Contemporary social theory makes much use of the concepts of modernity and postmodernity to understand the relations between the social and biophysical worlds. These notes provide an introduction to these concepts and the associated analysis but should be read with caution. Not only are they a summary of a very extensive literature but such concepts can obscure as much as they illuminate. Notes are selective and generalisations inevitably miss the detail and complexity of social change.

 

As a  distinct form of social life, modernity has a long and complex historical evolution which was accelerated by the Age of Enlightenment in late seventeenth and early eighteenth century Europe. The new social order brought unprecedented social change, transforming the relations between people and between people and the rest of nature. It was the first mode of social organisation to achieve global predominance and has brought major benefits together with considerable social and environmental costs.

 

Most societies and environments display a mix of traditional, modern and postmodern features. The impact of changing social structures and processes is socially and spatially uneven and readers should consider the extent to which people, communities and places, with which they are familiar, are affected by the trends outlined.

 

Reflecting on the extent to which one’s country, community, locality or identity has and is being shaped by modernisation and postmodernisation, is likely to more challenging for non-western students. While all the world’s people are incorporated into a global system shaped by these processes, the form and features of this incorporation vary widely. Modernisation and postmodernisation are variously delivered and presented as colonialism, imperialism, progress, development, .  .  .   .  and local responses and resistances are variously shaped by environmental, historical, political, cultural and other factors. Recent world history is complex but there is value in recognising general trends.

 

Understanding modernity involves understanding its four dimensions:

Economically, modernity involved industrialism and the expansion of a global capitalist economy with a related division of labour. Production no longer operated within or alongside the cycles of nature, but took on a linear form with increasing inputs of energy and materials and outputs of products, waste and pollution. Modern ‘wasteful’ economies powered by fossil fuels and using much non-renewable material replaced traditional ‘no waste’ economies powered by sunlight and using renewable material. While traditional societies depended on the relative abundance of renewable energy and material (infinite in stock but limited in its flow rate), modern industrial societies depend on the relatively scarcity of non-renewable energy and material (finite in stock but not in flow rate). They are ecologically unsustainable because they are use biophysical resources and services (ecological capital) at a faster rate than they can be renewed. The second law of thermodynamics (the entropy law) means that all economic production is dependent on the finite flow of low entropy energy-material from nature and that there are real ecological limits to such modern economic growth.

Economic competition and growth are inherent features of capitalism. It constantly searches for new raw materials, new sources of labour power and new technologies, and this search drives colonialism and imperialism. Production is increasingly shaped by the profit motive; wage labour is increasingly the main form of employment; industrial technology is increasingly harnessed to transforming natural resources into commodities; and economic accounting has a tendency to discount present and future environmental costs. Capitalism has no co-ordinated internal mechanisms for managing its impacts on biophysical resources and services and further capital accumulation is now constrained by ecological limits. The owners and managers of capital seek to overcome these limits to growth in ways which do not damage profits and are helped or hindered in such environmental modernisation by various political and administrative processes (eg. laws, regulations, taxes, trade agreements) operating at local, national and international levels.

 

Politica!ly, modernity involved the transfer of power from kings and feudal lords to governments elected by a widening franchise. Militarism facilitated the rise and consolidation of centralised nation states with their authority resting on their monopoly of force; bureaucratic forms of surveillance and administration; and liberal democratic forms of government. Citizens gradually acquired civil, political, and social rights and responsibilities, but the uneven distribution of economic, political and cultural power limited real democracy. Governments and political parties adopted ever more sophisticated forms of ‘control’ over citizens with the help of the mass media and consumerism.

Modern states have powers to regulate the social use of biophysical resources and services but politics in liberal democracies is generally flawed in ways that prevent sustainable development. The uneven distribution of power favours business interests; problems are not tackled with co-ordinated policies and action; and the electoral cycle favours short term expediency over long term measures. While the state's bureaucracy claims to embody the common purpose; employ neutral expertise; and cope rationality with complexity; the reality is that it is highly constrained in its response to complex environmental problems. Departmentalism and bureaucracy limit its actions as do administrative rationality and obstructions to the free flow of information. Action is generally reactive and preventative rather than anticipatory and when capitalism, liberal democracy and the administrative state operate together, it is generally the need for capital accumulation which constrains political moves towards more sustainable forms of development.

While modern politics has been dominated by the conflict between liberalism and socialism, new social movements (peace, environment, human rights, women, etc) within civil society draw attention to the costs of modernity. The environmental movement monitors the operation of capitalist markets and nation states and acts to bring about both reform and radical change.

The form taken by modern states and the adequacy of their governance, can only be understood by reference to their past and present position within the global economy. Political power reflects economic and military power and attempts to establish global systems of environmental governance are hindered by issues of national power and sovereignty.

 

Socia11y, modernity involved the stretching of social relations over time and space and the increased differentiation of social life. Peoples lives are no longer anchored in the local and the present for they increasingly interact with others at a distance and new aspirations link them with the future. Working, family and community lives become more specialised and separated; individuals are increasing able to define and realise their own identities rather have them prescribed by others; and universal time and space separate people from local time and place. Industrial capitalism redefines class and gender relations while colonialism and imperialism redefine ethnic relations. Modernity also saw the rise of civil society or a public sphere of reflection and action beyond the economy and the state.

Socialism presents itself as an alternative modernity, promising the fulfilment of the modern project in ways that better realise liberty, equality and fraternity. Like capitalism however, actually existing socialism became subverted and distorted by instrumental reason (see below under culture) and its alternative versions of modernity generally proved to be spectacular failures involving ruthless exploitation of human and non-human nature. After the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and the demise of social democracy in the West, socialism must adapt to new realities. The future may lie in closer links with radical sections of the environmental movement and a form of green or post-industrial socialism that uses new technologies to liberate people from work in the formal economy and provide them with more time for personal and community development. By emphasising liberty, diversity, tolerance and sustainability, such socialism would reflect the progressive elements of postmodern times.

 

Culturally, modernity involved a break with an holistic and traditional worldview which emphasised the interconnectedness of all living and non-living things, the importance of divine will and provenance, and the virtue of things remaining the same. This was replaced with a reductionist and modern worldview in which the world is seen in an objective and mechanistic way and science and rationality are seen as sources of constant progress, development and human emancipation. At the core of  the modernism is belief in a knowable world and the aspiration to reveal its essential truth. Reality is assumed to have an inner logic or to be ordered according to natural laws that can be revealed through scientific inquiry and the power of reason. The resulting universal knowledge promises regularity, predictability and control (discounts diversity and difference) and the rational management of the bio-physical and social worlds. It offers the prospect of individual liberty, material prosperity, social equality, universal morality, and the emancipation of humanity from natural calamity, disease, poverty, and economic, political and cultural oppression.

 

The failure of modernity to fully deliver on its promises, prompted the rise of the social sciences. The founding fathers of western sociology critiqued the ways in which modernity undermined community and security (Durkheim); crushed the human spirit with rationalism (Weber); and alienated people from their own nature and the rest of nature (Marx).

Critical theory develops the critiques of Marx and Weber by suggesting that modernity’s promise of emancipation has not been realised because rationality has become subverted and distorted by the rise of instrumental reason and an associated technocracy. These separate knowledge from values, means from ends, ethics from politics, and nature from culture; downgrade feelings, the symbolic and spiritual; and serve to legitimate the exploitation of human and non-human nature in societies with limited democracy. Instrumental reason and technocracy reduce non-human nature to a mere instrument of economic progress or object of scientific study, and erode the instinctual, aesthetic and expressive aspects of human nature. Restoring the promise of modernity and the Enlightenment means developing forms of communicative rationality that allow societies to decide what is technically possible, culturally acceptable, and morally and politically right, within a global system of governance or co-ordinated radical and participatory democracies. Such democracy would take account of the economic, scientific, aesthetic, cultural and existence values of non-human nature, however critical theory rejects ecocentric environmental beliefs that imagine values and politics emanating from a nature outside society. It suggests that nature is best viewed not as a resource for our use (technocentric materialism), or a source of intrinsic value (ecocentric idealism), but as a social category that is the product of both bio-physical and social structures and processes (historical materialism). Nature is to a considerable degree historically and socially constructed and can be reconstructed in more sustainable ways. The transition to postmodernity may allow this to happen.

 

The capitalist world economy that was a product of modernity shows long waves of growth and decline associated with different technologies, work practices, products, and modes of social regulation. The wave that grew after 1945 went into decline in the 1970s and the 1980s was a period of profound economic and social restructuring designed to launch a new wave of capital accumulation. The new mode of social organisation that emerged was so different from that it replaced that many commentators began to label it postmodernity. There is no consensus on the existence, extent or features of postmodernity, but there is a much debated concept to be explored.

 

Understanding postmodernity involves understanding its four dimensions:

Economically, postmodernity is characterised by more flexible and diverse forms of production and consumption. New information and communications technologies are used to bring greater flexibility to labour processes, labour markets, products, and patterns of consumption. This means that money, productive capital (particularly information), commodities, and labour now circulate through international space at a faster pace in a more disorganised manner. Commercial, technological and organisational innovation is speeded up and together with increased globalisation (interaction at a distance) this results in the shrinking of time and space (time/space compression). In postmodern economies information and cultural goods and services become particularly significant and economic power passes from the control of materials to the control of information and the media.

While modern societies expanded outwards to push back the frontiers of a non-commodified nature, postmodern society turns inwards to remake these social natures afresh and commodify such new ones as the human body. Linking the powers of information and biotechnologies allows nature to become a source of new forms of capital accumulation. Such new phenomena as genetically modified crops challenge modernity’s artificial separation of nature and society and raise important questions about risk, the neutrality of science, and the democratic control of the production process. Such control is necessary if the postmodern economy is to realise its potential to use biophysical resources and services more efficiently and recreate nature in more sustainable ways.

The postmodern economy requires 'clever' workers and consumers who are more ready and able to reflect on the work they do and the goods and services they consume. At the same time postmodern society further promotes individualisation by lessening the hold on people of such social structures as the labour market, church, and trade union. Information and communication structures now assume a greater role in shaping people's lives than social structures, and the disorientation and loss of identity induced by the rise of postmodernity compels many to use new cultural competencies and new sources of information to monitor themselves and their place in the world. As environmental and other risks increase, reflexive individuals develop a mistrust of experts; become critical of science and technology; see themselves as part of nature rather than apart from nature; recognise the global nature of environmental problems; and develop a solidarity with people elsewhere in the world and with future generations. Young people in particular use new cultural products to experiment with their identity. Their behaviour shows that reflexivity takes both cognitive and aesthetic forms for they experiment both with meanings and ideas (eg. vegetarianism, spirituality, animal rights), and with the signs and symbols of popular and alternative cultures (eg. fashion, music, body piercing).

 

Politically, the globalisation of the economy challenges the viability of territorially bounded and culturally and ethnically delineated nation states. Their competency and legitimacy is challenged by increased supra-national integration from above (eg. the European Union) and by demands for decentralisation and local autonomy from below (eg. devolution in the UK). The collapse of communist states and the ‘old’ world order offers new political opportunities for supra-national co-operation but a 'new' world order has yet to evolve and meanwhile nationalism, fundamentalism and fascism are on the increase. At the same time there is a declining interest and involvement in 'old' forms of politics; a desire for a less intrusive and paternalistic state; and increased interest and involvement in 'new' forms of politics centred on new social movements. Politicians seek to modernise their parties, presentation and policies in response to this crisis of legitimacy (eg. the new social democracy or ‘third way’in western Europe).

For many activists, postmodern politics entails engaging in multiple, local autonomous struggles for liberation while rejecting the imperialism of an enlightened modernity that presumed to speak for others (eg. ethnic groups, women, the working class) with a unified voice. It is associated with new forms of radical democracy and citizenship that accommodate a plurality of voices and extend rights to future generations and other sentient species. Such ecological and global citizenship requires new and co-ordinated institutions of governance, shaped by communicative rationality (see above under modern culture), acting all levels across all spheres of people’s lives.

 

Socially, postmodernity brings a global redivision of labour with some states, places and communities developing as a result of new social processes while others experience decline or underdevelopment. This is accompanied by a rise of part-time and contract working; an increase in the new middle and service classes; and a rise in the underclass. The decline of mass production, old class divisions, and the nuclear family further encourages individualisation as does the need for individuals to take greater control of their more flexible working lives and make more of life's other decisions by themselves. There is a wider range of options and identities on offer and people increasingly define themselves in terms of what they consume rather than what jobs they do.

Information and communications technology allows workers and citizens’ movements, consisting of more reflexive individuals, to create global networks of concern and protest that challenge the power of multinational corporations and the institutions of international governance. Some environmental and development NGOs become skilled in fostering new forms of solidarity, using images and the media to help people redefine their identity and citizenship.

 

Culturally, postmodernity is characterised by the experience of space and time as a messy collage of things (from past/present/future, near and far) all merged together in the here and now (eg. postmodern architecture). Postmodern culture is the key product of the postmodern economy: the result of a relentless and structurally determined quest for new and unusual commodities to sell for profit. Such commodities are increasingly given meaning and sold by being associated with those signs and symbols of nature that pervade our everyday lives. Having alienated people from nature, capitalism sells it back to those who can afford it in the form of ‘natural’ foods, health care products, therapies, holidays, or gardens.

Post-modernity brings a renewed critique of the Enlightenment project that sustained the modern age. This is suspicious of modern culture's obsession with order, truth, rationality and the autonomous individual, and regards modern notions of human progress, development and emancipation as problematic. Some postmodem thinkers (Baudrillard, Derrida, Lyotard) suggest that a bewildering array of information and knowledge now means that there are no absolute truths, that all is relative. Knowledge is socially constructed, a matter of convention, and is inseparable from language, power and identity. We know the world not as it is, but as mediated by symbolic systems such as language, discourse, and texts of all kinds. We should therefore abandon all notions that there may be a comprehensive or overarching language, theory or narrative through which all things can be connected, represented or explained, and should opt instead for a more humble and eclectic approach to knowledge.

Postmodern thinkers draw attention to the ways in which modern knowledge legitimates science, technocracy, patriarchy and imperialism, by marginalising the knowledge or voice of ‘others’. They support a new politics and pedagogy that draws such voices into critical reflection and action for change. In the case of education for ecological and global citizenship such pedagogy seeks to attend to the voices of future generations and those of the rest of sentient nature. Such pedagogy is responsive to the needs of more reflexive individuals and helps them to consider the ways in which their multiple identities are constructed in discourses of many kinds. These include the discourses of environmentalism, such as that of sustainable development, that legitimate and challenge the processes whereby new natures are being created (both in reality and in our imaginations) by the postmodern economy.

 

Further reading.

The Age of Revolution, The Age of Capital, The Age of Empire, The Age of Extremes (4 volumes), E. Hobsbawn, Abacus, various dates in 1990s.
What is Post-Modernism? C. Jencks, Academy Editions, 1996
Postmodernity, D. Lyon, Open University Press, 1999
Postmodernisation, change in advanced society, S. Crook, J. Pankulski & M. Waters, Sage, 1994
Postmodernity, B. Smart, Routledge, 1993
Environments in a Changing World (Insights into Human Geography Series), J. Huckle & A. Martin, Prentice Hall, 2001
Social Theory and the Environment, D. Goldblatt, Polity, 1996