Late modernity
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Late modernity (or liquid modernity) is a term for the concept that some present highly developed societies are continuing developments of modernity.
A number of social theorists (Beck 1992, Giddens 1991, Lash 1990) critique the idea that some contemporary societies have moved into a new stage of development or postmodernity. On technological and social changes since the 1960s, the concept of "late modernity" proposes that contemporary societies are a clear continuation of modern institutional transitions and cultural developments.
Anthony Giddens doesn't dispute that important changes have occurred, but he says that we haven't really gone beyond modernity. It's just a developed, radicalized, 'late' modernity - but still modernity, not postmodernity.
Zygmunt Bauman who introduced the idea of liquid modernity wrote that its characteristics are the privatization of ambivalence and increasing feelings of uncertainty. It is a kind of chaotic continuation of modernity.
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