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158-486: Most of the published materials focus on critiques of postmodernity and modern liberal values, and how an orthodox Christian worldview applies to a wide range of modern issues such as bioethics , city planning , the media , and academics . However, the viewpoints expressed in the Journal and other materials are not necessarily politically conservative , although the leaning is often in this direction; more accurately,

316-424: A decline in birth rates in the industrialized world, which had multiple second-order effects. Many regions have also made divorce much easier to officially procure. However, the decline in birth rate is not a universal trend; many nations continue to have high birth rates , and the world's overall population is still growing as of 2022. One of the yet evolving and unknown impacts in the contemporary era has been

474-406: A "fundamental mutation" so that it has "now become a set of texts or simulacra ". Whereas modernist art sought to redeem and sacralize the world, to give life to world (we might say, following Graff, to give the world back the enchantment that science and the decline of religion had taken away from it), postmodernist art bestows upon the world a "deathly quality… whose glacéd X-ray elegance mortifies

632-401: A "web of data". With the rise of information technology, computer security , and information security in general, is a concern for computers and networks. Concerns include information and services which are protected from unintended or unauthorized access, change or destruction. This has also raised questions of Internet privacy and personal privacy globally. The Space Race was one of

790-467: A combination of genuine popularity and legal rollbacks, Russia gradually moved toward being a one-party state , a democracy but one where Putin's party always won. Russia has since intervened in a variety of military conflicts in its neighboring countries including the 2008 Russo-Georgian War ; the 2014 Russo-Ukrainian War and Annexation of Crimea ; a 2015 intervention in the Syrian Civil War ; and

948-453: A commanding large slice of the sources of energy. Even if diminished, coal is still a popular and common style of power plant; it made up a huge proportion of South Africa and India's power grid from 1945 to the present, for example. That said, increasing price, as well as concerns both over the air pollution generated when it is burnt and the landscape destruction when it is mined (such as mountaintop removal mining ), have caused setbacks for

1106-462: A continuity with the past. Second a range of theorists have tried to analyze the present as a development of the "modern" project into a second, distinct phase that is nevertheless still "modernity": this has been termed the "second" or "risk" society by Ulrich Beck , "late" or "high" modernity by Giddens, "liquid" modernity by Bauman, and the "network" society by Manuel Castells . Third are those who argue that contemporary society has moved into

1264-610: A cooling of East-West relations. Germany split into two countries in 1949, liberal-democratic West Germany and communist East Germany . The conflict as a whole would become known as the Cold War . The Western Bloc formed NATO in 1949 while the Eastern Bloc formed the Warsaw Pact in 1955. Direct combat between the new Great Powers was generally avoided, although proxy wars fought in other countries by factions equipped by one side against

1422-692: A form of critique that is "postmodern" in that it breaks with utopian and transcendental "modern" critiques by calling universal norms of the Enlightenment into question. Giddens rejects this characterisation of "modern critique", pointing out that a critique of Enlightenment universals was central to philosophers of the modern period, most notably Nietzsche . Jameson views a number of phenomena as distinguishing postmodernity from modernity. He speaks of "a new kind of superficiality " or "depthlessness" in which models that once explained people and things in terms of an "inside" and an "outside" (such as hermeneutics ,

1580-471: A large disincentive to burn oil except when absolutely necessary (such as in the case of aviation fuel ), although oil continues to be one of the most popular sources of energy. Other fossil fuels have continued a prominent role in the world's energy production. Coal energy , usually credited as helping kickstart the Industrial Revolution , has declined somewhat in prominence, but it started from

1738-709: A lesser extent, during the Cold War, something similar happened with the Russian language in the Eastern Bloc and among communist-aligned factions; however, this status was mostly reversed after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The French and German languages saw their prestige as global languages decline after World War II. Religious trends have been disparate and not consistent across countries, often with sharply varying results even between similar and nearby groups. In industrialized and economically prosperous regions, there has been

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1896-559: A literally post-modern phase distinct from modernity. The most prominent proponents of this position are Lyotard and Baudrillard. Another set of issues concerns the nature of critique, often replaying debates over (what can be crudely termed) universalism and relativism , where modernism is seen to represent the former and postmodernity the latter. Seyla Benhabib and Judith Butler pursue this debate in relation to feminist politics, Benhabib arguing that postmodern critique comprises three main elements; an anti-foundationalist concept of

2054-540: A loose trend toward secularization that deprioritized the role of religion, even among people who still identified as adherents. The decline of Christianity in the Western world has been perhaps the most notable of these trends, although many non-Western cultures have been affected as well, such as the rise of irreligion in China (buttressed by antireligious campaigns ). As an example of how localized this process can be, during

2212-417: A negative consequence of holding postmodernist ideas. For example, Jürgen Habermas and others contend that postmodernity represents a resurgence of long running Counter-Enlightenment ideas, that the modern project is not finished and that universality cannot be so lightly dispensed with. Postmodernity, the consequence of holding postmodern ideas, is generally a negative term in this context. Postmodernity

2370-567: A phenomenon called the Japanese economic miracle . Many explanations are proffered for the enviable results of these years: relative peace (at least outside the " Third World "); a reduction in average family size; technological improvements; and others. The Eastern Bloc, meanwhile, established Comecon as their equivalent to the Marshall Plan and to establish internal trading rules between communist states. The 1970s saw economic headwinds. Notably,

2528-544: A policy of perestroika in the 1980s which allowed tentative market reforms. The fall of the USSR saw differing approaches in the 1990s in the East: some newly independent states went in a capitalist direction such as Estonia , some maintained a strong governmental presence in their economy, and some opted for a mix. The privatization of government firms and resources drew accusations of crony capitalism in many states, however, including

2686-586: A pro-Western stance. The Federation of Malaya was granted independence in 1957, with the concurrent fighting of the Malayan Emergency against communist forces from 1948–1960. The French unsuccessfully fought the First Indochina War in an attempt to hold on to French Indochina ; at the 1954 Geneva Conference , the new states of Cambodia , Laos , the Democratic Republic of Vietnam , and

2844-609: A second €130-billion Greek bailout. In 2013, the European Union agreed to a €10 billion economic bailout for Cyprus. The 2020 coronavirus pandemic caused economic disruption, with wide-ranging economic impacts of COVID-19 such as supply chain changes and an increase in working-from-home, along with the COVID-19 recession . Social changes since 1945 have been vast and disparate, affecting countries and subgroups within those countries in ways specific to each population, meaning there

3002-730: A series of Yugoslav Wars ; NATO eventually intervened in the Kosovo War . In the Middle East, the Israeli–Palestinian peace process offered the prospect of a long-term peace deal to many; the Oslo Accords signed in 1993 seemed to offer a "roadmap" to resolving the conflict . Despite these high hopes, they would be largely dashed in 2000–2001 after a breakdown of negotiations and the Second Intifada . The September 11 attacks were

3160-734: A series of coordinated suicide attacks by al-Qaeda upon the United States on 11 September 2001. On that morning, nineteen al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial passenger jet airliners . The hijackers intentionally crashed two of the airliners into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, killing everyone on board and many others working in the buildings. Both buildings collapsed within two hours, destroying nearby buildings and damaging others. The hijackers crashed

3318-459: A sharp drop in international trade , rising unemployment and slumping commodity prices. The recession renewed interest in Keynesian economic ideas on how to combat recessionary conditions. However, various industrial countries continued to undertake austerity policies to cut deficits , reduced spending , as opposed to following Keynesian theories. From late 2009 European debt crisis , fears of

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3476-927: A shuttle: the Challenger disaster and the Columbia disaster ). The program ultimately had 135 missions. The retirement of NASA's Space Shuttle fleet took place from March to July 2011. The end of the Cold War saw a new era of international cooperation with the International Space Station (ISS). Commercial spaceflight also became possible as governments loosened what had previously been their firm control over satellites, opening new possibilities, but also new risks such as light pollution from satellites . The Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program began in 2006. There are various spaceports , including spaceports of human spaceflight and other launch systems ( space logistics ). Private spaceflight

3634-686: A significant marketing feature through the early 2000s (decade), was similarly displaced by emphasis on relevancy ranking, the methods by which search engines attempt to sort the best results first. " Web 2.0 " is characterized as facilitating communication, information sharing , interoperability , User-centered design and collaboration on the World Wide Web . It has led to the development and evolution of web-based communities, hosted services , and web applications . Examples include social-networking sites , video-sharing sites , wikis , blogs, mashups and folksonomies . Social networking emerged in

3792-445: A source of vast revenue that did not require traditional government revenue-raising measures, such as tariffs or income taxation. The rising cost of oil led to the 1970s energy crisis and various adaptations in energy conservation to better conserve oil, such as more efficient engines and better insulation. It has also led to concerns of " peak oil ," that the rising extraction costs of oil will eventually lead to massive shortages and

3950-560: A sovereign debt crisis developed among investors concerning rising government debt levels across the globe together with a wave of downgrading of government debt of certain European states. Concerns intensified early 2010 and thereafter making it difficult or impossible for sovereigns to re-finance their debts. On 9 May 2010, Europe's Finance Ministers approved a rescue package worth €750 billion aimed at ensuring financial stability across Europe. The European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF)

4108-596: A stage of capitalism following finance capitalism , characterised by highly mobile labor and capital and what Harvey called "time and space compression". They suggest that this coincides with the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system which, they believe, defined the economic order following the Second World War. (See also consumerism , critical theory .) Other academics, such as the archaeologist Artur Ribeiro, also identify postmodernity with late capitalism. Though in

4266-634: A third airliner into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia . The fourth plane crashed into a field near Shanksville in rural Somerset County, Pennsylvania , after some of its passengers and flight crew attempted to retake control of the plane. In response, the United States under President George W. Bush enacted the Patriot Act . Many other countries also strengthened their anti-terrorism legislation and expanded law enforcement powers. Major terrorist events after

4424-450: A universal practice. Jameson argues that distance "has been abolished" in postmodernity, that we "are submerged in its henceforth filled and suffused volumes to the point where our now postmodern bodies are bereft of spatial co-ordinates". This "new global space" constitutes postmodernity's "moment of truth". The various other features of the postmodern that he identifies "can all now be seen as themselves partial (yet constitutive) aspects of

4582-475: A vast increase in demand for energy development , both to power vehicles such as personal cars as well as on public electrical grids . In particular, petroleum oil has been in ravenous demand across the world. Many of the cheapest and easiest sources of oil to access were largely drained in the 19th and early 20th centuries, leading to a hunt for new sources of oil. The value of oil has spilled over into politics as well, as " petrostates " with access to oil found

4740-491: A way that was less true in the 20th century. For example, diaspora groups of immigrants can more easily stay in contact with their family and friends in their origin region, compared to earlier eras where travel and communication was far more expensive, making a narrative of strictly increasing global homogenization incomplete. International telephone networks, and later Internet telephony, allowed cheaper and easier long-distance communication than previous eras. Language usage in

4898-447: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Postmodernity Postmodernity ( post-modernity or the postmodern condition ) is the economic or cultural state or condition of society which is said to exist after modernity . Some schools of thought hold that modernity ended in the late 20th century – in the 1980s or early 1990s – and that it was replaced by postmodernity, and still others would extend modernity to cover

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5056-585: Is a condition or a state of being associated with changes to institutions and creations and with social and political results and innovations, globally but especially in the West since the 1950s, whereas postmodernism is an aesthetic, literary, political or social philosophy, the "cultural and intellectual phenomenon", especially since the 1920s' new movements in the arts. Both of these terms are used by philosophers, social scientists and social critics to refer to aspects of contemporary culture, economics and society that are

5214-790: Is all there is, as if discourse were some kind of monistic stuff out of which all things are composed; the subject is dead, I can never say "I" again; there is no reality, only representation. These characterizations are variously imputed to postmodernism or poststructuralism, which are conflated with each other and sometimes conflated with deconstruction, and understood as an indiscriminate assemblage of French feminism, deconstruction, Lacanian psychoanalysis, Foucauldian analysis, Rorty's conversationalism, and cultural studies ... In reality, these movements are opposed: Lacanian psychoanalysis in France positions itself officially against poststructuralism, that Foucauldian rarely relate to Derridideans ... Lyotard champions

5372-586: Is corroding the circumstances that provide for its subsistence and will eventually result in a decline of individualism and the birth of a new neo-Tribal era. According to theories of postmodernity, economic and technological conditions of our age have given rise to a decentralized, media-dominated society in which ideas are only simulacra , inter-referential representations and copies of each other with no real, original, stable or objective source of communication and meaning. Globalization , brought on by innovations in communication, manufacturing and transportation

5530-522: Is defined as a period or condition loosely identified with the Progressive Era , the Industrial Revolution , or the Enlightenment . In philosophy and critical theory postmodernity refers to the state or condition of society which is said to exist after modernity, a historical condition that marks the reasons for the end of modernity. This usage is ascribed to the philosophers Jean-François Lyotard and Jean Baudrillard . One "project" of modernity

5688-656: Is flight beyond the Kármán line that is conducted and paid for by an entity other than a government agency. Commercialization of space is the use of equipment sent into or through outer space to provide goods or services of commercial value, either by a corporation or state. Space trade plans and predictions began in the 1960s. Spacecraft propulsion is any method used to accelerate spacecraft and artificial satellites . NASA announced in 2011 that its Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured photographic evidence of possible liquid water on Mars during warm seasons. On 6 August 2012,

5846-419: Is heavily linked to the concept of a Digital Age or Digital Revolution , and carries the ramifications of a shift from traditional industry that the Industrial Revolution brought through industrialization, to an economy based around the manipulation of information. The period is generally said to have begun in the latter half of the 20th century, though the particular date varies. The term began its use around

6004-436: Is liberating because it loosens the authority of local social normative standards. The second phase of postmodernity is " digitality " – the increasing power of personal and digital means of communication including fax machines , modems , cable and high speed internet , which has altered the condition of postmodernity dramatically: digital production of information allows individuals to manipulate virtually every aspect of

6162-427: Is not one single global story of social change. Despite this, one of the major trends has been an increasing interchange between cultures and a wider spread of the most successful works, enabled by new technology and globalization . In earlier periods, a successful musician or theater troupe might be confined to playing in a single city at a time, limiting their reach. The spread of better recording technology, such as

6320-437: Is often cited as one force which has driven the decentralized modern life, creating a culturally pluralistic and interconnected global society lacking any single dominant center of political power, communication or intellectual production. The postmodernist view is that intersubjective , not objective, knowledge will be the dominant form of discourse under such conditions and that ubiquity of dissemination fundamentally alters

6478-503: Is often called the "Soviet Union's Vietnam War" in comparison to the American defeat, being an expensive and ultimately unsuccessful war and occupation. More importantly, the intervening decades had seen that Eastern Europe was unable to compete economically with Western Europe, which undermined the promise of communist abundance compared to capitalist poverty. The Western capitalist economies had proven wealthier and stronger, which made matching

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6636-420: Is said by Jürgen Habermas to have been the fostering of progress by incorporating principles of rationality and hierarchy into public and artistic life. (See also post-industrial , Information Age ) Lyotard understood modernity as a cultural condition characterized by constant change in the pursuit of progress . Postmodernity then represents the culmination of this process where constant change has become

6794-426: Is seen as futile. The third feature of the postmodern age that Jameson identifies is the "waning of affect" – not that all emotion has disappeared from the postmodern age but that it lacks a particular kind of emotion such as that found in " Rimbaud 's magical flowers 'that look back at you'". He notes that " pastiche eclipses parody" as "the increasing unavailability of the personal style" leads to pastiche becoming

6952-440: Is the beginning of analysis, not the end, because the first task of enquiry is the questioning of accepted "universal" and "objective" norms. The Benhabib-Butler debate demonstrates that there is no simple definition of a postmodern theorist as the very definition of postmodernity itself is contested. Michel Foucault rejected the label of postmodernism explicitly in interviews yet is seen by many, such as Benhabib , as advocating

7110-508: Is the natural reaction to mass broadcasting in a society conditioned to mass production and mass politics. The work of Alasdair MacIntyre informs the versions of postmodernism elaborated by such authors as Murphy (2003) and Bielskis (2005), for whom MacIntyre's postmodern revision of Aristotelianism poses a challenge to the kind of consumerist ideology that now promotes capital accumulation . The sociological view of postmodernity ascribes it to more rapid transportation, wider communication and

7268-501: Is usually impossible to connect specific weather events to human impact on the world. Instead, such impact is expected to cause changes in the overall distribution and intensity of weather events, such as changes to the frequency and intensity of heavy precipitation. Broader effects are expected to include glacial retreat , Arctic shrinkage , and worldwide sea level rise . Other effects may include changes in crop yields , addition of new trade routes, species extinctions , and changes in

7426-553: The 1964 Brazilian coup d'état , the 1973 Chilean coup d'état , and others. Nicaragua suffered the most, with the Nicaraguan Revolution seeing major military aid from both great powers to their favored factions that extended a civil war in the country for decades. Mexico escaped this unrest, although functioned largely as a one-party state dominated by the PRI . Argentina had a succession of idiosyncratic governments that courted both

7584-605: The Bretton Woods system , a set of practices that governed world trade and currencies from 1945–1971, as well as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Western Europe also established the European Economic Community in 1957 to ease customs and aid international trade. In general, vast quality of life improvements affected most every corner of the globe during this period, in both

7742-554: The Cuban Missile Crisis in 1963, generally considered one of the incidents most dangerously close to turning the Cold War into a direct military conflict. The 1968 Peruvian coup d'état and also installed a Soviet-friendly government. Despite this, the region ultimately leaned toward the US in this period, with the CIA supporting American-friendly factions in the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état ,

7900-641: The Czech Republic was one of the most stridently irreligious , with only 15% of its population espousing any religious beliefs at all by 2011. In the Islamic world , a notable trend has been the spread of international schools of thought into regions where belief was previously localized, such as the International propagation of Salafism and Wahhabism funded by the government of Saudi Arabia . While regional Islamic groups remain strong, they are more contested than in

8058-607: The Fall of the Berlin Wall . He predicted that the question of political philosophy had been answered, that large scale wars over fundamental values would no longer arise since "all prior contradictions are resolved and all human needs satisfied." This is a kind of 'endism' also taken up by Arthur Danto who in 1964 acclaimed that Andy Warhol 's Brillo boxes asked the right question of art and hence art had ended. The debate on postmodernity has two distinct elements that are often confused; (1)

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8216-742: The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan to depose the Taliban , who had harbored al-Qaeda terrorists. The War in Afghanistan began in late 2001 and was launched by the UN-authorized ISAF , with the United States and United Kingdom providing most of the troops. The Bush administration policy and the Bush Doctrine stated forces would not distinguish between terrorist organizations and nations or governments that harbor them. Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF)

8374-401: The Journal consists of conversations between Myers and guests, most of whom are authors of recently published books. While a majority of the guests make a Christian profession, guests are selected for the merits of their arguments and the relevance of their viewpoints to the organization's purpose. Myers also provides commentary and analysis to segue from one conversation to the next. Although

8532-440: The Journal , Mars Hill Audio also produces anthologies of previously published essays and articles, documentary-type Reports , audiobooks , and a limited amount of printed material. This Christianity -related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This article about a United States publishing company is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This article about religious mass media

8690-573: The Six-Day War in 1967 and the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Under Anwar Sadat and later Hosni Mubarak , Egypt switched from Nasserism to favoring the Western Bloc, and signed a peace treaty with Israel. Lebanon, once among the most prosperous countries in the region and a cultural center, collapsed into the decade-long Lebanese Civil War from 1975–1990. Iran's unpopular pro-American government

8848-656: The Suez Crisis in 1956, briefly unify with Syria as the United Arab Republic (UAR) from 1958 to 1961, and expensively intervene in the North Yemen civil war from 1962 to 1970. Decolonization was the most important development across Southeast Asia and Africa from 1946–1975, as the old British, French, Dutch, and Portuguese colonial empires were dismantled. Many new states were given their independence, but soon found themselves having to choose between allying with

9006-573: The Victorian Age at the turn of the 20th century. Postmodernity has gone through two relatively distinct phases: the first beginning in the late 1940s and 1950s and ending with the Cold War (when analog media with limited bandwidth encouraged a few, authoritative media channels), and the second beginning at the end of the Cold War (marked by the spread of cable television and " new media " based on digital means of information dissemination and broadcast). The first phase of postmodernity overlaps

9164-456: The dialectic , Freudian repression , the existentialist distinction between authenticity and inauthenticity, and the semiotic distinction of signifier and signified) have been rejected. Second is a rejection of the modernist " Utopian gesture", evident in Van Gogh , of the transformation through art of misery into beauty whereas in the postmodernism movement the object world has undergone

9322-504: The magnetophon , meant that a musical act could have their song be played over the radio everywhere without loss of sound quality, creating international superstars such as Elvis Presley and The Beatles . The spread of home television sets allowed people across the globe to easily watch the same show, rather than requiring viewers to attend a local theater. Hollywood in California produced films that dominated cinema; while intended for

9480-744: The natural environment and human life are, at least in part, already being attributed to global warming. A 2001 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggests that glacier retreat , ice shelf disruption such as that of the Larsen Ice Shelf , sea level rise , changes in rainfall patterns, and increased intensity and frequency of extreme weather events are attributable in part to global warming. Other expected effects include water scarcity in some regions and increased precipitation in others, changes in mountain snowpack, and adverse health effects from warmer temperatures. It

9638-572: The price of oil started to go up in the 1970s, as the easiest and most accessible wells had already been pumped dry in the preceding century, and oil is a non-renewable resource. Attention was drawn to the abundant oil in the Middle East, where countries in OPEC controlled substantial untapped oil reserves. Political tensions over the Yom Kippur War and the Iranian Revolution led to the 1973 oil crisis and 1979 oil crisis . The Soviet Union called it

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9796-415: The sexual revolution transformed social relations in western countries between the 1960s and 1980s, as seen in the protests of 1968 . Living standards rose sharply across the developed world because of the post-war economic boom . Japan and West Germany both emerged as exceptionally strong economies. The culture of the United States spread widely, with American television and movies spreading across

9954-517: The state of being that is associated with a postmodern society as well as a historical epoch. In most contexts it should be distinguished from postmodernism , the adoption of postmodern philosophies or traits in the arts, culture and society. In fact, today's historical perspectives on the developments of postmodern art (postmodernism) and postmodern society (postmodernity) can be best described as two umbrella terms for processes engaged in an ongoing dialectical relationship like post-postmodernism ,

10112-483: The status quo and the notion of progress obsolete. Following Ludwig Wittgenstein 's critique of the possibility of absolute and total knowledge, Lyotard further argued that the various metanarratives of progress such as positivist science, Marxism , and structuralism were defunct as methods of achieving progress. The literary critic Fredric Jameson and the geographer David Harvey have identified postmodernity with " late capitalism " or "flexible accumulation",

10270-609: The " Era of Stagnation ". The 1970s and 80s also saw the rise of the Four Asian Tigers , as South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong emulated the Japanese route to prosperity with varying degree of success. In China, the leftist Gang of Four were overthrown in 1976, and Deng Xiaoping pursued a policy of tentatively opening the Chinese economy to capitalist innovations throughout the 1980s, which would be continued by his successors in

10428-463: The 1950s proved overly optimistic, however. Atomic energy grew to be a large part of several nations energy generation strategies, especially nuclear power in France . Nuclear power continues to be controversial. Concerns include its association with nuclear weapons , financial cost , disposal of radioactive nuclear waste , and fears of safety from reactor meltdowns , especially after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster . An anti-nuclear movement arose that

10586-474: The 1960s and 1970s included such a shift, and that this shift should be denoted as from modernity to postmodernity. [See French (2016), French & Ehrman (2016), or Sørensen (2007)]. Criticisms of the postmodern condition can broadly be put into four categories: criticisms of postmodernity from the perspective of those who reject modernism and its offshoots, criticisms from supporters of modernism who believe that postmodernity lacks crucial characteristics of

10744-586: The 1970s and 80s, the US took a new approach with the Space Shuttle program , hoping to reduce the cost of launches by creating a re-usable Space Shuttle. The first fully functional Space Shuttle orbiter was Columbia (designated OV-102), launched into low Earth orbit in April 1981. In 1996, Shuttle mission STS-75 conducted research in space with the electrodynamic tether generator and other tether configurations. The program suffered from two incidents that destroyed

10902-514: The 1990s. China's economy, tiny in 1976, would see tremendous growth, and eventually take the spot as second largest economy from Japan in 2010. Among Western economies, the collapse of the Bretton Woods system was replaced by a more flexible era of floating exchange rates. The Group of Seven (G7) first met in 1975 and become one of the main international forums that regulated international trade among developed country . The Soviet Union implemented

11060-717: The Cold War both the Polish People's Republic and the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic endorsed state atheism . However, after the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989–1990, the people of these bordering states had radically different cultural attitudes toward religion; Poland was one of the more religious states in Europe, with 96% of its population espousing a belief in Catholic Christianity in 2011, while

11218-514: The European Union with the signing of the Maastricht Treaty in 1993, which integrated Europe across borders to a new degree. International coalitions continued to have a role; the Gulf War saw a large international coalition undo Baathist Iraq's annexation of Kuwait, but other "police" style actions were less successful. Somalia and Afghanistan descended into long, bloody civil wars for almost

11376-605: The Iraqi Government. Despite government assumptions that the war in Iraq would be over with the fall of Hussein, it continued and intensified. Sectarian groups both fought each other and the occupying coalition forces via asymmetric warfare during the Iraqi insurgency , as Iraq was starkly divided between Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish groups that now competed with each other for power. Al-Qaeda operations in Iraq continued as well. In late 2008,

11534-701: The Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity , the most elaborate Martian exploration vehicle to date, landed on Mars. After the WMAP observations of the cosmic microwave background , information was released in 2011 of the work done by the Planck Surveyor , estimating the Age of the universe to 13.8 billion years old (a 100 million years older than previously thought). Another technological advancement came in 2012 with European physicists statistically demonstrating

11692-465: The Russian Federation, the largest and most important state of the USSR; the beneficiaries of the turbulent period were often called the " Russian oligarchs ". In the beginning of the 2000s, there was a global rise in prices in commodities and housing, marking an end to the 2000s commodities boom . The US mortgage-backed securities, which had risks that were hard to assess, were marketed around

11850-484: The September 11 attacks include the 2002 Bali bombings , the 2002 Moscow theater hostage crisis , the 2003 Istanbul bombings , the 2004 Madrid train bombings , the 2004 Beslan school siege , the 2005 London bombings , the 2005 Delhi bombings , and the 2008 Mumbai attacks , generally from Islamic terrorism . The United States responded to the 11 September 2001 attacks by launching a "Global War on Terrorism", invading

12008-507: The Soviet Union, after which followed the 1948 Arab–Israeli War . Egypt's weak and ineffective king Farouk was overthrown in the 1952 Egyptian revolution , and replaced by General Nasser ; the 1953 Iran coup saw the American-friendly shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi remove the democratic constraints on his government and take power directly; and Iraq's Western-friendly monarchy was overthrown in 1958 . Nasser's Egypt would go on to face

12166-496: The Soviet defense budget to the American one strain limited resources. The Pan-European Picnic in 1989 then set in motion a peaceful chain reaction with the subsequent fall of the Berlin Wall . The Revolutions of 1989 saw many countries of Eastern Europe throw off their communist governments, and the USSR declined to invade to re-establish them. East and West Germany were reunified . Client state status for many states ended, as there

12324-515: The Soviets deteriorated in the 1960s and 70s, resulting in the Sino-Soviet split , although the two were able to cooperate on some matters. " Ping-pong diplomacy " led to a rapprochement between the US and China and American recognition of the Chinese communist government in the 1970s. China's pro-democracy movement was suppressed after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests , and China's government survived

12482-510: The U.S. and Iraqi governments approved a Status of Forces Agreement effective through to the end of 2011. The Obama administration re-focused US involvement in the conflict on the withdrawal of its troops from Iraq and a surge of troops and government support in Afghanistan. In May 2011, the bin Laden raid occurred after bin Laden was tracked to his compound in Abbottabad , Pakistan. In 2011,

12640-564: The US and USSR, but generally mismanaged the economy. The Middle East saw events that presaged later conflicts in the 70s and 80s. A few years after the end of the UAR's union between Egypt and Syria, Syria's government was overthrown in the 1966 Syrian coup d'état and replaced with the Neo-Baathist Party, eventually leading to the leadership of the Al-Assad family . Israel and its neighbors fought

12798-590: The United Nations to govern international relations and disputes. A looming question was how to handle the defeated Axis nations and the shattered nations that the Axis had conquered. Following the Yalta Conference , territory was divided into zones for which Allied country would have responsibility and manage rebuilding. While these zones were theoretically temporary (such as the eventual fate of occupied Austria , which

12956-554: The United States and the United States dollar took a pivotal role in the world economy , displacing the UK. The era is sometimes called " Pax Americana " for the relative liberal peace in the Western world, resulting from the preponderance of power enjoyed by the US, as a comparison to the Pax Romana established at the height of the Roman Empire. New York's financial sector (" Wall Street ") was

13114-505: The United States declared a formal end to the Iraq War . In February 2020, President Donald Trump agreed with the Taliban to withdraw all American troops from Afghanistan over the next year. The Biden administration delayed the withdrawal by a few months, but still largely kept to the deal; the coalition-supported Afghan government soon collapsed, and the Taliban took undisputed control of

13272-522: The United States in 2007, was sparked by the outbreak of the 2007–2008 financial crisis . The modern financial crisis was linked to earlier lending practices by financial institutions and the trend of securitization of American real estate mortgages. The Great Recession spread to much of the developed country , and has caused a pronounced deceleration of economic activity. The global recession occurred in an economic environment characterized by various imbalances. This global recession has resulted in

13430-729: The Western Bloc, Eastern Bloc, or attempting to stay neutral as a member of the Non-Aligned Movement . British India was granted independence in 1947 without an outright war of independence being required. It was partitioned into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan ( West Pakistan and East Pakistan , future Pakistan and Bangladesh ); Indo-Pakistani wars were fought in 1947, 1965, and 1971. Sukarno took control of an independent Indonesia in 1950, as attempts to reinstate Dutch rule in 1945–1949 had largely failed, and took an independent-to-Eastern leaning stance. He would later be overthrown by Suharto in 1968, who took

13588-401: The Western and Eastern spheres. France called them Les Trente Glorieuses ("The Glorious Thirty [Years]"). Despite being largely destroyed in the war, West Germany soon bounced back to being an economic powerhouse by the 1950s with the wirtschaftswunder . Surprisingly, Japan followed Germany, achieving incredible economic growth and becoming the second largest economy in the world in 1968,

13746-469: The World Wide Web, the use of search engines to index knowledge, and telecommunications were producing a "convergence" marked by the rise of " participatory culture " in the words of Henry Jenkins . One demarcation point of this era is the liberalization of China in the early 1980s and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Francis Fukuyama wrote " The End of History? " in 1989 in anticipation of

13904-485: The ability to abandon standardization of mass production, leading to a system which values a wider range of capital than previously and allows value to be stored in a greater variety of forms. Harvey argues that postmodernity is an escape from " Fordism ", a term coined by Antonio Gramsci to describe the mode of industrial regulation and accumulation which prevailed during the Keynesian era of economic policy in OECD countries from

14062-575: The assumption that culture can be positioned outside "the massive Being of capital " upon which left-wing theories of cultural politics are dependent, has become outmoded. The "prodigious new expansion of multinational capital ends up penetrating and colonizing those very pre-capitalist enclaves (Nature and the Unconscious) which offered extraterritorial and Archimedean footholds for critical effectivity". Postmodern sociology can be said to focus on conditions of life which became increasingly prevalent in

14220-409: The backlash against these movements. The postmodern political sphere is marked by multiple arenas and possibilities of citizenship and political action concerning various forms of struggle against oppression or alienation (in collectives defined by sex or ethnicity) while the modernist political arena remains restricted to class struggle. Theorists such as Michel Maffesoli believe that postmodernity

14378-487: The case of Ribeiro, he places the start of modernity at the beginning of the Bretton Woods system. Those who generally view modernity as obsolete or an outright failure, a flaw in humanity's evolution leading to disasters like Auschwitz and Hiroshima , see postmodernity as a positive development. Other philosophers, particularly those seeing themselves as within The Modern Project , see the state of postmodernity as

14536-441: The center of the financial world from 1945–1970 in a dominant way unlikely to be seen again. Unlike the aftermath of World War I, the US strongly aided in the rebuilding of Europe, including aid to the defeated Axis nations, rather than punishment. The Marshall Plan sent billions of dollars of aid to Western Europe to ensure its stability and ward off a potential economic downturn. The 1944 Bretton Woods Conference established

14694-422: The coal industry. Natural gas has grown in its proportion of the market, especially as Liquefied natural gas (LNG) has enabled it to be transported over longer distances than was previously feasible. An entirely new form of energy creation dawned in the 1950s and 1960s: nuclear power for peaceful purposes and the construction of nuclear power plants . Hopes that atomic energy would be " too cheap to meter " in

14852-558: The contemporary era has seen a rise in English as a lingua franca , where people across the world learn the English language as a second language . This has been both to facilitate international communication, especially in places tied to international trade or tourism, as well as to better consume widespread English-language media. This is tied to increased Americanization , as American culture has grown increasingly influential and widespread. To

15010-466: The contemporary era. Wind energy , while used on a small scale for centuries, has seen growth with large distributed groups of windmills used to produce energy for the grid. Solar power has also grown in prominence, with around 4% of the world's overall energy production in 2021 (compared to a much smaller slice before). While these energy sources are considered to be much less environmentally impactful than fossil fuels , concerns have been raised over

15168-655: The country in August 2021 after the successful 2021 Taliban offensive . The Arab Spring began in earnest in 2010 with anti-government protests in the Muslim world , but quickly escalated to full-scale military conflicts in countries like Syria , Libya , and Yemen and also gave the opportunity for the emergence of various militant groups including the Islamic State (IS). The IS was able to take advantage of social media platforms including Twitter to recruit foreign fighters from around

15326-759: The creation of states such as First Nigerian Republic in 1963. Portugal, on the other hand, fiercely held onto their Empire, leading to the Portuguese Colonial War from 1961–1974 in Angola, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique until the Estado Novo government fell. Meanwhile, apartheid-era South Africa remained fiercely anti-communist, but withdrew from the British Commonwealth in 1961, and supported various pro-colonial factions across Africa that had lost support from their "home" governments in Europe. Many of

15484-567: The development optimistically; it was thought the world was steadily progressing toward free, liberal democracies. South Africa, no longer able to attract Western support by claiming to be anti-communist, ended apartheid in the early 1990s, and many Eastern European countries switched to stable democracies. While some Americans had anticipated a "peace dividend" from budget cuts to the Defense Department, these cuts were not as large as some had hoped. The European Economic Community evolved into

15642-404: The developments denoted by postmodernity. The idea of the postmodern condition is sometimes characterized as a culture stripped of its capacity to function in any linear or autonomous state like regressive isolationism, as opposed to the progressive mind state of modernism . Postmodernity can mean a personal response to a postmodern society, the conditions in a society which make it postmodern or

15800-402: The early 1930s to the 1970s. Fordism for Harvey is associated with Keynesianism in that the first concerns methods of production and capital-labor relations while the latter concerns economic policy and regulation. Post-Fordism is therefore one of the basic aspects of postmodernity from Harvey's point of view. Artifacts of postmodernity include the dominance of television and popular culture,

15958-401: The early 21st century as a popular social communication, largely replacing much of the function of email, message boards and instant messaging services. Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are all major examples of social websites that gained widespread popularity. The information distribution continued into the early 21st century with mobile interaction and Internet access growing massively in

16116-462: The early 21st century. By the 2010s, a majority of people in the developed world had Internet access and a majority of people worldwide had a mobile phone. Marking the rise of mobile computing , worldwide sales of personal computers fall 14% during the first quarter of 2013. The Semantic Web (dubbed, "Web 3.0") begins the inclusion of semantic content in web pages, converting the current web dominated by unstructured and semi-structured documents into

16274-562: The ease in enabling like-minded people to collaborate at long-distance, even if the digital utopianism of the 1990s is less common. Pessimistic assessments worry about the effects on children such as enabling cyberbullying ; filter bubbles where Internet users are not challenged by outsider views; " cancel culture " where people are pilloried online but sometimes disproportionately; and slacktivism as an appealing but ineffective replacement for older forms of community work. The growing world population and rising standards of living has caused

16432-433: The emergence of pop cultural styles of music and drama, including rock music and the ubiquity of stereo, television and radio helped make these changes visible in the broader cultural context. This period is associated with the work of Marshall McLuhan , a philosopher who focused on the results of living in a media culture and argued that participation in a mass media culture both overshadows actual content disseminated and

16590-567: The end of modernity and is part of the modern period (see lumpers/splitters , periodization ) . Television became the primary news source, manufacturing decreased in importance in the economies of Western Europe and the United States but trade volumes increased within the developed core. In 1967–1969 a crucial cultural explosion took place within the developed world as the baby boom generation , which had grown up with postmodernity as its fundamental experience of society, demanded entrance into

16748-577: The entirety of the decade ( Somali Civil War , Afghan Civil War (1992–1996) , Afghan Civil War (1996–2001) ). Russia fought a brutal war in Chechnya that failed to suppress the insurgency there from 1994–1996; war would resume during the Second Chechen War in 1999–2000 that saw a resumption of Russian control after Russia successfully convinced enough rebels to join their cause with promises of autonomy. The breakup of Yugoslavia also led to

16906-610: The eventual Republic of Vietnam were created. The division of Indochina eventually led to the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 70s (as well as the Laotian Civil War and Cambodian Civil War ), which ended in communist North Vietnam took over Sai Gon in 1975. In Africa, France fought the grinding Algerian War from 1954–1962 that saw the end of French Algeria and the rise of a new independent Algeria . The British and French both slowly released their vast holdings, leading to

17064-526: The existence of the Higgs boson . Climate change and global warming reflects the notion of the modern climate . The changes of climate over the past century, have been attributed to various factors which have resulted in a global warming. This warming is the increase in the average temperature of the Earth's near-surface air and oceans since the mid-20th century and its projected continuation. Some effects on both

17222-581: The expansion of the Russo-Ukrainian War to the full-fledged Russian invasion of Ukraine where Russia declared their intent to depose the Ukrainian government and install a compliant, Russia-friendly government. The Russian government has often cited the enlargement of NATO as a major complaint . The end of World War II in 1945 saw an increase in international trade and an interconnected system of treaties and agreements to ease its flow. In particular,

17380-400: The focus is critical rethinking of many of the assumptions of modernity and modern ethical theory. The Mars Hill Audio Journal , produced regularly since 1993, is a bimonthly, 90-minute "audio magazine" available on cassette tape , CD , and MP3 and is sold by subscription. Hosted by Ken Myers (formerly with National Public Radio and a graduate of Westminster Theological Seminary ),

17538-550: The growth of a capitalist private sector in China. In Russia, President Boris Yeltsin pursued a policy of privatization, spinning off former government agencies into private corporations, attempting to handle budget problems inherited from the USSR. The end of Soviet foreign aid caused a variety of changes in countries previously part of the Eastern Bloc; many officially became democratic republics, though some were more accurately described as authoritarian or oligarchic republics and one-party states . Many Western commentators treated

17696-658: The internal politics of smaller nations in their bid for global influence and via proxy wars . The Cold War ultimately ended with the Revolutions of 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The latter stages and aftermath of the Cold War enabled the democratization of much of Europe, Africa, and Latin America. Decolonization was another important trend in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa as new states gained independence from European colonial empires during

17854-628: The late 1980s and early 1990s, and has been used up to the present with the availability of the Internet. During the late 1990s, both Internet directories and search engines were popular— Yahoo! and Altavista (both founded 1995) were the respective industry leaders. By late 2001, the directory model had begun to give way to search engines, tracking the rise of Google (founded 1998), which had developed new approaches to relevancy ranking . Directory features, while still commonly available, became after-thoughts to search engines. Database size, which had been

18012-438: The late 20th century in the most industrialized nations, including the ubiquity of mass media and mass production, the rise of a global economy and a shift from manufacturing to service economies . Jameson and Harvey described it as consumerism , where manufacturing, distribution and dissemination have become exceptionally inexpensive but social connectedness and community have become rarer. Other thinkers assert that postmodernity

18170-423: The latter. The period has had diverse political ramifications: its "anti-ideological ideas" appear to have been associated with the feminist movement , racial equality movements , LGBT movements , most forms of late 20th century anarchism and even the peace movement as well as various hybrids of these in the current anti-globalization movement . Though none of these institutions entirely embraces all aspects of

18328-434: The lucrative American market, these films spread across the globe, backed by their large budgets and the cinematic expertise gathered there. The rise of the Internet in the 1990s allowed both for an ever further spread of the most popular and dominant works, but the comparatively cheap cost of publishing there, whether as a personal website, blog, or YouTube video, also allowed specific niche subcultures to connect and thrive in

18486-449: The media environment. This has brought producers into conflict with consumers over intellectual capital and intellectual property and led to the creation of a new economy whose supporters argue that the dramatic fall in information costs will alter society fundamentally. Digitality, or what Esther Dyson referred to as "being digital", emerged as a separate condition from postmodernity. The ability to manipulate items of popular culture,

18644-478: The modern project, critics from within postmodernity who seek reform or change based on their understanding of postmodernism , and those who believe that postmodernity is a passing, and not a growing, phase in social organization. Contemporary history Contemporary history , in English-language historiography , is a subset of modern history that describes the historical period from about 1945 to

18802-402: The name of an emancipated future. The denial of normative ideals removes the possibility for utopia, central for ethical thinking and democratic action. Butler responds to Benhabib by arguing that her use of postmodernism is an expression of a wider paranoia over anti-foundationalist philosophy, in particular, post-structuralism . A number of positions are ascribed to postmodernism – Discourse

18960-451: The nature of contemporary society and (2) the nature of the critique of contemporary society. The first of these elements is concerned with the nature of changes that took place during the late 20th century. There are three principal analyses. Theorists such as Alex Callinicos and Craig Calhoun offer a conservative position on the nature of contemporary society, downplaying the significance and extent of socio-economic changes and emphasizing

19118-519: The new government, the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan , whose grasp on power outside the major cities was shaky at best. The war was also less successful in restricting al-Qaeda than anticipated. The Iraq War began in March 2003 with the invasion of Iraq by a multinational force . The invasion of Iraq led to an occupation and the eventual capture of Saddam Hussein , who was later executed by

19276-564: The newly independent African governments struggled with the balance between being too weak and overthrown by ambitious coup-plotters, and too strong and becoming dictatorships. Latin America saw gradual economic growth but also instability in many countries, as the threat of coups and military regimes ( juntas ) were a major threat. The most famous was the Cuban Revolution that overthrew Fulgencio Batista 's American-friendly government for Fidel Castro 's Soviet-aligned government. This led to

19434-569: The other side's faction occurred. An arms race to develop and build nuclear weapons happened as policymakers wanted to ensure their side had more if it came to a war. In East Asia, Chiang Kai-shek 's Republic of China was overthrown in the Chinese Communist Revolution from 1945–1949. His government retreated to Taiwan , but both the nationalist KMT government and the new communist mainland government under Mao Zedong continued to claim authority over all of China. Korea

19592-400: The past. Another social trend has been the rise of urbanization as a larger proportion of the world's population has moved to live in cities and urban areas, and fewer people live in rural areas. In the United States, as the overall population more than doubled from 1930 to 1990, around a third of its counties saw their population decline by around 27%, suggesting that as rural counties empty,

19750-403: The period from 1945–1975. The Middle East also saw a conflict involving the new state of Israel , the rise of petroleum politics , the continuing prominence but later decline of Arab nationalism , and the growth of Islamism . The first supranational organizations of government, such as the United Nations and European Union, emerged during the period after 1945. Countercultures rose and

19908-573: The political, cultural and educational power structure. A series of demonstrations and acts of rebellion – ranging from nonviolent and cultural, through violent acts of terrorism – represented the opposition of the young to the policies and perspectives of the previous age. Opposition to the Algerian War and the Vietnam War , to laws allowing or encouraging racial segregation and to laws which overtly discriminated against women and restricted access to divorce, increased use of marijuana and psychedelics ,

20066-486: The postmodern movement in its most concentrated definition they all reflect, or borrow from, some of its core ideas. Some authors, such as Lyotard and Baudrillard, believe that modernity ended in the late 20th century and thus have defined a period subsequent to modernity, namely postmodernity, while others, such as Zygmunt Bauman and Anthony Giddens , would extend modernity to cover the developments denoted by postmodernity. Others still contend that modernity ended with

20224-590: The present. In the social sciences, contemporary history is also continuous with, and related to, the rise of postmodernity . Contemporary history is politically dominated by the Cold War (1947–1991) between the Western Bloc , led by the United States, and the Eastern Bloc , led by the Soviet Union . The confrontation spurred fears of a nuclear war . An all-out "hot" war was avoided, but both sides intervened in

20382-413: The reified eye of the viewer in a way that would seem to have nothing to do with death or the death obsession or the death anxiety on the level of content" (ibid.). Graff sees the origins of this transformative mission of art in an attempted substitution of art for religion in giving meaning to the world that the rise of science and Enlightenment rationality had removed – but in the postmodern period this

20540-410: The relationship between reader and that which is read, between observer and the observed, between those who consume and those who produce. Another conception of postmodernity is as an epistemological shift . This perspective suggests that the way people communicate and justify knowledge (i.e. epistemology) changes in conjunction with other societal changes, that the cultural and technological changes of

20698-417: The restrictions of the medium limit the length of these conversations to 12 to 15 minutes on the Journal (with 6 to 8 interviews on each issue), many are available as full-length Mars Hill Audio Conversations which are sold separately. Common topics include bioethics, city planning and communities, education, natural law theory, relativism , technology , literature , film , and music . In addition to

20856-400: The result of features of late 20th century and early 21st century life, including the fragmentation of authority and the commoditization of knowledge ( see " Modernity "). The relationship between postmodernity and critical theory, sociology and philosophy is fiercely contested. The terms "postmodernity" and "postmodernism" are often hard to distinguish, the former being often the result of

21014-400: The result of which is the evolving culture of the contemporary world . Some commentators deny that modernity ended, and consider the post-WWII era to be a continuation of modernity, which they refer to as late modernity . Postmodernity is the state or condition of being postmodern – after or in reaction to that which is modern, as in postmodern art ( see postmodernism ). Modernity

21172-523: The rivalries of the Cold War, with both the United States space program ( NASA ) and the Soviet space program launching satellites , probes, and planning missions. While the Soviets put the first human into space with Yuri Gagarin , the Americans soon caught up, and the US was the first to launch a successful Moon landing mission with Apollo 11 in 1969, followed by five more landings in the next few years. In

21330-441: The same general spatial object". The postmodern era has seen a change in the social function of culture. He identifies culture in the modern age as having had a property of "semi-autonomy", with an "existence… above the practical world of the existent" but, in the postmodern age, culture has been deprived of this autonomy, the cultural has expanded to consume the entire social realm so that all becomes "cultural". "Critical distance",

21488-416: The social effects of cheap and common Internet access. As users gradually switched from personal web pages to blogs to social media, many surprising effects have resulted with both positive and negative assessments. Optimistic assessments often praise the decentralized nature that allows anyone to theoretically gain a platform without the need to convince a publisher or media company to back them, as well as

21646-510: The southern half of the country, while the northern reaches are controlled by a mixture of Arab Sunni rebels, Kurds, and Turkey. Vladimir Putin , Yeltsin's successor, was very popular in Russia after his victory in the Second Chechen War. He portrayed himself as a corruption fighter initially, checking Russian oligarchs who had acquired vast wealth during Russia's liberalization period. With

21804-413: The subject and identity, the death of history and of notions of teleology and progress, and the death of metaphysics defined as the search for objective truth. Benhabib argues forcefully against these critical positions, holding that they undermine the bases upon which feminist politics can be founded, removing the possibility of agency, the sense of self-hood and the appropriation of women's history in

21962-541: The tensions that would roil the Soviet-aligned bloc during the 1980s. South Korea (in the June Democratic Struggle ) and Taiwan (with the lifting of martial law ) would take major steps toward liberalization in 1987–1988, shifting from Western-aligned one-party states to more fully participatory democracies. The 1980s saw a general retreat for the communist bloc. The Soviet–Afghan War (1979–1989)

22120-415: The term, but he cannot be made into the example of what all the rest of the purported postmodernists are doing. Lyotard’s work is, for instance, seriously at odds with that of Derrida Butler uses the debate over the nature of the post-modernist critique to demonstrate how philosophy is implicated in power relationships and defends poststructuralist critique by arguing that the critique of the subject itself

22278-418: The urban counties are where the vast majority of inhabitants are moving to. In Eastern Africa, the urban population soared from 11 million in 1920 to 77 million in 2010. Many rural Chinese people moved to large coastal cities such as Shenzhen to work in the 1990s and 2000s, leading to a sharp increase of Urbanization in China . Rural parts of Japan have seen stark population declines, especially among

22436-556: The various rare earth metals used in the production of batteries and solar, which can require destructive mining techniques to gather. The Information Age or Information Era, also commonly known as the Age of the Computer, is an idea that the current age will be characterized by the ability of individuals to transfer information freely, and to have instant access to knowledge that would have been difficult or impossible to find previously. The idea

22594-427: The wide accessibility of information and mass telecommunications. Postmodernity also exhibits a greater resistance to making sacrifices in the name of progress discernible in environmentalism and the growing importance of the anti-war movement . Postmodernity in the industrialised core is marked by increasing focus on civil rights and equal opportunity as well as movements such as feminism and multiculturalism and

22752-423: The world and a broad based credit boom fed a global speculative bubble in real estate and equities. The financial situation was also affected by a sharp increase in oil and food prices . The collapse of the American housing bubble caused the values of securities tied to real estate pricing to plummet thereafter, damaging financial institutions. The Great Recession , a severe economic recession which began in

22910-801: The world and seized significant portions of territory in Iraq , Syria , Afghanistan , and the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt from 2013 and ongoing. On the other hand, some violent militant organizations were able to negotiate peace with governments including the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in the Philippines in 2014. The presence of IS and the stalemate in the Syrian civil war created a migration of refugees to Europe and also galvanized and encouraged high-profile terrorism attacks and armed conflicts around

23068-627: The world, such as the November 2015 Paris attacks and the Siege of Marawi in the Philippines in 2017. In 2014, the United States decided to intervene against the Islamic State in Iraq , with most IS fighters being driven out by the end of 2018. Russia and Iran also jointly launched a campaign against IS and in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad . As of 2022, Assad has largely regained authority in

23226-608: The world. Science made new advances after 1945, which included spaceflight , nuclear technology , lasers , semiconductors , molecular biology , genetics , particle physics , and the Standard Model of quantum field theory . The first commercial computers were created, followed by the Internet, beginning the Information Age . In 1945, the Allies of World War II had defeated all significant opposition to them. They established

23384-464: The world. Some Western countries began a slow process of deindustrializing in the 1970s; globalization led to the emergence of new financial and industrial centers in Asia. The Japanese economic miracle was later followed by the Four Asian Tigers of Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan . China launched major economic reforms from 1979 onward, becoming a major exporter of consumer goods around

23542-462: The young, with only the Greater Tokyo area continuing to grow. How to deal with this change is a major issue, as many cities and their transportation networks were not designed to serve the larger populations that now occupy them. A major trend in many industrialized nations was the sexual revolution , an adoption of publicly more tolerant attitudes toward sex and pre-marital sex . " The pill "

23700-444: Was a special purpose vehicle financed by members of the eurozone to combat the European sovereign debt crisis. In October 2011 eurozone leaders agreed on another package of measures designed to prevent the collapse of member economies. The three most affected countries, Greece, Ireland and Portugal, collectively account for six percent of eurozone's gross domestic product (GDP). In 2012, eurozone finance ministers reached an agreement on

23858-581: Was divided similarly to Germany, with the Soviet Union occupying the North and the United States occupying the South (future North Korea and South Korea ). Unlike Germany, the conflict there turned hot, as the Korean War erupted from 1950–1953. Korea was not reunified under either government, however, due to strong support from both the US and China for their favored side; it became a frozen conflict instead. Japan

24016-429: Was first approved for use in 1960 in the United States, and spread rapidly around the world. The pill made birth control easier and more reliable than earlier methods. This made sex for pleasure less likely to result in unintended children. It also allowed for easier family planning , where couples could choose more specifically when to have kids compared to earlier eras. Some analysts credit this as one reason behind

24174-468: Was given a new constitution foreswearing aggressive war in 1947, and the American occupation ended in 1952 , although a treaty of mutual aid with the US was soon signed. The US also granted the Philippines their independence in 1946 while keeping close relations. The Middle East became a hotbed of instability. The new Jewish state of Israel declared its independence, recognized by both the United States and

24332-530: Was no conflict left to fund. The Malta Summit on 3 December 1989, the failure of the August Coup by Soviet hardliners, and the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union on 26 December 1991 sealed the end of the Cold War. The end of the Cold War left the United States the world's sole superpower. Communism seemed discredited; while China remained an officially communist state, Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms and socialism with Chinese characteristics allowed for

24490-592: Was overthrown in the 1979 Iranian Revolution and was replaced by a new Islamic Republic headed by Ruhollah Khomeini . Iran and Baathist Iraq under Saddam Hussein then fought each other in the Iran–Iraq War from 1980–1988, which ended inconclusively. In East Asia, China underwent the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976, a major internal struggle that saw an intense program of Maoism and persecution of perceived internal enemies. China's relations with

24648-457: Was released to independence as a neutral country), growing tensions between the Western Bloc , led by the United States, with the Eastern Bloc , led by the Soviet Union , meant that many calcified into place. Countries in Soviet zones of Eastern Europe had communist regimes installed as satellite states . The Berlin Blockade of 1948 led to a Western Airlift to preserve West Berlin and signified

24806-511: Was skeptical of atomic energy and has discouraged many projects. Nuclear proponents counter that nuclear energy produces no air pollution compared to traditional fossil fuel plants, and can provide a steady supply of energy regardless of external conditions unlike solar and wind energy. With the supply of Russian natural gas disrupted in 2022 , France is looking to reactivate some of its older decommissioned nuclear plants, for example. Various forms of renewable energy have grown in prominence in

24964-676: Was the United States combat operation involving some coalition partners and operating primarily in the eastern and southern parts of the country along the Pakistan border; the ISAF established by the United Nations Security Council was in charge of securing the capital of Kabul and its surrounding areas. NATO assumed control of ISAF in 2003. Despite initial coalition successes, the Taliban were never entirely defeated, and continued to hold territory in mountainous regions as well as threaten

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