Page 195 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts

POSTMODERN/POSTMODERNISM/POSTMODERNITY

The recognition of a relation between class and culture has led to
further issues. First, attention has broadened beyond its original focus
on such obviously cultural artefacts as texts, to include practices,
lifestyles and ‘lived culture’ – especially in the ethnographic study of
subcultures. Second, there has been a rediscovery of ‘cultural politics’,
often associated with the work of Gramsci (1971) and his concepts of
hegemony and the ‘national-popular’. Finally, attention to class has led
to consideration of the complex relations that exist between this and,
especially, gender and ethnic relations.
See also: Class, Cultural studies, Culture, Ideology, Subculture

Further reading: Fiske (1989a, 1989b); Frow(1995, 1997); Turner (1990)

POSTMODERN/POSTMODERNISM/
POSTMODERNITY

A social epoch, and an aesthetic movement, contrasted with
modernity. The concept of the postmodern has become widely used
in public discourse, often with its original theoretical assumptions
ignored or misunderstood. It is therefore useful to consider the term
in two ways – as a condition of society (postmodernity) and as a textual
practice (postmodernism).
The concept of postmodernity seeks to describe the contemporary
era or epoch. It has two central characteristics. First, the end of mass
markets and a change in the economic conditions that were associated
with modernity. Thwaites et al. (1994: 210) argue this change began
following World War II with Western Europe and Japan rebuilding
their own economies and relying less on US production and
technologies. Through these emerging economies, the development
of information technologies became prominent. It is with the
development of these technologies that the concepts of production
and consumption become less straightforward. The contemporary
understanding of this shift is represented by theories of the new
economy.
These changes to economic structure are seen as part of the end of
meta-narratives, the second notion that is central to discussions of
postmodernity. Whereas modernity was characterised by the unity of
the human race in the rational pursuit of truth and enlightenment,
postmodernity sees the two World Wars as ending this utopian vision.
The mass genocide that characterised these events fractured the
concept of a universalised ‘we’. Our present epoch is now instead

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