Postmodern Identity Research Articles

Europe's Postmodern Identity: A Critical Appraisal

The modern project of European integration is incorporating more and more “state-like” functions such as economic, monetary and foreign and security policy. But does the EU also have a solid basis of support among European citizens? For the further development of European integration one of the main questions seems to be how homogeneous Europe needs to be in cultural terms? What level of solidarity and “shared experience” is needed? How far should the EU become a locus of identity for European citizens? This essay argues that without something resembling a “European identity,” the process of Europeanization will inevitably grind to a halt or even rupture. But given the multifarious character of Europe, developing such an “identity beyond the state” can be based only on a solid base of multiculturalism, acknowledging that cultural diversity is a permanent and valuable part of democratic political society. Europe's emerging postmodern identity therefore calls for a politics of cultural affinity, rather than a narrow-minded conception of “Europeanness.” This essay takes the EU's policies on telecommunications and the semiotics of the Euro as examples of how notions of nationalism and sovereignty have changed (and continue to change) in the European context.

Latent destinies: cultural paranoia and contemporary U.S. narrative

Latent Destinies examines the formation of postmodern sensibilities and their relationship to varieties of paranoia that have been seen as widespread in this century. Despite the fact that the Cold War has ended and the threat of nuclear annihilation has been dramatically lessened by most estimates, the paranoia that has characterized the period has not gone away. Indeed, it is as if—as O’Donnell suggests—this paranoia has been internalized, scattered, and reiterated at a multitude of sites: Oklahoma City, Waco, Ruby Ridge, Bosnia, the White House, the United Nations, and numerous other places. O’Donnell argues that paranoia on the broadly cultural level is essentially a narrative process in which history and postmodern identity are negotiated simultaneously. The result is an erasure of historical temporality—the past and future become the all-consuming, self-aware present. To explain and exemplify this, O’Donnell looks at such books and films as Libra, JFK, The Crying of Lot 49, The Truman Show, Reservoir Dogs, Empire of the Senseless, Oswald’s Tale, The Executioner’s Song, Underworld, The Killer Inside Me, and Groundhog Day. Organized around the topics of nationalism, gender, criminality, and construction of history, Latent Destinies establishes cultural paranoia as consonant with our contradictory need for multiplicity and certainty, for openness and secrecy, and for mobility and historical stability. Demonstrating how imaginative works of novels and films can be used to understand the postmodern historical condition, this book will interest students and scholars of American literature and cultural studies, postmodern theory, and film studies.

Dawns, Twilights, and Transitions: Postmodern Theories, Politics, and Challenges

The postmodern turn which has so marked social and cultural theory also involves conflicts between modern and postmodern politics. In this essay, we articulate the differences between modern and postmodern politics and argue against one-sided positions that dogmatically reject one tradition or the other in favor of partisanship for either the modern or the postmodern. Arguing for a politics of alliance and solidarity, we claim that this project is best served by drawing on the most progressive elements of both the modern and postmodern traditions. Developing a new politics involves overcoming the limitations of certain versions of modern politics and postmodern identity politics in order to develop a politics of alliance and solidarity equal to the challenges of the new millennium.

Dawns, Twilights, and Transitions: Postmodern Theories, Politics, and Challenges

The postmodern turn which has so marked social and cultural theory also involves conflicts between modern and postmodern politics. In this essay, we articulate the differences between modern and postmodern politics and argue against one-sided positions that dogmatically reject one tradition or the other in favor of partisanship for either the modern or the postmodern. Arguing for a politics of alliance and solidarity, we claim that this project is best served by drawing on the most progressive elements of both the modern and postmodern traditions. Developing a new politics involves overcoming the limitations of certain versions of modern politics and postmodern identity politics in order to develop a politics of alliance and solidarity equal to the challenges of the new millennium.

The end of identity? The implications of postmodernity for political identification

Nationalism, it is widely agreed, is a phenomenon of modernity. What, then, are the implications of a shift toward postmodern culture for patterns of political identification? To address this question, I start by returning to first principles and theorize why people identify at all. I then highlight five important contemporary trends and their possible effects on identity, given this theory. I expect postmodern political identities to be more diffuse, diverse, instrumentally‐determined, context‐dependent, and less essentialized than those of modernity. I conclude that they may in fact be different enough from modern variants as to no longer warrant the appellation political identities.

Getting a Life: Homo Ludens as Postmodern Identity

The traditional markers of social identity -particularly occupation -lose much of their potency in postmodern times, which are characterized by diversity, fragmentation, discontinuity, and paradox. Many people in the industrialized West have benefited from technology, yet their jobs and day-to-day lives have been reduced to sedentary, boring routines, largely devoid of excitement, challenge, and personal growth. In consequence, they are beginning to replace homo faberwith homo ludensas the characterization from which to draw their social identities and self-enhancement needs, an inflection which has significant consequences for the leisure and tourism industry.

Consumer Culture and Gender Identity in South Korea

This paper examines how consumer culture works as a cultural backdrop to the process of women's identity construction, reproduction, and transformation. In particular, it seeks to understand the correlation and interaction between gender identity and self-identity in women. The study, therefore, focuses attention on three aspects, first, the reinforcement of gender identity and the fostering of postmodern identity. Second, it looks at the split of gender identity as the so-called phenomenon of “neo-tribalism.” Finally, it examines the tyranny of a self-oppressive gender identity by means of which self-identity is constructed in women, by enhancing the body or what I refer to as “body making.” These points are examined through the recent phenomenon of the Korean consumer culture, comprising the commercialization of the role model of the professional housewife and postmodernism; the “Missy syndrome,” as it is called in Korea; and the craze for what I refer to as “body making.” Therefore, in this study, I seek to explore mechanisms that force women into internalizing a self-oppressive gender identity, perpetuated as a type of self-identity by consumer culture.

Material Food, Spiritual Quest

Material Food, Spiritual Quest

The Socio-Spatial Making and Marking of 'Us': Toward a Critical Postmodern Spatial Theory of Difference and Community

The modernist surveillance of strict, arbitrary borders between 'real space' and 'imagined space' both produces and hides 'Othered' spatialities. While assuming that spatialities are simultaneously real-and-imagined,postmodernspatial theory seeks to recover the identities that emerge in relation to the veiled, lived realms of 'social space'. Furthermore, critical postmodern spatial theory privileges the lived spatialities of left-margined communities as sites of socio-spatial critique. A postmodern identity politics enacts critical postmodernspatial theory by nurturing the developmentof, and solidarity between, 'counterpublics', which are subaltern community spaces where private spatialities of alienation are brought to public discourse.

Richard Morris. <italic>Sinners, Lovers, and Heroes: An Essay on Memorializing in Three American Cultures</italic>. (SUNY Series in Communication and the Struggle for Identity in Postmodernity.) Albany: State University of New York Press. 1997. Pp. xxi, 237. $18.95

Journal Article Richard Morris. Sinners, Lovers, and Heroes: An Essay on Memorializing in Three American Cultures. (SUNY Series in Communication and the Struggle for Identity in Postmodernity.) Albany: State University of New York Press. 1997. Pp. xxi, 237. $18.95 Get access Morris Richard. Sinners, Lovers, and Heroes: An Essay on Memorializing in Three American Cultures. (SUNY Series in Communication and the Struggle for Identity in Postmodernity.) Albany: State University of New York Press. 1997. Pp. xxi, 237. $18.95. Peter Benes Peter Benes Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 104, Issue 2, April 1999, Pages 573–574, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/104.2.573 Published: 01 April 1999

The postmodern identity of Russia—and the west

In contrast to societies where socialization takes place through the transmission of anonymous and hence overpowering traditions, the typical way of socialization for Western people is through productive dialogue guided by the search for objectivity. Postmodernism, however, fosters a form of dialogue in which people should not look for objective knowledge but should simply register their diverse opinions. Just this type of dialogue has been the norm in Russia for centuries. As a result, Russian cultural and political initiative has been dominated by an all‐powerful state. In the West, we now witness a similar process, as the culture of nonjudgmental relativism consolidates its dominance over an increasingly postmodern society.

History without a Subject: The Postmodern Condition

* Postmodernism in America: An Introduction * Postmodernism and Social Theory * Postmodern Identity and Postmodern Political Mobilization * Postmodernity as a Regime of Accumulation?: From Fordism to Flexible Accumulation * The Globalizing World Economy, the Compression of Time, and the Spatial Reorganization of Social Domination * Postmodernity and Flexible Stratification: Is Class Still Material? * Reorganized Capitalism: New Processes of Power and Motivation * The New Professionals: Changes in Authority and Formal Organization * Postmodernity and the New Class * Conclusion

Postmodern politics and the battle for the future

The postmodern turn which has so marked social and cultural theory also involves conflicts between modern and postmodern politics. In this study, we articulate the differences between modern and postmodern politics and argue against one‐sided positions which dogmatically reject one tradition or the other in favor of partisanship for either the modern or the postmodern. Arguing for a politics of alliance and solidarity, we claim that this project is best served by drawing on the most progressive elements of both the modern and postmodern traditions. Developing a new politics involves overcoming the limitations of certain versions of modern politics and postmodern identity politics in order to develop a politics of alliance and solidarity equal to the challenges of the coming millennium.

Goddess Religion, Postmodern Jewish Feminism, and the Complexity of Alternative Religious Identities

ABSTRACT: This paper argues that Jewish Goddess feminism illustrates the complexity of alternative religious identities and their fluid, ambiguous, and sometimes intimate historical, cultural, and religious connections to mainstream religious identities.1 While Jewish Goddess feminists find contemporary Judaism theologically and politically problematic, thealogy (feminist discourse on the Goddess and the divinity of femaleness) can offer them precisely the sacralization of female generativity that mainstream Judaism cannot. And yet the distinctions between present/former, alternative/mainstream religious identities are surely ambiguous where the celebration of the Goddess can at once reconstruct Jewish identity and deconstruct the notion of religious identity as a single or successive affiliation. It would seem that Jewish Goddess feminism epitomizes how late or postmodern religious identity may be plural and inclusive, shifting according to the subject's context and mood and according to the ideological perspective of the observer.

Kleding: het authentieke beeld?: het standpunt van jongeren

The author discusses the role of the contemporary 'culture of the image' on the base of the results of qualitative research among Milanese youngsters, General theoretical observations are alternated with more specific interpretations of the empirical material. Two themes are particularly highlighted, the ambiguity of images, and the paradoxical relation between the pursuit of personal authenticity and the use of images as a medium of communication. In the concluding section, the author links her findings with some central themes of the ongoing sociological debate on postmodernity. Particular attention is given to the reflexive nature of postmodern identity and morality.

Young Environmentalists: Post-Modern Identities or Middle-Class Culture?

The dominance of certain fractions of the ‘new middle class’ within the environmental movement seems beyond dispute. As regards youth, on the other hand, involvement in ‘new social movements’ is often interpreted as part of identity-formation processes typical of the ‘postmodern’ era, where class background allegedly do not have the same impact as before. However, the latter position seems somewhat lacking in empirical foundation. A study of 5,624 Norwegian 13–19 year olds demonstrated that youth with a background in the humanistic-social intermediate strata were particularly over-represented in environmental organizations (EOs) and gave the highest political priority to environmental issues (EIs). Youth whose parents were manual or clerical workers were under-represented in EOs, and they attached less importance to EIs. A similar pattern was discerned in youth choosing academic and vocational subjects respectively, and there was a strong relationship between background class and choice of subjects. Number of books in childhood home (an indicator of cultural assets, itself strongly related to class) was also correlated with environmental orientation. It is suggested that the findings should be interpreted along four dimensions: a cultural polarization between abstraction and production, proximity to production and market, proximity to nature, and cultural dominance vs. subordination.

The Cultural Capital of Consumption: Understanding 'Postmodern' Identities in a Cultural Context

Arguing that psychology has failed to come to terms with the cultural context within which identities are established, this paper focuses on consumption as a means of identity formation in a 'postmodern' culture. It is suggested that the impact of consumption upon contemporary identities might be better understood by focusing upon the meanings with which young consumers endow consumer goods. In particular, data obtained through a participant observation in a sports shop in a northern English town are used to illustrate some of the misunderstandings that have arisen as a result of conceptualizations of the fragility of postmodern identities. The importance of applying theoretical insights (e.g. Bourdieu, Simmel) alongside innovative methodologies is therefore stressed.

Earth First! Activism: Ecological Postmodern Praxis in Radical Environmentalist Identities

Classical and conventional sociological theories cannot explain social-psychological dynamics in contemporary social movements. A synthesis of symbolic interactionism and New Social Movement theory offers a useful framework for analyzing and interpreting the role of consciousness/identity and culture/lifestyle in new social movements. Movement identifications are social-interactional processes that symbolize collectively constructed cognitive frameworks. Activist identities are forms of collective consciousness that function as symbolic resources in the ongoing mobilization of collective action. Activism in the radical environmentalist Earth First! movement is theorized as an ecological postmodern identity praxis that expresses biocentric, transpersonal ecological consciousness. The identity-constructs of the “Ecological Self” and “Wild Within” are expressed in activists' social gatherings and symbolic direct actions. These movement identifications/activist identities represent symbolic, counter-discursive challenges to technocracy.

Building Identities in a Mass-Communication World: A Commentary on Steven Miles's 'The Cultural Capital of Consumption'

The process of identity formation is approached from the multilevel perspective of symbiotic, distributed units (dyads, groups of consciousness, communities) that follows from a sociocultural interpretation of the issue of identity. According to that view, objects in general, and consumer goods in particular, are seen as psychological tools that are directed towards oneself as much as towards others. The process of socio-economic change that has replaced the socially mediated identification of goods by an instrumental and visual identification seems to be extending to personal identities. The effect of consumption and mass communication processes would seem to point to the fragmentation of the different units into separate and even confronting identities, as well as to the dramatization of objects in the symbolic narratives of postmodern identities constructed through advertising.

Media Culture: Cultural Studies, Identity and Politics between the Modern and the Postmodern

Preface and Acknowledgments Part I: Theory/Context/Methods 2. Media Culture, Politics, and Ideology: Hollywood Film in the Age of Media Politics 3. Diagnostic Critique, Deconstruction, and Social Anxiety: Fear and Trembling in the Middle Class and Disaffected Youth 4. For a Multiperspectival Cultural Studies: Black Voices From Spike Lee to Rap Part II: Media Culture/Identities/Politics 5. Reading the Gulf War: Production/Text/Reception 6. Miami Vice, Advertising, and the Construction of Postmodern Identities 8. Mapping the Present From the Future: Baudrillard and Cyberpunk Conclusion