towards scientists, experts and professionals. Instead, the character of postmodernity is irrevocably diverse and fragmented, exemplified by the worldwide web, which teems with images, videos and other material from almost every culture around the world. The experience of web surfing can be one of randomness as we encounter a wide range of values and ideas very different from our own. This potentially disorientating experience is typical of a postmodern culture that is saturated with mass-media content.
Jean Baudrillard argues that the electronic media have destroyed our relationship to the past, creating a chaotic, empty world in which society is influenced, above all, by signs and images. For Baudrillard, the rising prominence of the mass media erodes the border between reality and its representation, leaving just one ‘hyperreality’ within which we all live. In a hyperreal world, our perception of events and our understanding of the social world become highly dependent on their being viewed through mass media such as television. Baudrillard’s (1995) provocative newspaper articles ‘The Gulf War Will Not Take Place’, ‘The Gulf War is Not Really Taking Place’ and ‘The Gulf War Did Not Take Place’, published before, during and after the war in 1991, aimed to show how apparently primary ‘real-world’ events, such as armies fighting in Kuwait, and the apparently secondary media reports of them were actually part of the same hyperreality.
A good way of thinking about postmodern ideas as received in sociology is to distinguish between the main tenets of postmodern social change and sociological theory’s ability to account for and understand this. The rapid growth and spread of mass media, new information technologies, more fluid movements of people across national boundaries, the demise of social class identities, and the emergence of multicultural societies – all of these changes, say postmodernists, lead us to conclude that we no longer live in a modern world ordered by national states. Modernity is dead and we are entering a postmodern period. The question then arises as to whether ‘modern’ sociology can adequately analyse a ‘post-modern’ world: Is there a sociology of postmodernity? Or are the consequences of postmodern change so radical that they render modern theories and concepts redundant? Do we need a postmodern sociology for a postmodern world?
Critical Points
There are many critics of postmodern theory. Some sociologists argue that post-modern theorists are essentially pessimists and defeatists who are so appalled by the dark side of modernity they would jettison its positive aspects as well. Yet there are clear benefits to modernity, such as the valuing of equality, individual freedom and rational approaches to social problems. Some of the social changes described in postmodern theory are also poorly supported by empirical studies. For example, the idea that social class and other collective forms no longer structure social life, leaving individuals at the mercy of media imagery, is an exaggeration. Though there are now more sources of identity, social class remains a key determinant of people’s social position and life chances (Callinicos 1990).
Similarly, there is much evidence that the media do play a more important role than in previous periods, but it does not follow that people simply soak up media content. There is a large body of audience research which shows that TV viewers, for instance, actively read and interpret media content, making sense of it from their own situation. With the advent of the worldwide web there are also many alternative information and entertainment sources, many of which are based on interactions between providers and consumers, generating more rather than less critical comment and evaluation of mainstream media output. Finally, even if some of the changes proposed by postmodernists are genuine and influential, the evidence that they add up to a radical shift beyond modernity remains a matter of theoretical debate.
Continuing Relevance
The concept of postmodernity was bound to be controversial given that sociology itself is rooted in a modernist approach. What would be the point of sociology if we gave up on trying to understand and explain social reality and to apply that knowledge in order to improve it? Nonetheless, postmodernity has had a longerlasting impact on the discipline. The opening up of plural viewpoints and diverse interpretations of the same social reality means that sociologists can no longer assume an unproblematic common culture or shared values within society but have to be sensitive to cultural diversity.
The 1980s and 1990s saw a proliferation of books and articles on postmodernity and postmodern culture, but by the turn of the century the ‘postmodern turn’ appeared to be over as the concept of globalization rose to prominence across the social sciences. Some have argued that postmodern ideas were essentially an academic fashion that has now passed (McGuigan 2006; Nealon 2012). But is this correct?
Garnar (2020) argues that the concept of postmodernity is still relevant. Differentiating between postmodernism as a series of cultural phenomena and postmodernity as an epoch that moves beyond that of modernity, he argues that the former has seen significant shifts, while the latter continues to characterize our global age. In particular, Garnar (2020: 5–6) focuses on the role of digital technologies, arguing that ‘the postmodern condition is shot through with technology’ and that these are one element of the postmodern condition, alongside changes in production and consumption, global relations and structures of power. The internet, mass computing, tablets, smartphones, satellite and cable TV are all forms of ‘postmodern technology’ which encourage and facilitate the playfulness, heterogeneity and anti-hierarchical practices associated with the postmodern. And, to the extent that digital technology has become embedded in everyday life, then this can, arguably, be discussed as a postmodern age.
References and Further Reading
Baudrillard, J. (1983) Simulations (New York: Semiotext(e)).
__ (1995) The Gulf War Did Not Take Place (Bloomington: Indiana University Press).
Bauman, Z. (1992) Intimations of Postmodernity (London: Routledge).
__ (1997) Postmodernity and its Discontents (Cambridge: Polity).
Callinicos, A. (1990) Against Postmodernism: A Marxist Critique (Cambridge: Polity).
Garnar, A. W. (2020) Pragmatism, Technology and the Persistence of the Postmodern (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield).
Kumar, K. (2005) From Post-Industrial to Post-Modern Society (2nd edn, Oxford: Blackwell).
Lyotard, J.-F. (1984) The Postmodern Condition (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press).
McGuigan, J. (2006) Modernity and Postmodern Culture (2nd edn, Buckingham: Open University Press).
Nealon, J. T. (2012) Post-Postmodernism: Or, the Cultural Logic of Just-in-Time Capitalism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press).
Rationalization
Working Definition
A long-term social process in which traditional ideas and beliefs are replaced by methodical rules and procedures and formal, means-to-ends thinking.
Origins of the Concept
To act in a rational way means to act reasonably and to think through the action and its consequences before performing it. The philosophical doctrine known as rationalism, which originated in the seventeenth century, contrasted knowledge based on reason and reasoning with that rooted in religious sources and received wisdom.
