Post-Modernity

• Characteristics of Post Modernism

  • Diversity and fragmentation = broad range of subcultures > people create their identity from a range of choices, e.g. sexual preference
  • Rapid social change = new technology transforms patterns of work and leisure > life is less predictable
• Evaluations of post modernism

  • Giddens = people have freedom yet there's still structure that shapes people's decisions, e.g. graduation, getting a job, marriage
  • Contemporary feminists = trad. gender roles still disadvantage women and remain norm
• Judith Stacy

  • Studied divorced Cali. women > some developed extended support networks, some maintained relationships = shared parenting
  • never going to be one dominant type of family in Western culture > more varied and flexible
• Post modernism

  We no longer live in a modern world with predictable orderly structures

  • family structures are varied as individuals have more freedom of choice which would have been constrained in the past, e.g. same sex marriages
• Hareven

  Sociologists should focus on individual family members and choices they make throughout life > recognises variation in people's lives, e.g. deciding when to have children