199words and definitions: these terms are by their na-
ture contentious and student should be encouraged to
debate and question the definitions provided.
Modernism This term is linked to many political, cultural and artistic movements rooted in the changes in western society
that took place at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. It is a loose collection of ideas that
largely rejected history and applied ornament, and which embraced abstraction. People defined by this term
had a utopian desire to create a better world. They believed in technology as the key means to achieve social
improvement. All these principles were frequently combined with social and political beliefs (largely left-
leaning), which held that design and art could, and should, transform society (Victoria and Albert Museum).
Postmodernism The term can be applied to a wide-ranging set of developments that took place in different disciplines from
around the 1960s as a reaction to an earlier set of developments. This term tends to refer to a cultural,
intellectual or artistic state lacking a clear central hierarchy or organizing principle and embodying extreme
complexity, contradiction, ambiguity, diversity and interconnectedness. Jameson describes this term as ’a
movement in arts and culture corresponding to a new configuration of politics and economics, "late capitalism”.
transnational consumer economies based on global scope of capitalism’ (Jameson, 1991).
Capitalism A political-economic system where the means of production are privately owned and operated for profit.
Investments, income, production, pricing and services are determined through the operation of a free market
economy (Meiksins Wood, 2002).
Communism An economic system and ideology that is based on the common ownership of the means of production.
Karl Marx believed that this system would replace capitalism when the working class rose up and created a
classless society (Marx and Engels, 1848).
Discourse One of the definitions of this word in the Merriam and Webber dictionary defines it as a mode of organising
knowledge, ideas or experience that is rooted in language and its concrete contexts such as history or
institutions (Merriam and Webster Dictionary).
Globalisation A contentious term increasingly used in the last ten years. Ambassador Eizenstat, member of the Overseas
Development Council Board, refers to it as ‘the unprecedented rapid flow of private capital, ideas, technology,
goods and services across the world’.
Consumerism To some people this ‘is the essence of the good life...a vehicle for freedom, power and happiness. All of these
things lie in an individual’s ability to choose, acquire, use and enjoy material objects and experiences’ (Gabriel and
Lang, 2006).
Sustainable
developmentThe most famous definition comes from the Bruntland report in 1987 and refers to progress that meets
‘the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ (United
Nations, 1987).rEFErEncEs
Eizenstat, S., http://www.treasury.gov/press/releases/ls182.
htm, accessed 2 January 2009
Gabriel, Y. and Lang, T. (2006) The unmanageable consumer,
London Sage Publications
Jameson, F. (1991) Postmodernism, or the cultural logic of late
capitalism, Duke University Press
Marx, K. and Engels, F. (1848) The communist manifesto
Meiksins Wood, E. (2002) The origins of capitalism: A longer
view, London: Verso
Merriam and Webster Dictionary
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/discourse,
accessed 2nd January 2009
United Nations (1987) Report of the World Commission on
Environment and Development, General Assembly Resolution
42/187
Victoria and Albert Museum
http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/1331_modernism/
the_exhibition.html, accessed 2nd January 2009IntEractIVE actIVItIEswords and definitions: these terms are by their nature contentious and student should
be encouraged to debate and question the definitions provided.