Modernity and Post-Modernity (in relation to Sociological Theory)

 What is modernity and modernism?

'Modernity' is a period in history that began around the 1700's and lasted until the 1980's when post-modernity emerged.






In sociology the term modernity is associated with industrialisation of society that came about during the industrial revolution when society moved from being a rural/agricultural existence to people moving to towns and cities to work in factories and industrial workplaces. 



It was around this time that Sociology was born as it was during this period that Marx, Durkheim and Weber were writing their works in an effort to understand society as it was changing rapidly. 








Postmodernity

Industrial society continued up to the 1980's and we still live in an industrial world but the Postmodern thinkers believe that the theories proposed by modernist era sociologists no longer can explain today's world. Postmodernists like Lyotard reject metanarratives (grand theories) like Marxism and Functionalism. arguing that society has now become too fragmented to neatly fit into such metanarratives.



Postmodern society is now made new social factors like globalisation, choice, differing identities, consumer culture and service industries. Postmodern society no longer see's workers in manual factory jobs but in service jobs like customer service, barista, information technology and telecommunications.

Globalisation has meant that cultures has become more diverse and fragmented with multiple cultural influences affecting identity, clothing, music, language, etc. 





Media images, content consumption and social media affect people's identity and consumption choices. Baudrillard talked about the hyper-reality of a media saturated world where people struggled to tell the difference between the real and hyper real.



Main features of postmodernism include

- Globalisation

- Choice, identity, consumption - people are now freer than ever to be what they want to be

- Media saturation and hyper-reality (Baudrillard)

- Pick n Mix identities based on whatever identity you may wish. Globalisation has brought so much variety to what one once a simple existence that people can now draw from many global influences in music, fashion, sexuality to identify in many different ways. The old way of only identifying via class, ethnicity or gender are no longer relevant


Strengths of Postmodernism

- it has highlighted the impact of globalisation on identity and lifestyles in the present world

- it highlights the recent cultural changes in society in relation to media influence on identities, culture, and pick n mix choice of today's world


Criticisms

- is postmodernism itself a meta narrative?

- it over-emphasises the influence of the media and suggests that people are passive and easily duped by media content

- it exaggerates the impact of social changes and fails to recognise that many of the old structures are still in tact and cultures/society are still influenced by factors such as class, age, ethnicity and gender.


Important note - it is important to remember that when describing modernity to mention sociological theories that were prevalent and deemed relevant at the time - Functionalism, Marxism - and that Postmodernism now rejects these theories as outdated and no longer relevant or able to explain the world today in its chaotic, fragmented form.

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Education (with MIC) Topic 1 - The Role and Function of the Education System

Image
AQA Specification the role and functions of the education system, including its relationship to the economy and to class structure https://www.aqa.org.uk/subjects/sociology/as-and-a-level/sociology-7191-7192/subject-content-a-level/education-with-theory-and-methods The Functionalist Perspective on Education Let's remind ourselves of some words and concepts associated with Functionalism value consensus organic analogy macro perspective structural perspective consensus Activity Let's get thinking! In pairs, write down 5 functions that the education system could have for wider society.  Think carefully and write them down clearly after discussing as you will be asked to explain! Durkheim - Solidarity and Skills Functionalist Sociologist Emile Durkheim identified two main functions of the education system - Social Solidarity - Specialist Skills Social Solidarity Durkheim claims that education helps to build social solidarity (meaning a sense of community and shared values) and with...
Read more

Positivism, interpretivism and sociological methods - Theory and Methods topic 1

Image
Specification the relationship between positivism, interpretivism and sociological methods; the nature of ‘social facts’ Lets get thinking with an activity. Each member of the class will come to the board and together we will collect one quantitative data in graph form. Each member will draw a block over the month of their birthday. I will get us started. It will eventually look like the graph below and in the end we will have a 2 axis graph showing us quantitative data related to the what month each member of the class was born.  It will look something like the graph below Lets follow this link to find some more interesting statistics -  https://bestlifeonline.com/crazy-statistics/ The main sociological research methods stem from two opposing theoretical approaches to the study of society. These approaches are called positivism and interpretivism. Both approaches use different methods of studying society and carrying out research. As a result they use different research metho...
Read more

Theoretical, Practical and Ethical Considerations - Theory and Methods topic 2

Image
Specification the theoretical, practical and ethical considerations influencing choice of topic, choice of method(s) and the conduct of research Influences on the choice of research topic and method It may not come as a shock to hear this, but most academic sociological researchers choose to research a topic for which they have a deep interest. It is often an area where they work, something that has affected them or something that they have experienced and wish to further research to develop knowledge to share.  Once the topic is chosen there are a range of factors to consider how best to go about researching the topic.  A useful way to remember the influences of choice of research topic and method is PET - Practical issues, Ethical Issues and Theoretical issues. Practical Issues - Accessibility - in some settings accessibility is easy. We are often approached in public places by people conducting surveys and happy to take random people from the street to do it. Other setting...
Read more