Editing Social theory (section)

====Post-modern social theory====
{{Further|post-modern feminism|postmodernism|post-structuralism}}
The term "postmodernism" was brought into social theory in 1971 by the Arab American Theorist [[Ihab Hassan]] in his book: ''The Dismemberment of Orpheus: Toward a Postmodern Literature''. In 1979 [[Jean-François Lyotard]] wrote a short but influential work ''[[The Postmodern Condition|The Postmodern Condition: A report on knowledge]]''. [[Jean Baudrillard]], [[Michel Foucault]], and [[Roland Barthes]] were influential in the 1970s in developing postmodern theory.

Scholars most commonly hold ''[[postmodernism]]'' to be a movement of ideas arising from, but also critical of elements of [[modernism]].{{citation needed|date=February 2012}} The wide range of uses of this term resulted in different elements of modernity are chosen as being continuous. Each of the different uses is rooted in some argument about the nature of knowledge, known in philosophy as [[epistemology]].<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Allan|first1=Kenneth|last2=Turner|first2=Jonathan H.|year=2000|title=A formalization of postmodern theory|journal=Sociological Perspectives|volume=43|issue=3|pages=363|doi=10.2307/1389533|issn=0731-1214|jstor=1389533|s2cid=55576226 |url=http://libres.uncg.edu/ir/uncg/f/K_Allan_Formalization_2000.pdf}}</ref> Individuals who use the term are arguing that either there is something fundamentally different about the transmission of meaning, or that modernism has fundamental flaws in its system of knowledge. {{citation needed|date=March 2018}}

The argument for the necessity of the term states that economic and technological conditions of our age have given rise to a decentralized, media-dominated society. {{Citation needed| date= March 2018}} These ideas are [[simulacra]], and only inter-referential representations and copies of each other, with no real original, stable or objective source for [[communication]] and meaning. [[Globalization]], brought on by innovations in communication, [[manufacturing]] and [[transportation]],<ref>{{cite journal|last=L Arxer|first=Steven|year=2008|title=Addressing postmodern concerns on the border: globalization, the nation-state, hybridity, and social change|journal=Tamara Journal of Critical Organisation Inquiry|volume=7|issue=1/2|pages=179|issn=1532-5555}}</ref> is cited as one force which has decentralized modern life, creating a culturally pluralistic and interconnected global society, lacking any single dominant center of political power, communication, or intellectual production. The postmodern view is that inter-subjective knowledge, and not objective knowledge, is the dominant form of [[discourse]]. The ubiquity of copies and dissemination alters the relationship between reader and what is read, between observer and the observed, between those who consume and those who produce.{{citation needed|date=March 2018}}

Not all people who use the term postmodern or postmodernism see these developments as positive.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Petrov|first=Igor|year=2003|title=Globalization as a Postmodern Phenomenon|journal=International Affairs|volume=49|issue=6|pages=127|issn=0130-9641}}</ref> Users of the term argue that their ideals have arisen as the result of particular economic and social conditions, including "[[late capitalism]]", the growth of [[Broadcasting|broadcast]] media, and that such conditions have pushed society into a new [[historical period]].