Postponing the Postmodern: Sociological Practices, Selves, and Theories

by Ben Agger

We are not yet at a moment that could be called postmodernity, and may never be, says leading sociologist Ben Agger in his newest book. Modernity is still our history, our framework. Nevertheless, Agger shows how postmodern theory can enhance understanding of the self, everyday life, and culture in the early 21st century. Changes in culture, commerce, and communications, such as the internet, require 'postmodern' modes of knowing. Agger borrows from French postmodern theory and from the Frankfurt School's critical theory in addressing the utility and shortcomings of postmodern theory for understanding identity, culture, race, gender, and power. He explains postmodern theory clearly, borrowing creatively from postmodernism in order to theorize about daily life and social structures heavily reliant on information technologies like the internet and the Web.

256 pages, Paperback

First published August 27, 2002

Reviews

[Lukas Szrot · Rating 5 out of 5]

Compelling. A thorough and inspired critique of the post-enlightenment positivist agenda, a perspective on a method scientific inquiry that imagines itself apart from the world, a neo-Marxist view of the contradictions inherent in capitalism and how the vertical, authoritarian power structures it spawns pit factions of powerless people against one another. This Othering leads to premodern regression via religious fundamentalism and the resulting violence, Weberian disenchantment, sexism, racism, domination of nature culminating in a chilling prediction of the war on terror, a war without end that will turn America toward fascism and cost countless civilian lives. We remain in modernity--the postmodernists have helped to re-frame the debate, yet we are not obligated, in Dr. Agger's nuanced and well-argued approach, to accept the apolitical relativistic post-Nietzschean irrationality that many people fear would lead to nihilism and apathy.