Post-Modernism

Theoretical Perspectives: Post-Modernism

Key Ideas: 

• Culture and Identity (especially identities relating to gender, age, ethnicity)
  
• Centred and Decentred individuals
  
• Critical of Meta-Narratives (Grand Theories of Society like Marxism)
  
• Rejection of positivism (science as ideology)
  
• Post-Fordist production techniques
  
• Deindustrialisation
  
• Consumerism / Consumer Culture
  
• Class analysis "irrelevant" / "outdated"
  
• In-groups and out-groups ("One of Us or One of Them")
  
• Social Construction of reality (Subjective realities not objective realities)
  
• Reject ideology of "progress"
  
• New Social Movements
  
• Post-Industrial society / Post-Structuralism
  
• Globalisation
  
• Hyper-realities (media)
  
  

Key Names: Foucault, Derrida, Baudrillard, Bauman, Lyotard, McRobbie, Bell.

Key Criticisms: 

• In Sociology, modern twist on (old) Interactionist ideas
  
• If all knowledge is relative (has same status) why should anyone believe views of post-modern writers?
  
• Post-Modern society is ideology invention (does not exist)
  
• Over-emphasis on individuals, consumers, choice, etc.
  
• Under-emphasis on how "choice" is socially-created / produced
  
• No empirical evidence to support post-modernist "theories"
  
• Ignores power structures in society
  
• Capitalism does not produce empowered, knowledgeable, consumers
  
• Social class clearly related to life chances
  
• "Science" is not simply an ideology (describes empirical reality)
  
  

Key Critics: Gellner, Giddens, Habermas, Hall. (In addition, criticism has come from various sociological / non-sociological perspectives - Marxism, Feminism, New Right).