This document discusses key aspects of postmodern research methodology. It emphasizes that postmodern research rejects notions of objective truth and universal validity. Instead, postmodern research embraces pluralism, flexibility and reflexivity. It focuses on generating interpretive data rather than proving arguments. Postmodern researchers explore topics through diverse modes of expression and prioritize aesthetic and ethical values over traditional validity and reliability. The document also notes that postmodern research views realities as socially constructed and recognizes the intertwining of research practices and the researcher's own subjectivity.

1. POSTMODERNISMA CRISIS OF CONFIDENCE OR THE MOMENT OF TRUTH
Presented by:
Imran Khalid Khan
Madiha Shakir
Abdullah Saleem
Momina Azim

2. REMEMBER THE ‘GOOD OLD DAYS’!
Life was once predictable
Things were well structured –
mapped out for us
We knew who we were – a clear
identity
We had firm beliefs about the
nature of things

3. FROM MODERNITY TO POST-MODERNITY
MODERNISM
 production
 Community life
 Social class identity
 Family
 A belief in continuity and situation
 A role of education
 A one-way media
 Overt social control
 Nationhood
 Science aided progress and finding the truth
 consumption
 fragmentation (individualism)
 Identity from other sources
 Families (many options)
 Breakage with the past/tradition
 Education for what?
 Duality of media (choice/interchange)
 Covert control (CCTV etc.)
 Global
 Science is only one source of knowledge –
plurality of truths now
POST-MODERNISM
Structure/security/place/stability
YOU KNEW WHO YOU WERE
Confusion/lack of structure/incessant choice
YOU CREATE WHO YOU WANT TO BE

4. KEY FEATURES OF POST-MODERNISM
• Truth is relative
• Consumerism is all
• Transformation of the self (‘pick ‘n’ mix’)
• Disillusionment with the idea of progress
• Uncertainty
• Fragmentation of social life
• Incessant choice
• Globalisation
• The impact of ICT on social life

5. Postmodernism
Modern age has lost the
enlightenment
Search for
truth
People less
likely to follow
rigid ideology
Greater pluralism
is modern life
No absolutes
Culture and structures
are fragmented
Less predictable
Traditional labels
and categories
lose relevance
We recreate
the past,
blend with
the present
Globalisation
has narrowed
time and
space

6. FURTHER THOUGHTS…
Science no longer has the
answers
Progress is now a
questionable enterprise
Post modern society
feeds upon
itself..recreating the
past, entwining it with
the present, with some
self mocking humour
Cultural cohesion
comes from sharing
the same media
Accepting many realities
and that all the big
explanations are only
bigger stories
Each cultural identity can co-
exist…giving the individual
many ways of being

7. 10 POINTS OF POST-MODERNISM & STYLE
1. Emphasis on the centrality of style, at the expense of substance
2. Recycling past cultures and styles – pastiche
3. Playful use of ‘useless’ decoration
4. Celebration of complexity and contradiction. Mixture of high and low culture.
5. Sensitivity to the subtleties of image, language and signs
6. Intermixing – different styles – collaging
7. Accepting the collapse of distinction and difference
8. Rejection of monolithic definitions of culture – celebrate pluralism and diversity
9. Scepticism towards metanarratives and ‘absolutism’
10. Decline of the idea of only one source of meaning –truth.

8. FAITH COULD RE-EMERGE AS SCIENTIFIC
THINKING LOSES SIGNIFICANCE
• Science and progress always undermined faith (see Comte and
the demise of the theological stage)
• As technical and bureaucratic (Weber) thinking/living lose favour
• Think about the acceptance of the alternative ‘spiritual’

9. JACQUES DERRIDA
• Modernism = logocentrism
• Post-modernists rejected this and argue
that trying to tell the ‘big story’ now is
impossible
• Social structure is in a state of flux
• All meaning is now relative and socially
constructed
• Reality is fragile and confusing

10. JEAN FRANCOIS LYOTARD (1984)
• Science has helped destroy the metanarratives
• All metanarratives are simplistic and
reductionst
• We should focus on playing language games
to explore the many narratives that exist
• Knowledge is no longer a tool of the
authorities – we have choice/freedom
• Actions/ideas are now judged on how useful
they are…rather than how true they are.

11. JEAN BAUDRILLARD
‘we are constantly surrounded by an ecstasy of communication and
that communication is sickening’
We are now just customers whose desires are created by the media.
We pursue the images attached to the products
'simulacra’- make believe goods which bear no relationship to the
real world
We live in hyper-realities in which appearances are everything.
IMAGE IS EVERYTHING !

12. POST-MODERNISM ILLUSTRATED – ‘REALITY TV’
• Reality TV illustrates the interchange between the consumer
and the media
• They are ‘real people’ who people can be observed and
scrutinised.
• They do not entertain – rather than exist…they are a mish-
mash of cctv surveillance and gameshow
• In the real world they are talentless nobodys who are treated as
stars

13. POST-MODERNISM ILLUSTRATED –’DISNEYLAND’
• Disneyland is a simulacra. It is a simulated reality.
• It is artificial – yet ‘real’.
• It is a place that exists and is accepted because our
imagination makes it so.
• The fine line between reality and fantasy is ‘greyer’.
• The power of the symbol over substance.

14. POST-MODERNISM ILLUSTRATED - DIET
• The high street is global. Look at the choices and
combination that we now have.
• What is the impact on traditional culture? Identity?
• People are also driven by to change their body shape
through diet…a control…choice.
• People are constructing themselves and designing their
individual identities

15. RELIGION IN A POST-MODERN AGE
• Faith could re-emerge as scientific thinking loses significance
• Religious symbols have new life in new contexts
• Faith is now ‘up for grabs’ in the absence of absolute truth
• People can blend elements of various faiths to suit their lifestyle
• Globalisation has divorced faiths from locations and cultures
• fundamentalism is a response to a moral vacuum
• People can make choices which are more personal and meaningful
• Collective worship no longer needs to be based on ‘face to face’ interaction

16. RELIGIOUS SYMBOLS HAVE NEW LIFE IN NEW CONTEXTS
•How have traditional religious symbols been
recycled.
•Where can we find crucifixes, pentangles,
kaballah bracelets, buddhas, etc.

17. FAITH IS NOW ‘UP FOR GRABS’ IN THE ABSENCE OF ABSOLUTE
TRUTH
We can now make spiritual choices
that fit in with our identity and our
own version of ultimate truth and
meaning.

18. PEOPLE CAN BLEND ELEMENTS OF VARIOUS
FAITHS TO SUIT THEIR LIFESTYLE
Many people are finding greater freedom to
‘pick ‘n’ mix’ faiths to suit their
lifestyles.
This is about individual interpretation and
incorporating elements, ie, buddhist
philosophy with Christian morality
(Yuppie Buddhist experience in early 1990s)

19. GLOBALISATION HAS DIVORCED FAITHS FROM
LOCATIONS AND CULTURES
Religion is now more universal and there
are less barriers to hold people back from
joining faiths that differ to tradition

20. FUNDAMENTALISM IS A RESPONSE TO A MORAL VACUUM
There has been a revival of ultra traditional
ideas and ‘strict morality’ with some
religions which many have found inviting
and a source of ‘security’

21. PEOPLE CAN MAKE CHOICES WHICH ARE MORE
PERSONAL AND MEANINGFUL
Almost an extension of individuation and
the search for individual meaning.
the control and oppressive elements of
religion can be edited (see Rastafari)

22. COLLECTIVE WORSHIP NO LONGER NEEDS TO BE BASED ON ‘FACE
TO FACE’ INTERACTION
Organised religion may be suffering – but
faith is still alive.
Structures/institutions are melting away as
they now existing within individual minds
and action.

23. Modernism
Description and
uncovering of the object of
inquiry through ‘objective’
technique
Even ‘human
subjectivity’
through
linguistic
description
Language is a
neutral medium Post-Modernism
Description and
uncovering of the object of
inquiry through ‘objective’
technique
Language is a
neutral medium
POST-MODERN RESEARCH
through
linguistic
description

24. PRAGMATIC POSTMODERN METHODOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES
4 Central Elements single participants
may convey multiple
representations
research work and texts capture a plurality
‘of different identities or voices associated
with different groups, individuals, positions
or special interests’
‘Command of different theoretical perspectives’ and
‘strong familiarity with the critique of … these’ on the
part of researchers (reflexivity). This leads to the
possibility of ‘openness and different sorts of readings to
surface in the research’ (flexibility)
phenomena can be
presented using a
variety of modes and
media, including ‘the
use of different sorts of
descriptive languages’

25. POST-MODERN RESEARCH
Daredevil Research1
• break the mould of traditional research patterns through
• subversion,
• inversion,
• irony,
• pastiche,
• innovative forms,
• humour,
• slyness,
• paradox, and so forth
to make the strange, familiar – and the familiar,
strange
1- Janice Jipson and Nicholas Paley (1997, p.11)

26. CONTINUED…
 Post-Modern Researchers:
 fret less about ‘proving’ a point, or providing evidence to ‘support’ an argument, and concentrate
more upon generating a ‘polyvalent data base that is used to vivify interpretation’.
 call for ‘alternative forms of research presentation … such as fiction, art installations, dance, and
readers theater (sic)’
 Postmodern curriculum research lends itself particularly to exploration through ‘arts-based inquiry’.
 The ground for research rigour is thus shifted from traditions of validity and reliability to aesthetic and
ethical interests.

27. CONTINUED…
 Asks: what counts as valid research evidence?
 ‘Inquiry’ is often used as a substitute for ‘research’, to undo expectations set up by normative, positivistic models for
controlled experimentation, or by inductive mechanisms for ‘rigour’ through coding, classifying and deriving
schemata from data.
 Reflexivity and flexibility are preferred to such classifications.
 does not start from a naïve ‘realist’ position. James Scheurich (1997) explicitly challenges the assumptions of the
realist position of modernist research on three counts:
1. that there is a transparent, autonomous subject (agency) who authentically ‘speaks’ the research (this is termed
the crisis of identity of both researchers and subjects of research)
2. that there is a reasoning mind executing practices of reason, to which methodologies conform (the crisis of
methodological certainty)
3. that the narratives or accounts of the autonomous, reasoning and authentic-speaking agency can be taken as
direct representations of reality (the dual crisis of representation and validity)

28. CONTINUED…
 does not seek essences or truths
 data are not taken as ‘facts’, but as descriptive terms, both contextualised and relativised (placed in a
historical and cultural setting). Scheurich (1997) offers three informing guidelines for research in the
postmodern. It must be stressed that turning such guidelines into principles, a prescriptive manifesto,
or fundamental truths, is resisted by the postmodern sensibility. The guidelines are:
1. Research in the postmodern attempts to erase the distinction between research practices and
the subjectivity of the researcher. It is recognised that the two are intertwined. Research
practices, like all social practices, come to construct identities, of which ‘researcher’ is one.
Moulding this identity, as an aesthetic and ethical project, is what Foucault (see Bernauer and
Rasmussen, 1994) refers to as a ‘practice of the self’. Thus, what happens to the researcher in
the social practices of research is considered to be as important as what happens to the
subjects or objects (usually ‘texts’) of the research.

29. CONCLUSION
Research in the postmodern demands practices of ‘reflexivity’ and understanding of
the possibility that ‘reality’ is socially constructed. Again, where modernist research
assumes that there is a reality ‘out there’ waiting to be investigated, described, and
catalogued, social constructionism does not abandon the notion of an external world
to be investigated. Rather, it focuses upon how meanings are ascribed to a ‘reality’,
thus constituting (constructing or producing) that reality through social conventions,
discourse, conversations and negotiations within communities of practice.