Late modernity

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.

See also

* information society
* network society
* post-industrial society

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.