MODERNISM AND POST-MODERNISM IN DOING AND WRITING
ETHNOGRAPHY
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Expanded communication & inter-cultural influence
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A bewildering diversity of idioms, a global condition of
heteroglossia
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The current disposition of ethnographic authority (and
therefore, theoretical orientations)
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Ambiguous multi-vocal world (always was) -- increasingly
hard to conceive of human diversity as inscribed in
bounded, independent cultures
MODERNITY, MODERNISM, MODERNIZATION
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Modernity (post) -- historical condition, process, period
Modernism (post) -- a practice, usage, expression peculiar to
modern (post) times
Modernization – a socioeconomic process that tries to construct
modernity; the act of modernizing; the state of being modernized
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modernity can be said to unite all mankind
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Continued creativity & change – to be modern is to be part of a
universe in which “all that is solid melts into air” (Karl Marx)
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Recent, up to date
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Represents a process of change (dynamism)
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Enlightenment movement gave definition to the very idea of
modernity
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Idea of RATIONAL investigation and explanation
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Enlightenment critique of “traditional” authority
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Leading ideas of progress, science, reason, nature
The promise of the enlightenment
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Unending era of material progress & prosperity
Abolition of prejudice & superstition
Mastery of the forces of nature based on the expansion of
human knowledge
Laws of development & social sciences
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political life of individualism
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Dominance of secular forms of political power, authority,
sovergnity -- operating in well defined territories -- characteristic
of large complex societies
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Emergence of a distinct economic sphere governed by new
economic realities & ideas
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Decline of traditional social order based on FIXED social
hierarchies & overlapping allegiances
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Decline of religious worldview & rise of secular materialist
culture
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Rise of empiricism
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ways of producing & classifying knowledge
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All major social forces have precursors, precedents, analogs, and
sources in the past
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Change as “rupture”
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POSTMODERNISM
Postmodernity as a historical stage
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Postmodernism as a cultural project
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Postmodern as incredulity (challenging) toward meta-narratives
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contemporary rejection of all overarching or totalizing
modes of thought that tell universalist stories (Marxism,
Christianity, ‘scientific progress’).
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Metanarratives operate through strategies of exclusion and
inclusion, marshalling and homogenizing heterogeneity
into ordered realms
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fragmentation
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View our world as simultaneously expanding and shrinking
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new mix of messages, symbols, cultures, and media
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the increasing sound of a plurality of voices from the margins,
with an insistence on difference, on cultural diversity and on
claims of heterogeneity over homogeneity.
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celebrates the multiple, incompatible, heterogeneous, fragmented,
contradictory nature of postmodern society
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No linguistic normality — we can only produce pastiche
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a global condition of heteroglossia (Bakhtin)
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Ambiguous multi vocal world — increasingly hard to
conceive of human diversity as inscribed in bounded,
independent cultures
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speaking subjects in a field of multiple discourses -- language as
the interplay & struggle of regional dialects, professional jargons,
generic commonplaces, the speech of different age groups,
individuals, etc.