GLOBALISATION

Question 1

What are the characteristics that distinguish modern society from previous traditional societies?

Answer 1

• the nation state creates a bounded territory ruled by a powerful centralised state whose population usually shares the same language and culture
• capitalism brought about industrialisation of modern society with huge increases in wealth, however unequal, creating class conflict
• rationality, science, and technology becomes increasingly important
• individualism led to tradition becoming less important as the basis for our actions.

Question 2

What is Globalisation?

Answer 2

the increasing interconnectedness of people across the world

Question 3

What changes have brought about Globalisation?

Answer 3

1. technological changes
2. economic changes
3. political changes
4. changes in culture and identity

Question 4

What is Postmodernism?

Answer 4

an intellectual movement that emerged in 1970s. has been influential in sociology. it is an unstable, fragmented, media saturated global village where image and reality are indistinguishable. modernist theories no longer apply

Question 5

What is Foucault’s theory of anti-foundationalism?

Answer 5

• there are no sure foundations to knowledge, no objective criteria we can use to prove whether a theory is true or false

Question 6

What does Lyotard suggest about knowledge?

Answer 6

knowledge is just a series of different language games or ways of seeing the world.

Question 7

What is Baudrillard’s simulacra?

Answer 7

• knowledge is central to postmodern society
• society is no longer based on the production of material goods, but rather on buying and selling knowledge in the form of images and signs
• however unlike signs in past societies, those today are not related to physical reality
• signs stand for nothing other than themselves, they are not symbols of some other real thing
• eg. tabloid newspapers articles about fictitious soap opera characters are signs about signs rather than about an underlying reality
• the signs are meaningless as they do not represent anything real

Question 8

What is Postmodernist ideas about culture, identity, and politics

Answer 8

• culture and identity in postmodern society differ fundamentally from modern society, especially because of the media
• the media pervades and produces an endless stream of ever changing images, values, and versions of the truth
• culture becomes fragmented and unstable so there’s no fixed set values shared by members of society
• identity also becomes destabilised. we can change our identity by changing our consumption of patterns by picking and mixing cultural goods and media produced images to define ourselves
• we have lost the ability to improve society because we can’t grasp it

Question 9

Evaluation of Postmodernism?

Answer 9

• ignores power and inequality
• claim that we freely construct our identities through consumption overlooks the effect of poverty in restricting such opportunities
• people can actually distinguish between reality and media image

Question 10

Later Modernity: What is Giddens’ reflexivity theory

Answer 10

• we are at a stage of late modernity where rapid change takes place globally
• two key features are disembedding and reflexivity
• disembedding is the lifting out of social relations from local contexts of interaction. we no longer need face to face contact to interact.
• tradition and custom is less important and no longer a guide to how we act, causing us to become more reflexive
• reflexivity means that we are all continually re-evaluating our ideas and theories as nothing is fixed or permanent

Question 11

What is Beck’s idea of risk society?

Answer 11

• we face risks because of human activity eg. global warming
• individualism has grown in late modernity and tradition is not so important
• people are more reflexive
• we have to think for ourselves
• as a result risk consciousness becomes more central to our culture

Question 12

Evaluation of theories of late modernity?

Answer 12

• concept of reflexivity suggests we reflect on our actions and then are free to reshape our lives accordingly to reduce our exposure to risk. however not everyone has this option as the poor are generally exposed to more environmental risks
• marxists argue it is capitalism and not technology that is the source of risk