‘Society has now entered a new postmodern age and we need new theories to understand to understand it.’ Assess this view.

Sociologists all agree there is something called Modernity and Post Modernity-where they differ is which one they think society currently is. Theories such as feminism, Marxism, and functionalism are structural and believe society influences the individual. Whilst theories like post modernism and interactionism are non-structural and believe that the individual influences society. There are major changes that have occurred in society recently such as: the growing impact of new technology and the media, and new social and political movements (based on gender, environmental concerns and so on). What is being questioned is the nature, cause and effect of these changes which have different theories for explanation. The first argument is that the changes are so profound they represent a major shift from the modern century of the last two centuries, to a new post modern society. The second argument is that recent changes have been significant but they are still a part of modern society- just an intensification of the existing features of a modern society. The second argument is seemingly more valid, especially in terms of science and trying to prove post modernism. For post modernism argues that nothing can be proved to be true and take on a relativism method also supporting interpretivism. if this is the case the theory itself cannot be proven to be true hence lacking validity and, essentially, proving itself wrong. We cannot possibly live in a world where we don’t know any truths, for this reason it cannot be accepted that we live in a post modern society for there are alternative theories, such as late modernism, that are more relative to society today.

Modernity emerged in the late 18th century as part of the enlightenment project, to identify the workings of modern society and discover the direction it should take if it is to progress. There are main features of modernity include the nation state, that is the idea that the population shares language and culture, societies are separate with their own norms and values. Also there is capitalism, which is the industrialization of modern society. Individualism is the greater personal freedom, and the fact that everyone is interested in their own goals. Lastly, rationality, science and technology are about scientific ways of thinking which demonstrate and influence religious explanations of the world to no longer be as relevant, as now technology effect forms of organization, making science be the main way of explaining the workings of the world. Until recently, the nation-state provided the basic framework for most people’s lives. But many sociologist argue that we are now increasingly affected by globalization. Globalization is the increasing interconnectedness of people across national boundaries. We live in one independent ‘global village’ and our lives are shaped by global framework, rather than a national one. There are many changes that brought about globalization. One is a technological change which has increased internet access to anything around the world, and phone calls from London to Spain are now as easy as landline calls to the UK. Also satellite and television networks have created a ‘time space compression’. The next is economic changes which have meant that businesses never stops, as one bank closes, another one in China, for example, opens keeping business going. There have also been political changes which have disorganized capitalism and meant that states are less able to regulate activity of large-scale capitalist enterprises. The last is changes in culture and identity, countries and cultures aren’t isolated from each other and can now have shared norms and values. These changes raise important questions as to whether we still live in a modern society or have moved onto a postmodern one. Also it is now questionable whether we need new theories to help explain the changes or are the ones we have adequate. The final point in question is as to whether the Enlightenment project is still viable and whether we can still hope to achieve objective knowledge and use it to improve society, or have the rapid changes associated with globalization made society too chaotic for us to understand and control it, hence leading us to post modernity.

Postmodernism emerged in the 1970’s stressing the chaos and uncertainty in society. Postmodernity is an unstable, fragmented, media-saturated global village. They believe image and reality are indistinguishable and that we define ourselves by what we consume. Postmodernity is not a continuation with modernity but a complete break from it, a new society therefore, requires a new kind of theory, in which case modernist theories no longer ‘apply’. Lyotard (1984) described postmodernism as ‘an incredulity towards metanarratives’, and argued that people no longer believed in the ‘myth of truth’. As society is now changing so constantly and so rapidly, societies can no longer be understood through the application of general theories or metanarratives. Metanarratives are ‘big’ theories like Marxism or functionalism, which seek to explain society as a whole, but these no longer apply according to postmodernists, because society has become fragmented into so many different groups, interests and lifestyles that are constantly changing that society is essentially chaotic. There has been a loss of faith in superiority of rational thought and science, and the idea of progress. All knowledge of any kind is now true. Lyotard also believes in anti-foundationism- there are no sure foundations to knowledge as there is no objective criteria we can use to prove whether a theory is a true or false. This means that the enlightenment project is dead as if we cant guarantee our knowledge is correct, how can we use it to improve society. However, postmodernists are criticized for their pessimism about the enlightenment project and the view that objective knowledge is impossible and we cannot use knowledge to improve society. Additionally if postmodernists believe there is no sure absolute knowledge, this leaves the lingering question as to why their theory should be believed at all. Beck argues for the enlightenment tradition with the belief that there is the power of reason to create a better world. Rather than meta-narratives that claim absolute truth, postmodernists take a relative approach meaning that all views are true for those who hold them, and all accounts of reality are equally valid. Therefore, we should seek to embrace this diversity of views, rather than impose one version of the truth on everyone. The issue is, if knowledge is not about truth, what is it about. Lyotard recognizes this issue, but a postmodenist society is still preferable to modern society. Now, previously marginalized groups like ethnic minorities and woman can be heard, making it a better theory for society today.

Postmodern society involves a media-saturated consumer culture in which individuals are free to ‘pick n mix’ and change identities and lifestyles chosen from a limitless range of constantly changing consumer goods and leisure activities, which are available from across the globe. Boaudillard sees knowledge as important in postmodern society, like Lyotard. In contrast to Marxism, he argues that society has moved away from being based on production of material goods and buying and selling of signs and images, that bear no resemblance to material reality, are more important. Baudrillard sees life in the postmodern era as being so dominated by media imagery that it has become what used more or calls ‘media-saturated. The mass media used more or less to reflect some basic reality, but media images now dominate and discomfort the way we see the world. Baudrillard suggests that the media what he calls simulacra. This means images appear to reflect events in the real world but that have no basis in reality, and which are viewed simultaneously across the globe. Even images of real events are so distorted and distanced from reality that they actually replace reality. Baudrillard calls the distorted view of the world hypperality. The view is created and defined by media, and the image becomes more real than reality as it tries to make viewers feel they are experiencing an ‘event’. Some celebrities are well known for actually doing something, but just because they have been made famous by the media. This means, as Giddens puts it, that ‘much of our world has become a sort of make-believe universe in which we are responding to media images rather than to real people or places’, as is shown by people who write to characters in television soaps, imagining that they are real. Baudrillard argues, 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. Postmodernists make some important points about today’s society, such as: the significance of the media for culture and identity. However, Marxists, such as, Philo and Miller argue, they are wrong to claim that people cannot distinguish between reality and media image. Additionally, the claim that we freely construct our identities through consumption overlooks the effect of poverty, making it more difficult to say it’s relevant to society today as poverty still exists. Whilst postmodernists have indentified some important features of today’s society, it is poorly equipped to explain them. Late-modernists may be able to explain today’s society and the changes that have taken place better.

Unlike postmodernism, theories of late modernity argue that the rapid changes we are witnessing are not the start of a new era, but simply a continuation of a modern society. The key features of modern society that were always present have now become intensified, for example, social change was always a feature of modern society but now the increase of change has gone into overdrive, we are still in modernity, but have entered its later stage. If we are still in the modern era, then modernist theories like Marxism and Feminism are still useful. Therefore, the aims of the enlightenment project are still relevant, contrasting to postmodern views, we can still discover objective knowledge about the world and use it to improve society. A characteristic of late modernity Giddens calls ‘high modernity’ is that it experiences rapid social change on a global scale. This is due to two features of late modernity. One is disembedding which is, the lifting out of social relations from local contexts of interaction’. The effects are it breaks down geographical barriers and makes interaction less personal. The next is reflexivity, this means due to tradition no longer telling us how to act, means we have become more reflexive, as a result of this constant re-evaluation of ideas-nothing is fixed and everything is up for challenge. In this type of society, culture in late modern society becomes increasingly unstable and subject to change. These two ideas relate to globalization as allowing social interaction to spread, and technology to grow, the process of globalization is driven on. The concept of reflexivity suggests that we reflect on our actions and then are free to re-shape our lives accordingly and reduce our exposure to risk. However, not everyone has this option; for example, poor people are generally exposed to more environmental risks because they are more likely to live in polluted areas, but may be unable to move to a healthier one. Giddens thinks in high modern society, we face a number of high consequence risks. These are: nuclear war, instability of the economy, global warming and threats to freedom. In modernity there are global risks, e.g. nuclear war can kill us. These are manufactured or human-made rather than natural risks. People are more aware of risks and religion and culture is less important and doesn’t provide as much stability for people. Giddens describes these risks as ‘juggernaut of modernity’ where people feel insecure and unstable. However, he rejects the modernist view that we can make rational plans to reduce risks and achieve progress to a better society. Unlike postmodernism, late modernity not only shows that rational analysis of society is still possible, but also recognizes that whilst our knowledge isn’t perfect, it can still be used to improve society and reduce the risks we face.

Beck believes that today’s late modern or ‘risk society’ faces new kinds of danger. In the past the dangers that we faced were natural e.g. droughts. Today, the dangers we face are manufactured risks from human activities, e.g. pollution. Postmodernists such as Baudrillard reject the enlightenment project, with its belief in progress through rational based knowledge. Beck disagrees with this position, although he is skeptical about scientific progress, he still believes we can use our rationality to overcome this. Beck claims that science helps create risk, as people experience risk they become experts on areas that concern them, collecting data and reflecting those risks. However, Rustin argues it is capitalism that is the source of risk. Beck claims that politics, such as environmentalists, attempt to deal with these risks not just government but other groups. As a result, modernity generates risks and attempts to tackle risk. Hirst rejects this and argues that these movements are too fragmented to bring about capitalism. Like Beck and Giddens, Marxists believe in the enlightenment project. Marx claimed that his theory showed a working-class revolution could overthrow capitalism and bring an end to exploitation. Where Marxists differ from Becks and Giddens is that they believe that today’s society has indeed moved from modernity to postmodernity. They agree with postmodernists that there have been changes in society, and similarly describe postmodernist culture by emphasizing the importance of media images, diversity and instability. Rather than seeing postmodernity as a fundamental break with the past, Marxists regard it as merely the product of the most recent stage of capitalism and to undertanad it, we must examine its relationship to capitalism. Capitalism is a very dynamic system, constantly developing new technologies and ways of organizing production to make profits. However, capitalism is prone to periodic crisis of the 1970’s, which saw the end of the long economic boom that last since 1945. This crisis gave rise to a new regime of accumulation- a new way of achieving profitability. Harvey describes this as ‘flexible accumulation’ or post-Fordism. Flexible accumulation involves the use if ICT, expanded service and finance sector, job security, requirements for workers to be ‘flexible’ to meet employers ‘needs, and permits the production of customized products for small, ‘niche’ marks instead of standardized products for mass markets. These changes brought about many cultural characteristics of postmodernity. For example- introduction of customized products for niche markets promotes cultural diversity, easy switching of production from one product to another encourages constant shift in fashion. Flexible accumulation also brought about changes in consumption; it turned leisure, culture and identity into commodities. Jameson argues, postmodernity represents a more developed form of capitalism because it commodities virtually all aspects of life including our identities. Harvey argues that this more developed form of capitalism also leads to another feature of postmodernity: the compression of time and space, the commodification of cultures all serve to shrink the globe. Harvey Jameson argues that flexible accumulation has also brought about political changes that have the same characteristics as postmodernity, it has weakened the working-class and socialist movement and in their place, a variety of oppositional movements have emerged (environmental, woman’s liberation, anti racism…) Harvey and Jameson are hopeful that these new social movements can form a rainbow alliance to bring about change. But by accepting that political oppositions to capitalism has been fragmented into many different social movements, Marxists theories of postmodernism appear to abandon this.

To conclude it is evident that society is still lingering between late modernity and postmodernity. For late modernity accepts that its not a full break away from modernity, but rather a continuation. However, postmodernity is a complete break away, and due to the fact that it believes nothing can be proven to be objectively true, the theory itself is put under question. Society, as it is, is doing well to understand its surroundings with science, and to disregard the only method of discovering truth would be a step backwards, instead of progress. To say the least, there are hints of postmodernity in society, however, late modernity is sufficient to our understanding of society.