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 says that we haven't really gone beyond modernity. It's just 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

[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.