Postmodernists & globalisation

• Giddens (positive effects)

  • Globalisation has led to detraditionalization, a decline in traditional behaviour. 
  • Example: global campaigns such as #girlsnotbrides and #metoo have led to greater global awareness of gender inequality.  
• Katz & Sugiyma

  • Mobile phones are being used as a status symbol and a fashion statement signifying coolness 
  • Used by youth to assert their independence  
  • US and Japanese teens prioritized style over battery life 
• Marxists criticise Katz & Sugiyma for assuming that consumer choice has increased for all when in reality income is a key factor.
• Example of how online worlds can go wrong

  Belgium police had to 'patrol' Second Life as a result of virtual prostitution, rape, and pornography.
• Jurgenson

  • We live in an ‘augmented reality’- the digital and physical are enmeshed 
  • Techno-human syntheses are more common than ever, from medicine to communication and beauty. 
  • Lockdown fundamentally changed how we view our lives because of digitalisation 
  • Technology is now the driving force of our lives. 
• Examples of techno-human syntheses (Jurgenson)

  Medical = pacemakers, contact lenses, breast implants

  Communication = Zoom, radio, television
• Bauman

  • Identity is no longer based on anything stable and has become fragmented, fluid, and short lived. 
  • As a response to increasing uncertainty people are focusing on short-lived identities and relationships focused on ‘a good time’  
  • 'To be in cyberspace is to not be real'
• Marxists critique the idea that identity is now fluid as the rich have more resources to flex their online identities.
• Examples of short-lived identities and relationships online (Bauman)


  Dating apps allow users to create an idealised version of their identity
• Baudrillard

  • The signified is reality, the signifier is digital communication which projects a version of reality to us.
  • TV creates a hyper-reality that feeds us unreliable versions of the truth.
  • We've lost our grip on reality - what we see may or may not be true but we've stopped caring.
  • 'Information blizzard' makes it impossible to find the truth
  • Power is disappearing into an endless exchange of meaningless symbols.
• Baudrillard's theory is criticised for its lack of empirical evidence - he offers no evidence for his theory that the Iraq war was not real.
• Baudrillard's example of TV's hyper-reality

  He claims the Iraq war an illusion that did not take place. He thinks it was a series of images for TV viewing.