Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: Post-Modernism and the Social Sciences by Pauline Rosenau ISBN: 0-691-02347-6 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 05 November, 1991 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (4 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Excellent, clear, concise, engaging summary of the issues
Comment: Outstanding book! One of the best overviews of the often confusing post-modern literature I have ever encountered. Highly recommended!!!
Rating: 5
Summary: Timely and well done
Comment: It's really hard to know how a nihilistic movement such as post-modernism can have anything other than a renunciatory effect upon science of any kind. That notwithstanding, Rosenau distinguishes two main strands within PoMo, which may otherwise cause confusion. The skeptical strand comprises the purists who brook no compromise with their anti-foundational findings. On the other hand, are what Rosenau calls the"affirmatives". They comprise the compromisers within the broader PoMo camp, and are prepared to somehow accomodate modernist precepts within a broader PoMo framework. Whether these affirmatives compose anything more than an unworkable eclecticism, is left wisely unresolved. Even so, Rosenau believes their sensitivity to openess has the capacity to force modernism into major revisions. In any event, it is the purists, the other major strand, who define the movement itself.
If the affirmative's problem is trying to eclectically blend unblendables, the skeptics tend to refute themselves, the usual outcome of extreme abeyance. In an excellent concluding section, the author summarizes the endemic paradoxes of this position. For example, PoMo's use of theory to disavow theory; deconstruction's use of the very tools it deconstructs, viz. reason and logic; moreover, in raising the marginal at the expense of the center, a value judgement takes place even when such judgements are programmatically condemned.
Boiled down to basics, purist PoMo ends in its own version of solipsism: millions of unsynthesizable personal narratives. Small wonder that only the narrowest, most localized results are sanctioned in a prospective post-modern social science. In Rosenau's account, the possibility that such a science can emerge focuses on individuals instead of subjects or personalities. Since reason, structure, and other modes of synthesis are impossible, how such idiosyncratic accounts can even approach a threshold of science seems inexplicable to me even after reading the book.
But since PoMo is the fashion of the day, it's to the author's credit to have crystallized these topical questions in clearly understood terms.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Modern Classic in the Social Sciences
Comment: As a graduate student I encountered this book on several levels over the years. I first bought it in India while doing anthropological fieldwork to catch up on theory. The applications on social inquiry to the "Third world" were very helpful, especially the section on views of the west in the post-Marxist era. More recenty I have read it with an interest in public policy, and found relevant insights on the nature of the public sphere. The glossary is unique in its throroughness. This book serves as a classic--elegantly written, comprehensively researched- and more importantly a useful guide to postmodern ideas for the working academic and student alike.
 |
Title: Anthropological Theory Today by Henrietta L. Moore ISBN: 074562023X Publisher: Blackwell Publishers Pub. Date: March, 2000 List Price(USD): $32.95 |
 |
Title: Theories of Culture in Postmodern Times by Marvin Harris ISBN: 0761990216 Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield (non NBN) Pub. Date: 16 October, 1998 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
 |
Title: The Origin of Minds : Evolution, Uniqueness, and the New Science of the Self by Peggy La Cerra, Peggy Lacerra, Roger Bingham ISBN: 0609605585 Publisher: Harmony Books Pub. Date: 26 November, 2002 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
 |
Title: Archaeological Theory Today by Ian Hodder ISBN: 0745622690 Publisher: Polity Pr Pub. Date: May, 2001 List Price(USD): $31.95 |
 |
Title: Postmodern Theory by Steven Best, Douglas Kellner ISBN: 0898624185 Publisher: Guilford Press Pub. Date: 15 November, 1991 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
