Global Journal of Human Social Science, C: Sociology and Culture, Volume 23 Issue 2

The proponents of postmodernity explained the immediacy and speed of second modernity as the cultural logic of changes in its economic system and modes of control (Jameson, 1991). New forms of coordination were set up, using a variety of subcontracting arrangements to integrate multinational operations of many small businesses under powerful transnational firms. This constitutes a new means of profitability through dispersal, mobility and innovation, which serves to accelerate production processes and shorten the lifespans of products. Competitive edge is achieved by swift data analysis and instant response to changes in fashions, tastes and financial markets. This is made possible by the financial deregulation and fast and easy communication and transport (Harvey, 1989). Furthermore, the swift flow of information from one commercial arena to the others is the basis of a global financial market that functions without a break, and largely determines the fate of economic players (Tomlinson, 2007). These financial players, like the major banks and institutional investors, tend to focus on short term gains, rely on immediate responses to global changes and encourage the invention of new financial instruments. Such accelerated rates of production, delivery and change of commodities require a corresponding acceleration of the rate of consumption. This is achieved to a large extent by the aesthetisation of everyday life, and the formation of a ‘casino economy’ in which cultural items such as art, fashion, media and entertainment are the main products: ‘The relatively stable aesthetic of Fordist modernism has given way to all the ferment, instability, and fleeting qualities of a postmodernist aesthetic that celebrates difference, ephemerality, spectacle, fashion, and the commodification of cultural forms’ (Harvey, 1989, p. 156). Postmodernity is therefore frequently described in terms of the fragmentation of time into a series of eternal presents (Vattimo, 1988), in which it is impossible to integrate signs and images into a meaningful narrative. Such an evanescent stream of signs and images gives rise to isolated, powerful and highly affective experiences that cancel the distinction between real and imaginary (Baudrillard, 1994). This postmodern culture is embedded in the context of leisure consumption. It is evident mostly in theme parks, tourist attractions, shopping centres and nightlife hubs (Featherstone, 1995). Postmodern culture is therefore perceived as a carnivalesque consumer culture of quickly changing, custom made, semiotically laden products supporting an equallydiverse range of lifestyles. Culture has been disembedded from real conditions and needs and became its own ‘hyperreality’. The need for speed and its social ramifications are equally prominent in discussions of second modernity which do not interpret it as postmodern. The reflexivity attributed to second modernity is also deemed responsible for the highly ephemeral and continuously changing nature of its systems and institutions. Disequilibrium and change are endemic to these reflexive systems, by means of internal feedback mechanisms (Lash, 2003). First modernity was rooted in a non modern foundation that damped the dynamics of modernisation. The nuclear family, traditional gender roles, clear class structures and the nation state all performed social integration functions in first modern society. All were eventually called into question by the growing uncertainty engendered by reflexive modernisation. They have become experienced as variable, plastic, and as the product of free choice (Beck, Bonss & Lau, 2003). This brought them under constant pressure to justify their current form, and to change continually as a result of redefinition by individuals. Progress, which in first modernity was a calling justifying effort, has become in second modernity an unstoppable process demanding effort in order to stay in the game. Not only the individual’s place in society but the places themselves melt too quickly to serve as life projects. People are relentlessly driven and uprooted without the satisfaction of ever reaching a destination in which they can stop worrying (Bauman, 2001). The modernist voluntarism of the brilliant future is thus replaced by the adoration of change, reform and adaptability without a secure horizon and a major historical vision. The emphasis is upon motion without a utopian destination, dictated by the demands of efficiency and performativity as a survival nevessity and dominated by the comprehensive rule of urgency (Lipovetsky & Charles, 2005). Stress for time becomes a significant factor in pushing levels of activity to the maximum in all ages and all fields of life, and: actors operate under conditions of permanent multidimensional change that make standing still by not acting or not deciding impossible. Whoever does not continually readapt to the steadily shifting conditions of action…loses the connections that enable future options. The circumstances of action and choice themselves alter continuously and along multiple dimensions such that there is no longer a resting place from which one might “calmly” explore options and connections (Rosa, 2013, p. 117). The constitutive instability of choices and actions due to accelerated social change forces individuals and organisations to repeatedly revise their conduct and redefine what counts as relevant. The only aspiration left is for immediate satisfaction through rapid consumption and disposal. This becomes the definitive promise of a market designed increasingly along the logic of fashions, fads and © 2023 Global Journals Volume XXIII Issue II Version I 77 ( ) Global Journal of Human Social Science - Year 2023 C Epochal Change and Second Modernity as a Sociocultural Manifestation of Managerialism