The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change

David Harvey, Blackwell Publishers, 1990. ISBN 0-631-16294-1

Harvey posits a ". . . sea-change in cultural as well as in political-economic practices since around 1972." (p. vii) To examine this phenomenon he explores the nature of modernity and postmodernity to see if the sea-change is a true change in the nature of capitalism or simply a change in the face that capitalism presents the world.

To understand postmodernism, we first must examine modernism. Harvey briefly reviews the cultural, social, and artistic expressions of modernism as the fruition of the Enlightenment. Alas, it is easier to define postmodernism by what it is not than what it is; so Harvey goes on to extensively contrast the modernist and postmodernist views on number of social, economic, cultural, political, and even theological issues. To further illustrate he examines at some length the modernist and postmodernist influences on architecture and urban design. Harvey views postmodernism as enveloping modernism -- he says ". . . there is much more continuity than difference" (p. 116) between modernism and postmodernism.

What, then, is the nature of the changes in the political economy since the early 70s? Harvey defines it as the migration from a postwar Fordism to what he calls flexible accumulation -- "the emergence of entirely new sectors of production, . . . new markets, and . . . greatly intensified rates of . . . innovation." The question is, is flexible accumulation a replacement of traditional capitalism or just a new variation?

The answer lies in a changing experience of space and time. The experience of a compression in space and time (accelerated by such things as satellite communications, increased use of temporary or contract workers, just-in-time manufacturing, etc.) has given increased value to the ephemeral and new emphasis on instantaneity and disposability. The result is a much more volatile society and economy where long-term planning is extremely difficult and indeed, increasingly pointless. This volatility resulted in the increasingly impracticability of Fordism as classically practiced.

Harvey concludes by reexamining the face of postmodernity in a collage of short vignettes from the worlds of finance, economics, and politics; postmodernity is not the destination, but the process, a 'historical-geographical condition'. He feels that once we begin to truly understand "the problems of time--space compression, . . . the significance of geopolitics and otherness" (p. 359) we can once again search for a "new version of the Enlightenment project".

Copyright 1996 by Gordon Zaft.