Evaluation of Postmodernism

Strengths

• Highlighted important cultural changes, particularly in media, culture and identity.
• Shows how the construction of personality is more fluid and complex, people have more choice to pick and mix identities based on media consumption and globalisation, no longer a result of structural factors.
• Insight into social changes, growing risk and uncertainty and the growing power of the media.
• Challenges previous sociological explanations of society, updates outdated views.

Weaknesses

• Lacks values and vision for the improvement of society, undermines the idea of progress, ignoring a range of diverse social problems within society.
• Over-emphasised influence of the media, assumes people are passive and easily manipulated. However most people are capable of identifying what is real and what is not, aware that the media does not always report the truth.
• Exaggerates the scale of social change, social distinctions are not fully blurred and not all of the world is interconnected. Different cultures are still strong, rather than there being a global culture.
• Ignores differences in power and widespread inequality, individuals are still constrained by factors such as class, ethnicity and gender.
• Postmodernism itself is a metanarrative and is therefore dismissing itself.