Fragmentos de la realidad social posmoderna

Abstract

So huge is the amount of social, political, economical and cultural changes, which are taking
place in advances societies, that many social scientists are wondering if we are confronting with a
real epochal change. In answering that question, the article presents a set of theoretical works that
describe and analyse contemporary social change. Although all these contributions highlight the
importance of that changes, they also show an academic divide between «continuists» and
«rupturists». The first ones think of changes as a continuing development of the modernization
process. The second ones, on the contrary, think that we are entering on a new and post-modern era.
Even though we may believe that post-modernity, as a concept, is only an academic fashion
among many others, or that it lacks of enough rigor to be useful to scientific purposes, we can use it
as a very powerful lever to stimulate new kinds of observation and thinking. We do not know right
now what post-modernity actually means, but we do know we need new ways of thinking to be able
to understand this new world. So far we have only some fragments of this «posmodern» reality. This
article presents some of them.
Finally, in this article we are offering a new approach based on the «posmodern bifurcation»
hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, we see post-modernity as a double-faced process running
simultaneously through two opposite paths. One leads us to higher grades of modernization, to a
hypermodern stage of society. The other leads us to a restoration of traditional resources, to a
revaluation of traditional societies. We demand more modernity, but we also demand to recuperate
traditional values and structures. Posmodern people don not feel that Modern Society and
Traditional Society oppose each other simply, rather they are trying to make new hybridisations
taking from each kind of society whatever they feel may improve the quality of their lives.