Postmodernity

by Lyon, David; Blake, Susan; Kim, Eun-Sook

• ISBN13: 9780816632275
• ISBN10: 0816632278
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-03-01
• Publisher: Univ of Minnesota Pr

Summary

In the second edition of this highly successful text, postmodernity is seen as the social condition of the twenty-first century, in which some of the most familiar features of the modern world are not only called into question, but actually undermined by novel trends. The key carriers of the postmodern--new technologies and consumerism--emerged in thoroughly modern contexts, but so profoundly affect everyday social life that modernity itself is changing shape. Postmodernity is a way of describing a new society-in-the-making without supposing that modernity has been entirely left behind. While some dub these changes as "high" or "late" modern, this book argues that "postmodernity" best captures today's transformations or modernity.

Author Biography

David Lyon is Professor of Sociology at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada.

Table of Contents

Preface to the First Edition	ix
Preface to the Second Edition	xi
Introduction: Screen Replicants and Social Realities	1	(5)
Postmodernity: The History of an Idea	6	(19)
Modernity and its Discontnts	25	(21)
From Postindustrialism to Postmodernity	46	(23)
Consumerism and Beyond: The Shape(lessness) of Things to Come	69	(21)
Postmodernity, Fin de Millenaire and the Future	90	(21)
Notes	111	(16)
Index	127