Modernity and Social Theory SO3523 Postmodernism & Postmodernity.

Modernity and Social Theory SO3523

Postmodernism & Postmodernity


• Postmodernism - A challenge to the assumptions of modern thought – the ‘death of reason’ (Power,1990)

• Postmodernity – Social changes that herald the decline of the society constructed through modern ways of thinking

• Start with modernity -


• Background:

• Renaissance 14th – 16th century

• The Reformation 1517

• Deism


• Immanuel Kant:

‘Sapere aude: have courage to use your own understanding.’

Also: Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot etc. – radical doubt, questioning and emancipatory knowledge


• The Enlightenment 17th – 18th century

• Individualism & Individual Freedom

• Reason/Rationality

• Order

• Progress


• Romanticism: Late 18th - 19th century (anti enlightenment’s ‘cold’ rationality)

• Individualism

• Experience

• Emotions

• Nature

• The Past (Nations)


• Modern Society (Modernity):

• Individualism (unified and autonomous sense of self)

• Order & Control

• Science

• De-traditionalization & Secularization

• Complex Division of Labour


• Industrialism• Bureaucracy• Professionalism & Expertise• Fordism/Production/Career (‘Job for Life’)• Economic Management• Urbanisation• Optimism/Confidence


• Two main strands to modern thought and its application – mechanization of social order + emancipation of the lifeworld (Cooper & Burrell, 1988)

• Systemic Modernism: • Instrumental rationality applied to control complex

organisations and tasks (see Weber, Fordism, Ritzer etc.)


• Critical Modernism:

• Critical reason applied to advancing understanding for the improvement of society

• Rational Science and Social Science

• Social Constructionism


• Jurgen Habermas:

• Enlightenment project incomplete• Instrumental rationality (systemic)

constraining rationality’s emancipatory (critical) potential– see ‘colonisation of the lifeworld’

• Need for revival of critical rationality through ideal speech community


• Anthony Giddens:

• Late Modernity (superficiality, scepticism and consumerism extensions of modernity – not new era)

• Reflexive Modernity – modernity as ‘post-traditional’

• Global Modernity, ‘Disembedding’ & Risk


• Evaluating Modernism & Modernity:• Privileging of rational over the irrational (emotional)• Precise language, categorisation and meaning• Liberation from superstition and tradition• Facilitates order/predictability• Focus on understanding/discovery• Technological/scientific (including medical)

advancement, production, economic expansion and improved living standards. BUT


• Devalues/constrains emotional experience• Constrains individual autonomy and spontaneity

through ‘disciplinary society’ – rational control and surveillance

• Marginalizes minority/non-Western forms of knowledge

• Moral inadequacy- role of rationality in colonialism, imperialism, social inequality, world wars and genocide (holocaust)

• Produces environmental degradation/increased risk (scientific failure and technological dystopia)


• Lecture 2

• Postmodernism: ‘This term means nothing: use it on all possible occasions’ (anon).

• Criticises assumptions of modern thought and modern rationality – heralds the decline of the modern project and modern society and the emergence of a new form of society - postmodernity.


• Postmodernists Reject:

• a) Enlightenment project of achieving progress through reason

• b) The belief in single all encompassing truths – meta-narratives

• c) The privileged status of reason/mind over emotion, sentiment, intuition, mysticism and body. (Romanticism?)


• d) Pre-given boundaries between things, ideas and experiences

• e) Categorization of experience

• f) Objective knowledge

• f) The intellectual marginalization of particular sets of ideas, ways of life etc.


• Michel Foucault (Post-Structuralist)

• Power/Knowledge (influence of Nietzsche)• Language & Discourse (influence of Saussure)• Impossibility of Objective Knowledge/Truth• History as directionless – not progressive• Professionalism & Expertise• Surveillance, Control & Bio-Power


• Jacques Derrida (Post-Structuralist)

• Instability of Meaning – privileging of difference, inversion and ambiguity over authoritative (modern) classification/categorization

• Deconstruction – all texts (ideas, actions) open to as many interpretations as there are interpreters – no definitive reading


• Jean-François Lyotard

• End of Grand Narratives (decline in belief in progress)

• Legitimacy – (scientific, and others forms, achieved through presentation rather than substance)

• De-realization


• Jean Baudrillard

• Simulation – consumerism and the mass media engage in a proliferation of signs that are increasingly detached from any underlying reality

• Hyperreality


• Zigmunt Baumann• The Holocaust - consequences of rational social

engineering, instrumental calculation and bureaucratic organization

• ‘Liquid Modernity’ - Late (post) modernity – solid features of modern self and society ‘dissolve’ amid flux an flow of complex consumer society – selfhood is chosen from the ‘supermarket of identities’

• ‘Legislators and Interpreters’


• Postmodern Society (Postmodernity)

• Individualism (multiple/’performative’ self)

• Superficiality/Pastiche/Play

• Disorder & Flux

• Anti-Science

• No privileged standpoint – all traditions, beliefs equally valid


• Postmodern Society (Postmodernity)

• Fragmentation• De-industrialisation• Disorganisation• Relativism• Post-Fordism/Consumerism/Flexibility• Pessimism/anxiety, stress and doubt


• Evaluating Postmodern & Postmodernity:• Provides critical evaluation of modernity and modern

thought• Draws attention to the dehumanising and irrational

features of modern rational organisation (not exclusive in this – see Marx, Weber, Simmel, Ritzer etc.)

• Challenges the ethno-centric assumptions of Western rationalism

• Draws attention to the increasingly artificial, superficial and ‘mythical’ nature of contemporary culture and lived environment. BUT


• Relativism/Radical Constructionism – If there is no privileged standpoint, and no possibility of objective knowledge, then why postmodern theory?

• Also – if all perspectives/versions of reality are equally valid then medical doctor = witch doctor?

• Tendency towards solipsism – view that nothing is verifiable beyond one’s own experience – potential for triviality, fatalism and even nihilism.

• No recipe/hope for social advancement/improvement criteria for judgement of ideas, values, morality

• Anomie and meaninglessness • Just Babel? – Pretentious Irrational Nonsense (Chomsky,

Sokal etc.)


• End of Meta-narratives?

• What about -

• Globalization• Neo-liberalism• Liberal Democracy• Religion (Secularization or Desecularization?)

Modernity and Social Theory SO3523 Postmodernism & Postmodernity.

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