Postmodernization

In modern societies, culture is differentiated from other areas of social life and high culture is differentiated from popular culture. However, postmodernization reverses these trends. According to Crook et al., an intensification of some of the processes at work in modernity leads to postmodernization. Differentiation, rationalization and commodification are superseded by hyperdifferentiation, hypercommodification and hyper-rationalization...This leads to a new type of culture: Crook et al. call this new culture postculture.

Hypercommodification: Hypercommodification involves all areas of social life becoming commodified... Consumption increasingly takes place within the home, and members of the same family become inclined to consume different things... Instead of a uniform family culture, each family member chooses their own lifestyle.

Hyper-rationalization: Hyper-rationalization involves the use of rationalized technology to spread cultural consumption more widely and to privatize it. Technology such as the satellite TV allows greater individuals choice about what do watch... Again, this allows individuals to choose their own lifestyle... Media images come to dominate society. Media copies and reproductions begin to replace the authentic, real thing they present. Eventually, images and signs lose their connections with reality and become what Baudrillard calls simulacra.

Hyperdifferentiation: Crook et al., argue: ‘In postmodernization a thousand flowers bloom.’ A fantastic variety of cultural forms develop with no particular type being dominant... The increased fragmentation of culture -hyperdifferentation- leads ultimately to dedifferentiation, in which distinction between different types of culture break down. In particular, the distinction between high culture and popular culture is undermined in postmodernizing societies.