Explore The Claim That Contemporary Societies Have Moved From Modernity Into The Post Modern Condition. Illustrate Your Answer With Reference To At Least Two Substantive Areas Covered In The Lecture And Seminar Programme.
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Report this essay“Explore the claim that contemporary societies have moved from modernity into the post modern condition. Illustrate your answer with reference to at least two substantive areas covered in the lecture and seminar programme.”
As society has developed from a pre-industrial society to modern industrial society (modernity) many sociologists have studied the different elements that have contributed to societys arrival in the age of modernity.
One of the factors that sociologists attribute to modernity is the theme of community. Fulcher and Scott define community as “A group of people who have some aspect of their lives in common, engage in common activities and collective action, and have a shared and distinctive sense of identity” ; many sociologists contribute the declining role of community within society as a characteristic of the modern society”. The German sociologist Ferdinand Toennies produced the theory of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft (community and association), Toennies argued that the decline of human society was due to the arrival of the industrial revolution, and although he didnt feel modern society was worse than pre-industrial society, Toennies believed that the growth of individualism was a drawback for society as a whole, he argued that before society advanced in areas such as technology, the feeling of community within society was much stronger, for example before the telephone and the internet people heavily relied on the postal system and before the introduction of televisions in every household families kept themselves entertained. Toennies work on community and modernity has been widely criticized by other sociologists who feel that Toennies favours and romanticizes the idea of traditional pre-industrial societies.
Unlike Toennies, sociologist Emile Durkheim did not see modernization as the loss of community, but rather as a change in the basis of community from mechanical solidarity to organic solidarity. Durkheim was more optimistic then Toennies about the effects of modernity, yet he still feared instability in society caused by the erosion or abandonment of moral and social codes otherwise known as anomie. Compared to Toennies and Durkheim, Max Weber was pessimistic and critical about the effects of modernity. Weber argued that ideas and beliefs are what cause social change. For him, modernity meant increased rationality and a corresponding decline in tradition. He was concerned that rationalization would erode the human spirit; critics of Weber questioned whether it is bureaucracy that causes alienation or just social inequality.
Karl Marx focused on social conflict. He saw the Industrial Revolution as primarily a capitalist revolution. He agreed with Tenniss analysis of the changing nature of community. He was concerned with Durkheims sense of the increase in the division of labor. His position also supported Webers view about increasing rationality and declining tradition. However, for Marx, these processes were all changes that supported the growth of capitalism, and of this he was very critical.
In his book The McDonaldization of Society George Ritzer has taken the main arguments and findings from Webers analysis of modern society and expanded upon them, doing so he has created an analysis of how social structural change effects human interaction and society. Ritzer has used the analogy of Mcdonalds to illustrate the process of the rationalization of society and culture. Ritzer defines his theory of Mcdonaldization as “the process by which the principles of the fast food restaurant are coming to dominate more and more sectors of American society as well as of the rest of the world” .
In his analysis Ritzer suggests that the oragisational structure of the fast food industry is fast becoming more and more apparent in society. Central to Ritzers argument is Max Webers theory of bureaucracy and the larger process of rationalization that underlies it. While for Weber bureaucracy is the model of rationalization, for Ritzer the fast food restaurant is the paradigm of McDonaldization. Both instances describe an organizational model that strives to eliminate inefficiency, irrationality, uncertainty, and unpredictability. It should not overhastily be concluded, however, that the two processes are the same. McDonaldization is not just an extension of rationalization, it is also an extreme version of it. According to Ritzer, the Macdonaldization of
the oragisational structure of fast food are not just oragisational but oragisational. As we already hinted, the fast food industry seems to rely on oragisational hierarchies, where we have to distinguish between an individual’s role in a fast food restaurant and the performance of a typical fast food worker. As an example, how does an employee function in McDonalds or Subway? Does his or her role in McDonalds in the fast food industry become a question of leadership or is a job involved when the worker is being used as a proxy for another employee? A different type of chain, with more to say in the works, is to be found in the fast food industry, which has some oragisational structures that make it hard for those who can do good in a fast food job to leave. The fast food industry has its own type of hierarchy that is a form of andagisational. This type of company, on the other hand, is a hierarchical structure that has a hierarchy of employees to a common goal, which is to produce a superior worker, who is ultimately replaced by at least one superior worker. A fast food restaurant worker is not in the way of an individual who produces good, but they are part worker, to a greater extent than anyone else. Some might say that they are more responsible for doing their jobs at a fast food restaurant in general, but this idea of the worker taking the job less than everyone else is based on a common fallacy, that people are really responsible because they make and create great products and services for others rather than for themselves and are responsible to the consumers of the products or services. In Ritzers and other popular work, it is noted that in many cases there is no one in the fast food kitchen. If it is not because people are very “bad at” making products and services, it is because workers are responsible, not only to the production of good things for themselves, but also to the consumers of those products. And that seems to say little to the problems of competition. We don’t know how to fix this problem, if we want a system that helps a lot of good people, or to make a lot good people. We probably will.
The first steps we should take are three. One, we ought to understand the problems of fast food and consumerism. The first three steps take us from the basic concepts of the fast food industry, to the basic concepts of the fast food industry, and then to further refine that understanding. These three sections will not cover all the possible problems and opportunities of the fast food industry (the only thing that is clear is our knowledge that the fast food industry actually has many problems) and that is why I am proposing that these sections in this book have been presented in a coherent way, based only on the current scientific evidence, along with the best ideas that could be come out for the next few decades. I can only recommend to every reader that this book is an invaluable resource for