| The 'Postmodern Turn' in the Social Sciences | By Simon Susen | | "Simon Susen has done a first-class job in bringing some order into postmodern thought, which is notorious for its programmatic disorderliness. He has succeeded in doing so on the basis of research that is of unprecedented width and depth. The resulting compendium of thoughts and thinkers may well serve as a crucial point of reference for people contributing to or affected by the 'postmodern turn' - that is, the rest of us." | - Zygmunt Bauman, University of Leeds, UK | | "More commonly associated with the humanities, postmodernism has also had major impacts in the social sciences. Rather than choosing one narrow interpretation, Simon Susen takes a broad and inclusive look at a whole series of important debates and shifts of direction. The result is a timely account not just of past controversies but also of changing presuppositions shaping future scholarship." | - Craig Calhoun, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK | | "Simon Susen's detailed, systematic, and precise description of the 'postmodern turn' in all its dimensions - from identity politics to cultural studies - provides a diagnosis of where we stand today in the social sciences. We all need this book in order to engage in a serious assessment of our theoretical (and practical) predicament. There is no excuse - everyone has to read it!" | - Slavoj Žižek, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia; The Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, UK; New York University, USA | | The main purpose of this book is to examine the impact of the 'postmodern turn' on the contemporary social sciences. Here, the 'postmodern turn' is conceived of as a paradigmatic shift from the Enlightenment belief in the relative determinacy of both the natural world and the social world to the - increasingly widespread - post-Enlightenment belief in the radical indeterminacy of all material and symbolic forms of existence. As illustrated in this enquiry, the far-reaching importance of this paradigmatic transformation is reflected in five influential presuppositional 'turns', which have arguably been taking place in the social sciences over the past few decades and which are inextricably linked to the rise of postmodern thought: (I) the 'relativist turn' in epistemology; (II) the 'interpretive turn' in social research methodology; (III) the 'cultural turn' in sociology; (IV) the 'contingent turn' in historiography; and (V) the 'autonomous turn' in politics. On the basis of this five-dimensional approach, the study provides a systematic, comprehensive, and critical account of the legacy of the 'postmodern turn', notably in terms of its continuing relevance in the twenty-first century. |
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