Post modernity: Facts and Effects

Post modernity is a recent concept initially introduced in the ‘arts and architecture, spread to the study of popular culture and were developed most fully in philosophy, but they are becoming increasingly influential in the social sciences, particularly sociology’ (Taylor 1999, p.16).

Now a phrase is being commonly used which is that we are living in a post modern society. Sociological theorists Jean-Francois Lyotard and Daniel Bell confirmed the terms post modernity and its existence in today's modern world but Ulrich Beck denied the concept. Social scientists observed the development of a powerful world where a diverse and complex social structure forced the group of people to interconnect and to make a strong bond of relationship to demonstrate consistent and quick changes and continuity. Sociologists also mentioned that today's post modern society is the product of mainly the chronological historical process of Great Transformation and Modernity.

The Great Transformation, involving the processes of ‘industrialisation and the expansion of market capitalism’, was ‘first observed in the Europe of the 18th and 19th centuries’ (Holmes, Hughes & Julian 2003, p. 22). The most important change was the ‘great European industrial revolution’ which began in the ‘1780s right through to the 1950s’ (Holmes, Hughes & Julian 2003, p. 24). The great European industrial revolution was ‘…a period of massive innovation in production of everything from manchester to heavy engineering. This revolution also saw the steady movements of populations into cities, looking for wage work in factories’ (Holmes, Hughes & Julian 2003, p. 24).

Massive industrialisation causes the development and also defined the structure of modernity. This enabled the social scientist to understand better the changes and continuities was taking place in the world. Now the post modernity is a significant term in social science to explain or dercribe:

‘… the complex range of phenomena associated with the historical process, commencing in the 17th century, which saw Western societies change from a agricultural to an industrial foundation, from a feudal to a capitalist framework, with most of their populations migrating from rural, village settings to towns and cities, as well as moving beyond Western Europe in the process of colonising much of the rest if the world’ (Krieken, Habibis, Smith, Hutchins, Haralambos & Holborn 2000, p. 7)