Human Nature, Visual Culture, and the Age of Globalization: Challenges to the Life of Faith

Postmodern theology and philosophy have expanded the discussion of human nature and have challenged the concept of human nature as enduring and unchanging. Instead, postmodernism has suggested that the social arena, understood in its widest context, is the stage upon which human nature is molded and developed. Postmodern thought understands human nature in terms of subjectivity, and the development and realization of subjectivity has given rise to different schools of thought and produced a prolific literature. This literature, mainly in the areas of sociology and cultural studies, has introduced a diversity of scholarship devoted to many aspects of the everyday and the ordinary which only a generation ago would be considered to be lowbrow and unworthy of the accolade of scholarship. Postmodernism and postmodernity often get blamed for many of the shifts of contemporary society and culture, but one can say, and without attributing any blame, that the diversity of sociological and cultural analysis has given new meaning to what is considered worthy of scholarship and learning. One of the benefits of the analysis of the everyday and the ordinary is that tha