Postmodernism and Social Theory

This chapter addresses postmodernism&s;s influence on theory. As the "cultural dominant" of consumer capitalism, postmodernism is not exclusively, or even primarily, an intellectual movement. It has nonetheless significantly affected academic practice, particularly in the United States. The chapter describes how "modernity" has been conceptualized by sociologists and examines how classical sociology responded to the complexities of modernity by trying to turn it into a reflexive project that promised to make people masters of people social environment. It looks at how the failure of Durkheimian sociology helped give birth to postmodernism via poststructuralists such as Georges Bataille, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. The chapter then returns to Jurgen Habermas theory of communicative rationality and attempt to show how it is implicated in the discussion about postmodernity. It then examines what was perhaps the most ambitious sociological effort to make a reflexive project out of modernity: Durkheimian structuralism.