What are the first, second, and third worlds? What does it mean to develop? Development often implies progress as modernization.
Modernity: a forward-looking view of the world that emphasizes reason, scientific rationality, creativity, novelty, and progress.
Modernization: "A process of social change resulting from the diffusion and adoption of the characteristics of expansive and apparently more advanced societies through societies which are apparently less advanced. Modernization involves social mobilization, the growth of a more effective and centralized apparatus of political and social control, the acceptance of scientifically rational norms and modes of transformation of social relations and aesthetic forms. The five linear stages of economic growth proposed by Rostow (1960, 1978) provide the conceptual spectacles - or rather blinkers within which such a view of development may be seen." (Dictionary of Human Geography 1990)
Video clip from El Norte: washing clothes the modern mechanized vs. the traditional way by hand.
Postmodernity: a view of the world that emphasizes an openness to a range of perspectives in social inquiry, artistic expression, and political empowerment . . . Postmodernity abandons Modernity's emphasis on economic and scientific progress, instead focusing on living for the moment. Above all, Postmodernity is consumption-oriented . . . "a society of the spectacle."
Modernus: Latin term used to distinguish the Christian from Pagan eras.
Modern - looking forward rather than backward.
First used in English in the 1600's.
Sweeping technological and scientific changes trigger a new round of spatial organization and transform the underpinnings of social and cultural life.
Proxemics: the study of the social and cultural meanings that people give to personal space.
Technological innovations outpace cultural norms and institutions. Disruptive changes become the norm in an ever changing world.
"All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air." Engels
Postmodernity: a view of the world that emphasizes an evenness to a range of perspectives in social inquiry, artistic expression, and political empowerment.
"Postmodernism claims that the modern world has changed qualitatively in the last twenty-five years in several areas:technology, economy, culture, and knowledge." (Yapa: http://www.geog.psu.edu/~yapa/Discorse.htm#Note1 October 20, 2000)
"An explosion in new technologies for the storage, retrieval, and transmission of information and images has given rise to a post-industrial information age. . . An interconnected network of communication satellites, fibre-optic cables, personal computers, the internet, electronic mail, web pages, and fax machines gives us instant electronic access to any place on the globe."(Yapa: http://www.geog.psu.edu/~yapa/Discorse.htm#Note1 October 20, 2000)
What effect is this having on culture?
"Postmodernity is a cultural condition reflecting the new economic logic of post-Fordist capitalism and its disorienting sense of compressed space and accelerated time." Harvey
Mass marketing vs. niche markets
Cosmopolitanism: an intellectual and esthetic openness toward divergent experiences, images, and products from different cultures.
multiculturalism, the proliferation of information and images
Measuring Development in the modern era.
GDP: Gross Domestic Productan estimate of the total value of all materials, foodstuffs, goods, and services produced by a country in a particular year.
GNP: Gross National Productsimilar to GDP, but also includes the value of income from abroad.