Late modernity

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Late modernity (or liquid modernity) is a term for the concept that some present highly developed societies are continuing developments of modernity.

A number of social theorists (Beck 1992, Giddens 1991, Lash 1990) critique the idea that some contemporary societies have moved into a new stage of development or postmodernity. On technological and social changes since the 1960s, the concept of "late modernity" proposes that contemporary societies are a clear continuation of modern institutional transitions and cultural developments.

Anthony Giddens doesn't dispute that important changes have occurred, but he argues that we have not truly abandoned modernity. Rather, the modernity of contemporary society is a developed, radicalized, 'late' modernity - but still modernity, not postmodernity.

Zygmunt Bauman who introduced the idea of liquid modernity wrote that its characteristics are the privatization of ambivalence and increasing feelings of uncertainty. It is a kind of chaotic continuation of modernity.

[edit] See also

• information society
• network society
• post-industrial society

Modernity is a type, mode, or stage of society, initially confined to the recent history of West European countries from the Renaissance to the rise of mass media, and characterized by a larger-scale integration of formerly isolated local communities and departure from tradition and religion toward individualism, rational or scientific organization of society, and egalitarianism. A society in the state of modernity is called a modern society. The process of a society becoming a modern society is called modernization. The most defining events in the modern period include:

-Rise of the nation state, -Industrialization, -Rise of capitalism, -Emergence of socialist countries, -Rise of representative democracy, -Increasing role of science and technology, -Urbanization, -Proliferation of mass media, -The more particular events in the West European history include:

-The Age of Discovery -The Renaissance -The Enlightenment -The Reformation and Counter Reformation -The French Revolution -The American Revolution -The Industrial Revolution

(Credit goes to knowledgerush.com)

[edit] References

• Bauman, Zygmunt, Liquid Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press ISBN 0-7456-2409-X
• Beck, Ulrich, Anthony Giddens and Scott Lash. 1994.Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order. Blackwell.
• Beck, Ulrich. 1992. Risk Society. SAGE Publications.
• Giddens, Anthony. 1991. The Consequences of Modernity. Stanford University Press.
• Lash, Scott. 1990. The Sociology of Postmodernism. Routledge.