ABSTRACT
The “Western” world currently exists in a condition of postmodernity (Harvey, 1990), which, literally speaking, means after the “modern” era. The late 1960s is associated with the beginning of the postmodern era and the condition of postmodernity exemplifies the changes that have occurred in contemporary society since that time. These changes include a multitude of transformations such as global economic processes in which trade and capital now flow freely around the world (Burbules & Torres, 2000); a move from organized to “disorganized capitalism” (Lash & Urry, 1987); new global forms of media and communications technologies that result in changes to identity and interaction in both local and global contexts (Burbules & Torres, 2000); a new capitalist work order where importance is placed on “knowledge and flexible learning needed to design, market, perfect and vary goods and services as symbols of identity, not the actual product itself as a material good” (Gee, Hull, & Lankshear, 1996, p. 26); and the corporatization of schooling and childhood through consumer culture (Kenway & Bullen, 2001). There also have been significant alterations in architecture, cultural activities such as the arts and music, and ways in which time and space are conceptualized and subsequently used (Harvey, 1990). In sum, Best and Kellner (1991) distinguish
postmodernity in terms of time, as “a sociohistorical epoch” (p. 164); in regard to art and modernism, as a “configuration of art after/against modernism” (p. 164), and postmodern knowledge as a “critique of modern epistemology” (p. 164).
