Globalisation, modernity and Postmodernity.

Question 1

LATE MODERNITY

Answer 1

Changes in society are not a sign of postmodernity but an amplification of the social changes in modernity. Enlightenment project is still viable.

GIDDENS
Social change created by
-Disembedding
- Reflexivity.

Global risks Juggernaut of modernity. Religion less relevant.

BECK - modernity create risk, late modernity tackles -> People become experts in their field of risk, helping their individualism. Politics also helps solve. Media distorts but reflexivity ensures clearer.

BUT

• Not all have power to reflex and change (Poor)
• HIRST - Politics too fragmented.

Question 2

MODERN vs GLOBAL

Answer 2

Industry -
M - Fordist
G - Transnational SKLAIR ‘ Global capitalist class’

TECH
M- Science and rationality
G- Time space compression - Beck - Global risk society.

STATE
M- Nation state
G- MCGREW - Deterritorialisation, OHMAE borderless world

ECONOMIC
M- Capitalist Ush and Urry - Organised Capitalism
G- Disorganised Capitalism - global scale, weightless, money never sleeps.

IDENTITY
M- More freedom, less focus on the ascribed
G- Global culture, fragmented identity.

Question 3

POSTMODERNITY

Answer 3

FOUCALT -
Anti Foundationalism - No truth, nothing to base theory on.
Reject Metanarratives - no one version of the truth, assertion creates regimes like the USSR.

LYOTARD
Reject Metanarratives - science and religion.
Knowledge is just a series of language games.
Postmodernity = small localised truths, not macro, cannot assert, diversity better than monopoly.

BAUDRILLARD
Hyper reality - cannot identify reality so cannot improve.
Simulacra - knowledge is sold in symbols but symbols have little relation to reality ie magazines about soaps.
Pick n Mix identity
The end of the social

BAUMAN
Buy identity
Liquid modernity - social structures breaking down.

BRADLEY New identities created by globalisation.

Question 4

Evaluation of postmodernism

Answer 4

PHIOL AND MILLER
If no truth then can dispute holocaust - morally indefensible.
Ignore power disparity - especially media
Constraints on identity construction ie poverty.

HARVEY
Still enlightenment

Postmodernism itself is a Meta narrative.

Too vague, no solutions.

Question 5

POSTMODERN MARXISTS

Answer 5

HARVEY AND JAMESON - There is Postmodernity but this just represents a new stage of capitalism.

HARVEY - New niche individual products just reflect change in attitude of capitalist markets after saturation and crisis of the 1970s.
JAMESON - Pick n mix identity just highlights how this is a fuller level of Capitalism as consumerised all aspects of life and culture.

HARVEY AND JAMESON - Individuality has divided oppositional groups preventing change and an overthrow of the system.

Question 6

MODERNITY THEORIST

Answer 6

WEBER - Iron cage of rationality

MARX- Modernity is defined by Capitalism

DURKHEIM- Organic solidarity (not mechanical) defined by economic co-dependency, collective conscience is weakened - more freedom but more anomie