Late modernity is a term that has been used to describe the condition or state of some highly developed present day
societiesA society, or a human society, is a group of people related to each other through persistent relations, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or virtual territory, subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations...
. It regards their state as a continuation or development of
modernityModernity typically refers to a post-traditional, post-medieval historical period, one marked by the move from feudalism toward capitalism, industrialization, secularization, rationalization, the nation-state and its constituent institutions and forms of surveillance...
, rather than as a distinct new state, post-modernity.
'Late modernity is defined by complex,
globalGlobalization refers to the increasingly global relationships of culture, people and economic activity. Most often, it refers to economics: the global distribution of the production of goods and services, through reduction of barriers to international trade such as tariffs, export fees, and import...
capitalist economies and a shift from state support and welfare to the privatisation of services...a process fuelled by the information revolution, the capacity to move capital and information around the world instantaneously'.
Postmodernity?
Social theoristsSocial theories are theoretical frameworks which are used to study and interpret social phenomena within a particular school of thought. An essential tool used by social scientists, theories relate to historical debates over the most valid and reliable methodologies , as well as the primacy of...
such as Lash (1990), and 'sociologists such as
Ulrich BeckUlrich Beck is a German sociologist who holds a professorship at Munich University and at the London School of Economics.-Life:...
,
Zygmunt BaumanZygmunt Bauman is a Polish sociologist who, since 1971, has resided in England after being driven out of Poland by an anti-Semitic campaign, engineered by the Communist government which he had previously supported...
and
Anthony GiddensAnthony Giddens, Baron Giddens is a British sociologist who is known for his theory of structuration and his holistic view of modern societies. He is considered to be one of the most prominent modern contributors in the field of sociology, the author of at least 34 books, published in at least 29...
, criticize adherents of "
postmodernityPostmodernity is generally used to describe the economic or cultural state or condition of society which is said to exist after modernity...
" that presume the ending of the modernization process and the dawning of a new era. Contemporary modernity, they argue, rather involves a continuation or even a radicalization of the modernization process'. On
technologicalTechnological change is a term that is used to describe the overall process of invention, innovation and diffusion of technology or processes. The term is synonymous with technological development, technological achievement, and technological progress...
and
social changeSocial change refers to an alteration in the social order of a society. It may refer to the notion of social progress or sociocultural evolution, the philosophical idea that society moves forward by dialectical or evolutionary means. It may refer to a paradigmatic change in the socio-economic...
s since the 1960s, the concept of "late modernity" proposes that contemporary societies are a clear continuation of
modernModernity typically refers to a post-traditional, post-medieval historical period, one marked by the move from feudalism toward capitalism, industrialization, secularization, rationalization, the nation-state and its constituent institutions and forms of surveillance...
institutional transitions and cultural developments. Such authors talk about a
reflexive modernizationThe concept of reflexive modernization was launched by a joint effort of three of the leading European sociologists - Anthony Giddens, Ulrich Beck and Scott Lash...
process: 'social practices are constantly examined and reformed in the light of incoming information about those very practices, thus constitutively altering their character' 1990: 38). Modernity now tends to be self-referring, instead of being defined largely in opposition to traditionalism, as with classical modernity.
Anthony Giddens does not dispute that important changes have occurred since "high" modernity, but he argues that we have not truly abandoned modernity. Rather, the modernity of contemporary society is a developed, radicalized, 'late' modernity - but still modernity, not postmodernity. In such a perspective, 'so-called postmodernism turns out to be a technological hyper-intensification of modernism...continued
enmeshment in modernism '.
Subjects
The subject is constructed in late modernity against the backdrop of a 'world of fragmented and incommensurate identities and personae' - something fully commensurate with the 'rise of "life-style" cultures..."In buying one part of the system, one buys (into) the sign system as a whole...into a lifestyle"'. The framing matrix of the late modern personality is the way 'uncertainty, fragmentation, and ambiguity issue from the disembedded social relations of high (or post-) modernity', impinging upon 'the self-reflexive consciousness of the newly emergent multiple self'.
Arguably at least, 'young women have been produced as ideal subjects of late modernity through a blending of a kind of individualized
feminismFeminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...
with
neoliberalismNeoliberalism is a market-driven approach to economic and social policy based on neoclassical theories of economics that emphasizes the efficiency of private enterprise, liberalized trade and relatively open markets, and therefore seeks to maximize the role of the private sector in determining the...
'.
Liquid modernity
Zygmunt Bauman who introduced the idea of liquid modernity wrote that its characteristics are the privatization of
ambivalenceAmbivalence is a state of having simultaneous, conflicting feelings toward a person or thing. Stated another way, ambivalence is the experience of having thoughts and/or emotions of both positive and negative valence toward someone or something. A common example of ambivalence is the feeling of...
and increasing feelings of uncertainty. It is a kind of chaotic continuation of modernity, where one can shift from one social position to another, in a fluid manner. Nomadism becomes a general trait of the liquid modern man, as he flows through his own life like a tourist, changing places, jobs, spouses, values and sometimes even more (such as political or sexual orientation), (self-)excluded from the traditional networks of support.
Bauman stressed 'the profound change which the advent of "fluid modernism" has brought to the human condition...the burden of pattern-weaving and the responsibility for failure falling primarily on the individual's shoulders'. The globalized social world takes on 'the pattern of a caravan site. The place is open to everyone with his or her own caravan and enough money to pay the rent'. The result is a normative mindset dominated by 'the new pieties...that it is both more truthful and better not to know who you are, that it is preferable to slip, shift or float than to know, stop or stay'; a mindset with 'its characteristic conditions of perpetual motion as a mode of being', peopled by a subject 'imprisoned, as it were, in an existential freedom of his own making'.
See also
Further reading
- Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens and Scott Lash. 1994.Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order. Blackwell.
- Beck, Ulrich. 1992. Risk Society. SAGE Publications.
- Giddens, Anthony. 1991. The Consequences of Modernity. Stanford University Press.
- Lash, Scott. 1990. The Sociology of Postmodernism. Routledge.