Abstract
Simon Susen’s book, The ‘Postmodern Turn’ in the Social Sciences, comes heralded by leading British and American academics as an antidote to declining interest in postmodern thinking. What follows is an inclusive and encyclopaedic account of transformations in critical thinking about modern societies under the rubric of postmodernism. In a paradox, the book offers an excellent introduction to the concepts of modernity, modernism and modernization, and the theories surrounding them across the social sciences. Susen employs the concept of modernity to refer to the epochal era that followed the dawn of Enlightenment thinking in Europe from the late 17th century. Modernism is the concept employed to refer to theoretical perspectives that influence modernization as a set of dynamic societal and organizational processes within the ongoing historical epoch of modernity. On the other hand, Susen employs the concept of postmodernity to refer to the emergence of a global society that represents a break from modernity and as a new epochal era in its own right. The concept of postmodernism is employed to refer to social science perspectives that influence concepts of postmodernization as a set of ongoing social and discursive processes within this new epochal era called postmodernity.
Susen may raise a few eyebrows by tracing the historiography of influences on postmodern scholarship back to Nietzsche in the 19th century and Heidegger and Wittgenstein in the 1920s. These earlier thinkers are acknowledged to have been conscripted by postmodernism either unwittingly or posthumously. However, although a plethora of scholars in the postmodern era proper from 1970 are classified as moderate sympathizers with postmodernism, it is only a handful of more contemporary scholars (including Featherstone, Hassan, Jenkins, Lyotard, Nicholson, Seidman, Silverman, Soja and Susen himself) who are ascribed by Susen to be enthusiastic card-carrying and self-proclaimed proselytizers of the ‘postmodern turn’ in the social sciences. All the same, Susen goes on to suggest that postmodernism has had a global reach with French-speaking scholars being the most prominently assimilated (or conscripted) into the postmodern turn (Baudrillard, Deleuze, Derrida, Foucault, Guattari, Irigaray, Latour, Lyotard, Maffesoli and Mouffe). These are followed numerically by US-American scholars (Best, Butler, Fukuyama, Haraway, Hartsock, Hassan, Jameson, Kellner, Lash, Nicholson, Rorty, Seidman, Silverman, Soja, Ventura and Young) then by British scholars (Andersen, Featherstone, Harvey, Jenkins, Lyon, Massey, Tester and Urry) and German-speaking scholars (Heidegger, Nietzsche, Welsch and Wittgenstein) also featuring strongly. Other notable influences on postmodern thinkers are said to include Bauman (Poland), Heller (Hungary), plus Vattimo (Italy).
The postmodern turn in the social sciences is theorized to be inextricably linked to five presuppositional and influential turns in the social sciences. The first is the ‘relativist turn’ in sociological epistemology, which is exemplified by a shift away from the quest to discover explanatory truths and certainties based on the empirically grounded and grand social theories of Marxism or Durkheimian structural functionalism. Instead, the ‘relativist turn’ involves a shift towards diverging perspectives and uncertainties based on multiple and particularized experiences rather than grand narratives and universal experiences. The new postmodernist epistemology, or theories of knowledge, involves complete opposition to empirical positivism and grand theories. In essence, it is postpositivism. The second is the ‘interpretive turn’ in social science methodologies away from a search for relative determinacy and explanations of the social world towards an increasing focus on discourse analysis and understandings of the social world. In essence, the book shows that the relativist and interpretative turns in the social sciences served to delegitimize grand narratives such as Marxism and big-picture ideological frameworks, which privileged the sociohistorical roles of the working classes and the role of state institutions in driving social progress based on political economies, ideologies and concepts of social choice. It also explains that postmodernism involved a rejection of social science approaches that sought to produce descriptive, explanatory, cumulative and predictive knowledge based on methodologies that sought to reveal empirical realities and truths. The mission of positivism and modernism to reveal empirically based truths and evidence-based knowledge is dismissed as a quixotic, and always subjective, quest. Instead, Susen shows that postmodernism embraces and promotes poststructuralism, discourse analysis and theories emphasizing the significance of social processes over social structures as routes to progressing individual and societal empowerment. But, modernist conceptualizations of the roles of society and politics are replaced in postmodernism by an epistemic emphasis on locating individual and particularized perspectives in a globalized world, because the era of postmodernity is seen to be characterized by globalization and the curtailment of social choice within nation-states. Postmodernist concepts of glocalization are understood to lessen individual autonomy whereas thinking globally and acting locally are seen to serve the (re)constitution of human autonomy. Put simply, Susen explains that postmodernism fervently opposes orthodox Marxism and is extremely suspicious of Enlightenment- and modernity-driven explanations or understandings of progress towards a better social world.
The third presupposition is the ‘cultural turn’ in sociology away from orthodox Marxist political economy towards cultural reference points for social enquiry that privilege anthropology, pluralism and conceptualizations of popular culture over high art. The fourth presumption is the ‘contingent turn’ in history spurred by the collapse of communism and theories about an end of history reinforcing disbelief in metanarratives and ideological grand narratives leading to the posthistorical moment where we are understood to be left with no universal understandings or consensus about the historical development of human society. The fifth presupposition is the ‘autonomous turn’ in politics towards the politics of identity or politics of difference encompassing three dichotomies of equality versus difference, society as a project versus projects-in-society, and clarity versus ambiguity. In addition, the autonomous turn in politics is linked favourably with the growth of literature on cosmopolitanism as a classical reflexive, rights-based, empowering and transformative project that predates the Enlightenment and the growth of nationalism.
The book is thematically organized around these five presuppositions with lengthy descriptions and discussion dedicated to each one. However, on the one hand, although Susen is heralded as the saviour of postmodernism, on the other hand, and perhaps this is not a surprise, the book does not hold back from reflexive criticism. For many perhaps, the most damning criticism reiterates Delanty’s argument in Modernity and Postmodernity (2000) that by delegitimizing any grand narratives beyond cosmopolitanism, postmodernism runs parallel to the rise of post-Fordism and neoliberal perspectives and serves to legitimize the deregulation and ruthlessness of casino capitalism. By failing to reveal and criticize new global powers of social domination and social citizenship disentitlements, it appears postmodernism contributes to an acceptance of homelessness, poverty and social division in ghettoes or hyper-ghettoes. This is because, as a set of discourses and perspectives across the arts and social sciences, postmodernism is understood to be ‘devoid of politics in the purposive, coordinated, and projective sense’ (p. 257, emphasis in original). It is worth remarking at this point, that although there are several index references to gender and feminisms including postfeminism, there is no reference to patriarchy. All this leaves postmodernism open or weak to what Susen identifies as normative limitations (p. 279), especially when contrasted with modernism as an unfinished and self-critical project with emancipatory potential at the individual and societal levels. Indeed, on the one hand, modernism involves critical thinking about the empowering and disempowering aspects of modernity, whereas according to Susen, postmodernism needs to recognize the emancipatory aspect of the modernist project in order to fully help the social sciences to fulfil their remit to advance the study of humanity. Susen, as a prominent advocate of postmodernism, suggests a way forward beyond sceptical irony or agnosticism about the emancipatory potential of modernity towards a new emancipatory project of postmodernism. In the absence of such a shift, postmodernism struggles to challenge the normative and ubiquitous emancipatory narratives of the free market.
This book is researched well, and fulfils its postmodern function as a product by being a pleasure to hold, look at and read. Palgrave Macmillan has produced a stylish grey/black cover with a contrasting pink spine. The book is useful for PhD students because it gives an overarching introduction to contemporary debates and critical thinking on epistemology and methodology in sociology, politics and history. For some, the book may symbolize an epitaph for postmodernism whereas for others it may signal a rallying cry, but for many the book will serve as a useful reference source about contemporary critical thinking in the social sciences.