"This is the most lucid, concise, and comprehensive summary and analysis of the impact of postmodernism
on the social sciences. . . . In sum, a brilliant yet genuinely helpful, humane, and readable work."
--Choice
Submitted by the Publisher, April, 2002
Summary
Post-modernism offers a revolutionary approach to the study of society: in questioning the validity of modern
science and the notion of objective knowledge, this movement discards history, rejects humanism, and resists any
truth claims. In this comprehensive assessment of post-modernism, Pauline Rosenau traces its origins in the humanities
and describes how its key concepts are today being applied to, and are restructuring, the social sciences. Serving
as neither an opponent nor an apologist for the movement, she cuts through post-modernism's often incomprehensible
jargon in order to offer all readers a lucid exposition of its propositions. Rosenau shows how the post-modern
challenge to reason and rational organization radiates across academic fields. For example, in psychology it questions
the conscious, logical, coherent subject; in public administration it encourages a retreat from central planning
and from reliance on specialists; in political science it calls into question the authority of hierarchical, bureaucratic
decision-making structures that function in carefully defined spheres; in anthropology it inspires the protection
of local, primitive cultures from First World attempts to reorganize them. In all of the social sciences, she argues,
post-modernism repudiates representative democracy and plays havoc with the very meaning of "left-wing"
and "right-wing. " Rosenau also highlights how post-modernism has inspired a new generation of social
movements, ranging from New Age sensitivities to Third World fundamentalism. In weighing its strengths and weaknesses,
the author examines two major tendencies within post-modernism, the largely European, skeptical form and the predominantly
Anglo-North-American form, which suggests alternative political, social, and cultural projects. She draws examples
from anthropology, economics, geography, history, international relations, law, planning, political science, psychology,
sociology, urban studies, and women's studies, and provides a glossary of post-modern terms to assist the uninitiated
reader with special meanings not found in standard dictionaries.