Page 179 - Cultural Studies Dictionary

DICTIONARY OF CULTURAL STUDIES

domination of any particular political project (for example, the proletariat of
Marxism). Instead it must be constructed in terms of the recognition of difference
and the identification and development of points of common interest.
156 Here there can be no appeal to absolute standards of legitimation or to the laws
of history, as orthodox Marxism has tended to do. Rather, all progressive values
must be defended within the pragmatic context of particular moral traditions
including modern political ideas about democracy, justice, tolerance, solidarity and
freedom. Further, the prime agents of social change are held not so much to be
classes (though they play a part) as social and cultural movements that have
developed from a proliferation of new social antagonisms in the spaces of
consumption, welfare and habitat.

Links Anti-essentialism, foundationalism, hegemony, Marxism, poststructuralism,
reductionism

Postmaterialism The politics of the modern Western world have largely been
concerned with questions of material scarcity and the unequal distribution of goods
and power. In this context, the values of equality, liberty and solidarity have fuelled
an emancipatory concern with an ethics of justice, parity and participation.
However, given a degree of release from material deprivation within Western
culture, contemporary politics has, at least for some sections of the population,
become somewhat less centred on questions of economic inequality and the
injustices that flow from this and more concerned with questions of justifiable self-
actualization, identity, choice and lifestyle. This involves a shift of emphasis from
quantity to quality, from an obsession with economic growth to a concern with the
environment, health, relationships, emotional ‘intelligence’, spirituality and
happiness. This represents a significant cultural and political shift in some quarters
of Western culture. However, it arguably remains overshadowed by the continued
predominance of a materialist consumer culture.
Links Commodification, cultural politics, identity project, life-politics, values

Postmodernism The contemporary emergence of the concept of postmodernism is
not simply an academic fashion but also, and more significantly, it marks a response
to substantive changes in the organization and enactment of our social worlds.
However, a degree of perplexity surrounds the notion of postmodernism because it
has become confused with the concept of postmodernity as well as having acquired
a number of different uses of its own. We may understand postmodernism to be a
notion that refers us to questions of culture and knowledge while the idea of
postmodernity relates to historical patterns of social organization.
The concept of postmodernism may be comprehended thus:

• A cultural style marked by intertextuality, irony, pastiche, genre blurring and bricolage.

There have been significant cultural changes in contemporary life that have been
described in the language of the postmodern. Core to the postmodern ‘structure of