In order to explain and understand the social transformations that we are going through, in Western societies we have generated different frameworks of knowledge, which include different concepts and theories.

The latter, the current era, has been named in many different ways, among which is the concept of post-modernity . In this article we will see some definitions of this term, as well as some of its main characteristics.

What is post-modernity?

Post-modernity is the concept that refers to the state or socio-cultural climate that Western societies are going through today. The latter includes a subjective and intellectual dimension, but also has to do with political and economic organisation, as well as with artistic activity . And this is so because they all refer to the different phenomena that are configured in our societies, and that at the same time make our societies take shape.

On the other hand, it is called “postmodernity” or “post-modernity” because the prefix “post” makes it possible to establish points of rupture with the previous era, which we know as “modernity”. This means that it is not that modernity has ended, but rather that it has been crossed: there are some global elements that have had important transformations, with which some local and subjective phenomena have also been transformed .

It should be noted, however, that the concept of postmodernity originally referred to an artistic and cultural movement , rather than a political one. However, it served as an inspiration for social movements that incorporated the questioning of meta-narratives (the explanations of the functioning of society with a pretension of universalism) into their approach to politics.

Moreover, since it is such an ambiguous concept (because its nuclear idea is a kind of radicalized relativism), there cannot be any consensus on what it means to be postmodern either. This implies that beyond the criticism of the concept of universal truth, there is not much more that the postmodern elements of society have in common; not even the idea that all narratives are equally valid is accepted by the entire postmodern movement.

Post-modernity or post-modernism?

The difference between the two concepts is that the first refers to the cultural state and how the institutions and lifestyles that were characteristic of modernity have been modified, giving rise to new processes and lifestyles.

The second concept, that of postmodernism, refers to the new ways of understanding the world in terms of knowledge production .

In other words, the first concept makes a clearer reference to changes in social and cultural configuration; while the second refers to changes in the way of generating knowledge, which involves new epistemological paradigms that impact scientific or artistic production, and which ultimately affect subjectivities.

To put it even more succinctly, the term “post-modernity” refers to a socio-cultural situation of a particular period, which is that of the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st (the dates vary according to the author). And the term “postmodernism” refers to an attitude and an epistemic position (to generate knowledge), which is also the result of the socio-cultural situation of the same period.

Origins and main characteristics

The beginnings of post-modernity vary according to the reference, the author or the specific tradition being analysed. There are those who say that post-modernity is not a different era, but an updating or an extension of modernity itself. The truth is that the limits between one and the other are not completely clear. Nevertheless, we can consider different events and processes that were relevant to generate important transformations.

1. Political-economic dimension: globalization

The term “post-modernity” differs from the term globalization in that the former accounts for the cultural and intellectual state and the latter for the organization and global expansion of capitalism as an economic system, and democracy as a political system .

However, both are related concepts that have different points of contact. This is because post-modernity has been initiated in part by the process of political and economic transformation that has generated what we can call “post-industrial societies”. Societies where production relations have moved from being centred on industry to being mainly centred on technology management and communication.

For its part, globalization, whose rise is present in post-modernity, refers to the global expansion of capitalism . Among other things, the latter has resulted in the reformulation of the socio-economic inequalities deployed by modernity, as well as lifestyles strongly based on the need for consumption.

2. Social dimension: media and technologies

Those institutions that in previous times defined our identity and sustained social cohesion (because they made our roles in the social structure very clear to us with almost no possibility of imagining anything else), lose stability and influence. These institutions are replaced by the entry of new media and technologies.

This creates an important subjection to these means, because they are positioned as the only mechanisms that allow us to know “reality”. Some sociological theories suggest that this creates a “hyperreality” where what we see in the media is even more real than what we see outside of them, which makes us conceive in a very narrow way the phenomena of the world.

However, depending on how it is used, the new technologies have also generated the opposite effect: they have served as a tool for subversion and important questioning .

3. Subjective dimension: fragments and diversity

After the Second World War, the epoch that we know as modernity entered in a process of break and transformation that weakened the pillars of order and progress (main characteristics of the scientific and social revolutions), reason why from then on the critic to the excessive rationality expands , as well as a crisis of the values that had marked the traditional relations.

This has as one of its effects a large number of devices for the construction of subjectivities: on the one hand, a significant fragmentation of the same subjectivities and of the community processes is generated (individualism is reinforced and fast and fleeting links and lifestyles are also generated, which are reflected for example in fashion or in the art and music industry).

On the other hand, it makes it possible to make diversity visible. Individuals are then freer to build both our identity and our social articulations and new ways of understanding the world as well as ourselves are inaugurated.

That is to say, from the postmodern thought the ideal of reaching a way of thinking as objective as possible and therefore adjusted to reality in its most fundamental and universal aspects is rejected. Priority is given to giving voice to alternative stories that explain facets of reality that are not the most usual or those that receive the most attention.

On the other hand, this rejection of narratives with pretensions of universality has been criticized for being considered an excuse to legitimize relativism of all kinds, something that leaves out of the debate “popular knowledge” associated with non-Western cultures or those alien to the heritage of the Enlightenment: Chinese medicine, belief in spirits, radical identity movements, etc.

Bibliographic references

  • Bauman, Z. (1998). Viewpoint Sociology and postmodernity. Retrieved 18 June 2018. Available at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1467-954X.1988.tb00708.x.
  • Brunner, J.J. (1999). Cultural globalization and post-modernity. Revista Chilena de Humanidades, 18/19: 313-318.
  • Review Sociology (2016). From Modernity to Post-Modernity. Retrieved 18 June 2018. Available at https://revisesociology.com/2016/04/09/from-modernity-to-post-modernity/.