Postmodernism

The term postmodernism appeared in academic geography in the late 1980s, although it had been circulating earlier in several disciplines and professions. The term is often used in two different ways. First, it designates an object of study whereby researchers examine some feature that is seen to be postmodern in style, character, or design. Commonly identified postmodern objects include buildings, cities, cultures, societies, and economies, although this last object is often described using the related term post-Fordist. The clustering of such postmodern objects together may be seen to imply that people are, in at least some places in the world, living in a distinctive epoch or condition of postmodernity. The other way that the term postmodernism is often used is to imply an approach (or ...