it about?
According to Jean-Francois Lyotard (1992), in postmodern society, knowledge is just a series of different language games’ or ways of seeing the world. However, in his view, postmodern society, with its many competing views of the truth, is preferable to modern society, where meta-narratives claimed a monopoly of truth and sometimes sought to impose it by force, as in the Soviet Union. Postmodernity allows groups who had been marginalised by modern society, such as minority groups and women, to be heard.
Baudrillard: simulacra
Like Lyotard, Jean Baudrillard (1983) argues that knowledge is central to postmodern society. He argues that society is no longer based on the production of material goods, but rather on buying and selling knowledge in the form of images and signs. However, unlike signs in past societies, those today bear no relation to physical reality.
Instead, signs stand for nothing other than themselves - they are not symbols of some other real thing. Baudrillard calls such signs simulacra (singular: simulacrum). For example, tabloid newspaper articles about fictitious soap opera characters are ‘signs about signs’ rather than about an underlying reality.
Baudrillard describes this situation as hyper-reality: where the signs appear more real than reality itself and substitute themselves for reality. However, because the signs do not represent anything real, they are literally meaningless. In this respect, Baudrillard is particularly critical of television, which he sees as the main source of simulacra and of our inability to distinguish between image and reality.
Culture, identity and politics
Postmodernists argue that culture and identity in postmodern society differ fundamentally from modern society, especially because of the role of the media in creating hyper-reality. The media are all pervading and they produce an endless stream of ever changing images, values and versions of the truth. As a result, culture becomes fragmented and unstable, so that there is no longer a coherent or fixed set of values shared by members of society.
This bewildering array of different messages and ideas also undermines people’s faith in meta-narratives. Confronted by so many different versions of the truth, people cease to believe wholeheartedly in any one version. Furthermore,given the failure of meta-narratives such as Marxism to deliver a better society, people lose faith in the possibility of rational progress.
In postmodernity, identity also becomes destabilised.
For example, instead of a fixed identity ascribed by our class, we can now construct our own identity from the wide range of images and lifestyles on offer in the media. We can easily change our identity simply by changing our consumption patterns - picking and mixing cultural goods and media-produced images to define ourselves.
Baudrillard is pessimistic about the postmodern condition.
Media-created hyper-reality leaves us unable to distinguish image from reality. This means that we have lost the power to improve society: if we cannot even grasp reality, then we have no power to change it. Political activity to improve the world is impossible, and so the central goal of the Enlightenment project is unachievable. It seems that, while we can change our identity by going shopping, we cannot change society.
From a Marxist perspective, Philo and Miller (2001) make several criticisms of postmodernism:
- It ignores power and inequality. For example, the idea that media images are unconnected with reality ignores the ruling class’ use of the media as a tool of domination.
- Similarly, the claim that we freely construct our identities through consumption overlooks the effect of poverty in restricting such opportunities.
- Postmodernists are simply wrong to claim that people cannot distinguish between reality and media image.
- By assuming all views are equally true, it becomes just as valid to deny that the Nazis murdered millions as it does to affirm it. This is a morally indefensible position.
Postmodernism can be criticised on logical grounds. For example, Lyotard’s theory is self-defeating: why should we believe a theory that claims that no theory has the truth?
Postmodernism can be criticised on logical grounds. For example, Lyotard’s theory is self-defeating: why should we believe a theory that claims that no theory has the truth?
Moreover, Best and Kellner (1991) point out that postmodernism is a particularly weak theory:
while it identifies some important features of today’s society (such as the importance of the media and consumption), it fails to explain how they came about.
Postmodernists are criticised for their pessimism about the Enlightenment project - their view that objective knowledge is impossible and that nothing can be done to improve society.
David Harvey (1989) rejects this pessimistic view.