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Modernity and Postmodernity (Baudrillard (Postmodern society about…
Modernity and Postmodernity
Modernity
Refers to industrial world that emerged late 1700's.
Introduction of mass production. Urbanisation (growth of towns and cities) and state bureaucracy.
Modernity period of time where world was guided by ordered, rational, scientific studies rather than other sources of knowledge, e.g. religion.
Modernist sociological theories study modernist societies. Interested in why societies have evolved in the way they have and why they're arranged the way they are. Investigate in a scientific way.
Modernist theories structuralist theories of Marxism and Functionalism.
Referred to as 'grand narrative' and 'metanarratives' (stories which make sense of other stories).
Modernists claim monopoly of truth which is the claim that they are objectively right about society.
Postmodermism
Postmodernists argue society has moved on from ordered world of modernity because of several changes occurring.
These changes are;
Work has become more flexible, service industries partly taken over from manufacturing industries.
Emphasis on consumption of cultural products.
Pluralism of culture and pluralism of roles, people have different identities based on situation they're in.
Globalisation affected production and communication, making boundaries between states less important.
Metanarratives
No longer enough to answer questions about social world, several other theories must be taken into consideration if society is to be understood properly.
Known as a relativist approach- no one theory alone can claim to be true and provide truth about society.
Baudrillard
Postmodern society about consumption, rather than production, focusses on how we consume signs. e.g. poster of a band, not real thing.
As there's no agreed definition of what's real, signs in society don't relate to real things.
Baudrillard says signs are 'simulacra' we consume signs, even though they're meaningless.
He refers to hyper-reality- inability to tell what is real from what's not.
TV gives false sense of reality, unaware of what's going on in society and the world. Resulting in inability to improve society, as we've lost all reality of social world.
Criticisms
Emphasise role of culture and media in creating identities but there's no one identity that people choose anymore, people happy to create new identities at different stages in their life.
Harvey claims Baudrillard too pesimistic about ability to change society in future.
Theory claims no one theory holds the truth, so this should be applied to their theory too, so theory contradicts itself.
Theory ignores interactions between individuals and ignores the relationship between institutions.