 Dear students, in this module, we are going to understand the late modern societies. Late modern societies often referred to the postmodern or liquid modern societies are marked by extreme fluidity in the social structures, cultural norms and personal identities. So, as you can see that more and more societies are departing from the fixity towards more and more fluidity and flexibility. In the traditional societies, people had been very rigid, very firm, very standing on their value system, but as you can see that in the modern societies, people are less careful about or less stringent about their value system, their personal identities and also about their whole life ideologies. So, they emerge from and extend the characteristics of modern societies, but also challenge and change the many aspects of modernity. Maaman and who is a German sociologist, his concept of liquid modernity encapsulates the uncertainty and constant change that define late modern societies, institutions, values and relationships which no longer have the permanence, they are fluid and continuously shifting. So, you can see that in the modern societies, we are having our institutional values and also the personal relationships as well as personal identities which are which cannot be seen in the fixities as we have been seeing in our traditional societies. Now, they are more fluid, they are more flexible. So, late modern societies are often characterized by the dominance of consumer culture. Individuals are encouraged to consume not only goods and services, but identities, experiences and lifestyles. So, these postmodern societies are not valuing the fixity in our values and in our morals and behaviors. So, they would like people to become more fluid and not only in their personal identities but also in their public sphere. So, Anthony Giddens theory of reflexive modernization suggests that in late modern societies, individuals continually reflect and reassess their identities and actions in response to the new information. When we talk about traditional societies, then the identities that were present in the traditional societies, the things that were disliked by them, they were relatively very fixed. For example, we used to see that the principles of their nature, the system of their self-pity or the religious beliefs were very rigid. They were very rigid and they did not have relative flexibility because they considered them to be very important. In modern societies, people are influenced by the modern lifestyles. By the way, the rigidity is converted into flexibility. The main reason for this is that modern lifestyles are guided through the economic system. And consumer culture makes them more aware that your economic life matters more. For you, materialistic things should matter more. Because in this modern world, the facilities and luxuries that you need to gain and access should be the main purpose of your life. For that, you will be able to access as much flexibility as your identities and practices. So, the proliferation of digital technology and internet has significantly transformed the social interactions and identity formation. Social media platforms, for instance, have allowed individuals worldwide to connect, communicate and share the experiences such as through Facebook, Twitter, etc. And global risks such as the climate change and pandemics are more pronounced in the late modern societies. So, these risks transcend the national borders and global responses as seen in the international cooperation to combat the COVID-19. Late modern societies are also characterized by a heightened focus on individual rights and freedom. This can be seen in the widespread legalization of same-sex marriages in many western societies, reflecting a shift in societal attitudes towards the sexuality and marriage. In the late modern societies, the nature of work is also transforming due to the automation and digital technology. The rise of gig economy with the flexible but insecure jobs as seen at the platforms like Uber, Fiverr and Upwork is reshaping the landscape of employment and labor rights. The experience of time and space changes in the late modern societies due to technology. The time and space compression term coined by David Harvey in 1990 reflects to the way fast, easy communication and travel make distances less relevant and increase the pace of life. And lastly, the rise of multiculturalism and the decline of dominance of single cultural narrative are the hallmark of the modern lifestyle. The increasing diversity in the societies like Canada with its policy of multiculturalism exemplifies this shift.