Prelude: Postmodern social theory

Abstract

Of all the topics in this collection, it is likely that ‘postmodern social theory’ in the Western world is currently the least well-regarded – if not also the least wellunderstood – area of study. In fact, as some social thinkers have noted, the word, ‘postmodern’, has even in the twenty-fi rst century become a derogatory term – applied to those persons and concepts that lack either coherence or seriousness (e.g., Han 2010 ). It is also alleged that postmodern social theory has since the mid1990s lost much of its intellectual zeal within and beyond the Western academy – to the extent that the fi eld in the early twenty-fi rst century is now considered to be well and truly ‘dead’ (Ryan 2007 : 3571) or at the very least ‘out of fashion’ (Potter and Lopez 2005 : 4). What in part explains why postmodern social theory has come to be regarded as a relic of the past has to do with the perceived incapacity of some of its proponents to advance a constructive, rather than just a destructive, mode of analysis (Cockerham 2007 ). At its worst, critics allege that the fi eld has next to nothing to say about what social life is actually like, despite having a fair bit to say about the conceptual shortcomings of other social theoretical approaches that do so. This relates to the criticism that postmodern social theory has been overly fi xated on the issue of epistemology. While to some degree it is fruitful to question if our knowledge of the social world is indeed not more elusive or contextual than as previously thought, a research programme wholly based on such a concern, however, is said to offer no clear direction of where next to go. This in turn is commonly held to explain why ‘circular’ arguments are so common in the postmodern discourse (Rojek and Turner 2000 : 636-7).