postmodern

• metanarrative


  big picture, a singular truth

  an all encompassing explanation of society and explain why everything happens e.g. science
• relativist position


  all views are for true for the people who hold them, no one has a monopoly on the truth e.g. religion
• Lyotard (1992)


  knowledge (always relative) is a series of different language games or ways of seeing the world

  postmodern society is preferable to modern society

  language games - games in which participants try to assert that certain claims are true, participants are trying to get other people to accept the truth claims; whoever has the best argument essentially wins and their claims are true
• Baudrillard: Simulcra


  knowledge is central to postmodern society

  society is based on buying and selling knowledge in the form of images and signs

  signs stand for nothing other than themselves - not symbols of some other real thing (simulcra) - describes this situation as hyper-reality, signs appear more real than reality itself and substitute themselves for reality but don't represent anything real, they're meaningless - Baudrillard is critical of television which he sees as the main source of simulcra and of our inability to distinguish between image and reality
• postmodernity 1970s

  major intellectual movement

  fragmented, unstable, media saturated global village where image and reality are undistinguishable

  Fackault - modern theories no longer apple

  metanarratives

  take a relativist position
• evaluation of postmodernism - advantages

  • identifies individuals are complex
  • explains how societies are changing from local countries to a global society
  • challenging metanarratives - encourages sociologists to reflect on assumptions
• evaluation of postmodernism - widely criticised

  • Philo and Miller 2001 (marxist) - ignores inequality and power
  • idea we freely construct our identity - overlooks impact of poverty
  • wrong to say we can't distinguish reality and media
  • assuming all views are true, gives weight to Nazi denials of the Holocaust
• evaluation of postmodernism - practical

  • Best and Kellner 1991 - all criticism and lacks vision of how to improve society
  • a metanarrative itself
  • little research and sweeping generalisations
  • enlightenment project - too critical to claim that there is no knowledge