A sociology of the phase transition to postmodernism

16.06.2023

The second phase transition

Postmodernism is the paradigm towards which the transition from the previous paradigm, the modern, is taking place. The transition is taking place before our eyes, so today's society (at least western society, but also planetary society as far as western influence is concerned) is a society in transition. Not only is Russian society transitive in a broad sense, but also the social matrix that defines the life of humanity to this or that degree is changing its qualitative nature today.

This transition (transit) occurs strictly from the Modern to the Postmodern. At the same time, some principles of the Modern have already been discarded, debunked, dismantled, while others still remain in force. At the same time, some elements of the postmodern paradigm have already been actively and universally implemented, while others remain in the draft stage, 'on the way'. This transitivity complicates a proper sociological analysis of Postmodernism, since the overall social picture observed today is, as a rule, a combination of parts of the outgoing Modern and the incoming Postmodern. Moreover, this process does not proceed in a frontal and uniform manner, but varies from society to society.

The need to clearly understand the structure of the three paradigms

In any case, in order to analysis, from a sociological point of view, the content of postmodern society, i.e. to be a competent sociologist of the 21st century, it is absolutely necessary to operate with a set of sociological knowledge related to all three paradigms - pre-modern, modern and postmodern -, to know their key points, to understand the general structure of the respective societies, to be able to reconstruct the main poles, strata, status and roles of each type of society. This is necessary for the following reasons.

The phase shift to Postmodernism touches the deepest fundamentals of society, including those that seemed to have long since been clarified and even overcome in the Modern. The aim of postmodern philosophy is to demonstrate the insufficiency and reversibility of this 'overcoming'. Postmodernism argues that 'modern society has failed in its program and has not been able to completely eliminate the premodern from itself'. In order to understand this thesis, which is central to the sociological and philosophical program of Postmodernism, it is necessary to think seriously again: what is Premodernism?
The social structures to be radically transformed in Postmodernism have not been put in place in any previous historical phase: they represent profound sociological, anthropological, psychoanalytical and philosophical constants that have remained unchanged throughout history and are most vividly manifested in archaic societies, explored from a new angle by 20th-century structuralism. This means that Postmodernism works not only with the past and history, but with the eternal and the timeless. Thus, the long-forgotten topic of mythos turns out to be not only relevant, but central, and the study of archaic societies from a peripheral, almost museum-like initiative becomes a mainstream field of study.
The transition to Postmodernism implies equally fundamental changes in the overall structure of society, comparable to those that occurred during the transition from Premodern to Modern. Moreover, the earlier phase transition is crucial in its content and pattern for the study of the current transition. The symmetry and content of this symmetry between the two is central to the entire postmodern paradigm.

These arguments, to which many other technical and applicative considerations can be added, allow us to realize the most important law of 21st century sociology: we are only able, from a sociological point of view, to adequately understand the society in which we find ourselves if we possess not only a basic set of sociological tools, but also an understanding of all the social differences between the Premodern-Modern-Postmodern paradigms.

Transformation of the object of sociology in postmodernism

We should not forget that sociology emerged in the age of the Modern and, although it is largely responsible for the critique of the Modern and the preparation of the transition to the Postmodern, it carries with it many conceptual, philosophical, methodological and semantic traces of the Modern, which are losing their meaning and appropriateness before our eyes. The shift from sociology to post-sociology is inevitable, which means that the level of sociological reflection on sociology itself, its principles, its foundations, its axiomatics, is now more relevant than ever.

This stems from the following fundamental phenomenon. In the transition to Postmodernism, the very object of sociology changes. Of course, society is always evolving in all phases; each time its correct study requires the improvement of the relevant tools, but during the phase transition something more profound changes: the register of disciplines changes. Thus, all social transformations in the pre-modern paradigm were related to changes within religions - their change, their evolution, their division or fusion, their correlation. In the transition to the Modern, the entire class of social processes, institutions, doctrines, structures related to religion (and it was not only extensive, but almost total) turns out to be more irrelevant and moves to the periphery of attention. As we have seen, in Auguste Comte's eyes, it was sociology as post-religion that had to take the vacated place.

In the Premodern, the study of society was almost identical to the study of its religion, which defined the prevailing properties of institutions, processes, distribution of sati, etc. in a social context. In Modernity, however, religious studies and the sociology of religion have become very modest directions and only structuralism and psychoanalysis and some of the founding fathers of sociology (Durkheim, Mauss, Weber, Sombart) have reminded us of its fundamental importance - mainly through the study of the social conditions of the origin of Modernity (Weber, Sombart) or through the study of archaic societies (late Durkheim, Mauss, Halbwachs, Eliade, Levi-Strauss). In any case, on either side of the Modern boundary (the earlier transitional phase) are two very different types of society: 'traditional society' (Premodern) and 'modern society' (Modern).

The differences between them are so fundamental and the basic values and principles are so opposite that one can speak of complete antitheticity. If the Premodern is the thesis, the Modern is the antithesis. And the corresponding societies, in many respects, are not only qualitatively different, but also opposite objects of research. - It is no coincidence that F. Tönnies places 'society' (Gesellschaft) as the object of sociology only in the age of the Modern, whereas, according to his doctrine, 'community' (Gemeinschaft) corresponds to the Premodern. If we accept Tönnies' theory, considered an undisputed classic of sociology, we should have divided sociology into a science of society (Gesellschaft) and the Modern, and a science of community (Gemeinschaft) and the Premodern ('communology'). Although this division did not take place and sociology studies traditional and modern societies in the same way, the transformation of the object of study in the early phase of the transition from the Premodern to the Modern is so essential that the idea of dividing them into two disciplines was seriously debated in the formative phase of the science. In our time, the subject of 'communology' has been revisited by the famous French sociologist Michel Maffesoli.

Post-society and post-sociology

Something similar happens in the second transitional phase - from the Modern to the Postmodern. The object of research - 'society' - again changes irreversibly. What society becomes in the Postmodern is as different from what it was in the Modern as 'modern society' is different from 'traditional society' (Gemeinschaft). Therefore, one can tentatively speak of 'post-society' as a new object of study for sociology. At the same time, sociology itself must change to adapt its methods and approaches to the new object. Thus, a 'postsociology', a new (post)scientific discipline that would study the new object, is on the horizon.

In any case, the minimum sociological adequacy in the study of the processes at work in the transition to the Postmodern is directly linked to an understanding of the underlying logic of all three paradigm shifts and this, among other things, makes the study of the Premodern with all its sociological components - myth, archaic, initiation, magic, polytheism, monotheism, ethnos, duality of fraternities, kinship structures, gender strategies, hierarchy, etc. - a necessary condition for the adequacy of the subject. - a necessary condition for the professional adequacy of the sociologist, called upon to supplement the taxonomy of the objects of this science with a new link - the 'post-society'.

The archaeo-modern correction

The whole situation is further complicated by the fact that the Premodern-Modern-Postmodern chain only applies to Western societies - Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia, etc. In the zone of sustainable and dominant development of Western civilization, we can clearly register the transition of society along all three paradigms, with the fact that the establishment of each new paradigm tends to be fundamental, irreversible and cleansed of the remnants of the previous one. The process of paradigm shift for Western civilization is endogenous, i.e. driven by internal factors.

For all other societies, the subsequent movement along the chain of paradigm shifts (including the various sub-cycles we have described above) is either external, exogenous in character (it occurs through colonization or defensive modernization), or it occurs only partially (Islamic monotheism, which is more 'modern' than polytheism and even more so than archaic cults, has never crossed the Modern line, stopping before it), or it is absent altogether (many ethnic groups on Earth still live in stable systems of 'perpetual return'); but, as the influence of the West is now global, the former case - exogenous modernization (or acculturation) - extends to almost all societies, bringing elements of Modernity into even the most archaic tribes. This gives rise to the phenomenon of the Archaeo-modern.

The Archaeo-modern complicates the sociological picture

The problem of the Archaeo-modern in sociology significantly complicates the analysis of societies along the historical syntagm Premodern-Modern-Postmodern, as it adds to the three paradigms a series of hybrid variants, in which the social facades of the Modern are artificially and inorganically placed on the basis of sociological structures relating to the Pre-Modern. The archaeo-modern is also specific because this combination of the archaic and the modern is not at all related at the level of consciousness, it is not understood, it is not organized, no generalizing interpretative models appear, which creates the phenomenon of the 'society of the dump' (P. Sorokin). The modern blocks the rhythm of the archaic and the archaic sabotages the coherent structuring of the modern.

The study of archaeo-modern societies represents a separate class of social tasks, which can be relegated to a special branch of sociology. The archaeo-modern does not generate new content, since each of its elements can be fairly easily traced back either to the context of traditional society (to the Premodern) or to that of modern society (to the Modern). Only the sets of dissonances, absurdities and ambiguities generated by this or that archaeo-modern, the reservations, failures, errors and accidental coincidences, which sometimes acquire the status of social characteristics and in some cases become constitutive, are original. For example, a misunderstood social institution or a technical object borrowed from the Modern, such as a parliament or a mobile phone, may function in isolation from its context (in the absence of democracy in society or a mobile phone network), partly reinterpreted in relation to local realities, and partly simply a misunderstood element, acting as a 'sacred object' of little known purpose - like a meteorite.

The Archaeo-modern and the Postmodern: the deceptive appearance of similarities

The Archaeo-modern becomes a particularly difficult sociological problem when studying the second phase of transition - from the Modern to the Postmodern. The fact is that certain phenomenological properties of Postmodernism - in particular, Postmodernism's ironic appeal to the archaic in order to point out to Modernism what it could not completely free itself from - outwardly resemble the Archaeo-modern. But with the difference that the Postmodern constructs its strategy of juxtaposing the incongruous (the Premodern and the Modern) in a contrived, thoughtful manner, with a subtle ironic and critical, provocative intent (as a great mind), whereas the Modern performs similar operations on its own (as a fool).

The Archaeo-modern is a Modern that has not revealed itself and will probably never reveal itself again. The Postmodern is a Modern that has revealed itself, but overcomes itself to reveal itself even more. Hence the very subtle sociological distinction: the Postmodern imitates certain aspects of the archaeo-modern as part of its poststructuralist program to 'enlighten the Enlightenment'; the archaeo-modernist takes it at face value and genuinely does not understand how a postmodern West that playfully includes themes and whole ethnic groups (immigration) from mainstream society will soon be different from the archaeo-modern societies of the rest of the world.

The sociology of globalization (postmodern and archaeo-modern)

Here, a two-tiered model of globalization takes shape. This globalization is based on the juxtaposition of Postmodernism and Archaeomodernism. Postmodernism is embodied by Western society, which integrates humanity along its lines of power. It is an information society, which decodes and recodes information flows ('ocean of information'). Throughout the world, there are segments of elites that are more integrated into the Modern than the rest of society and that are at least partially able to embrace some Postmodern trends. They become the nodes of globalization in its logical, rational and strategic aspect.

Humanity is being transformed into a homogeneous field with symmetrical centre-portals, where the routers of infemes (infeme = tiniest quant of information - as mytheme of Levy-Srausse) are concentrated. This is where the laws of Postmodernism operate and where those who are aware of them (shift-working Westerners or representatives of local elites who have learnt the canons and norms of post-society) reside.

All other social spaces are left to the archaeo-modernist, who perceives the weakening of the modernizing impulse (which bedeviled the archaic in the age of Modernity) as a relaxation, and is happy to see globalization as a 'window of opportunity' for localization, i.e. to address familiar and non-generalized concrete everyday concerns, where the archaic and the modern coexist in a form of subdued conflict, like a dug-out dump. To describe this dual phenomenon, contemporary sociologist Roland Robertson (4) has proposed using the Japanese corporate slang term, 'globalization', to describe the intertwining of two processes in globalization: the strengthening of global networks operating according to the postmodern agenda (globalization proper) and the archaicization of regional communities gravitating towards a return to local culture (localization). Thus, Postmodernism blends with Archaeo-modernism in a single lump that is difficult to separate, the correct sociological deciphering of which requires a high level of professionalism and a deep understanding of the mechanisms at work in each paradigm, taken individually and in hybrid and transitional forms.

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