Postmodernism and Protest

Recovering the Sociological Imagination

Datos Bibliográficos

ID7525907
AutoresKitty Calavita, Carroll Seron
Año1992
Volumen26
Número4
Páginas765-771
Fecha de publicación1992-01-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaLaw & Society Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0023-9216 • E-ISSN: 1540-5893
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/3053815
OpenAlexW2317146946
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas11
Referencias citadas7

Joel Handler's presidential address to the 1992 Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association examines the intellectual debates that animate recent studies of social change. This talk is his attempt to understand and question these studies of transformative politics which, Handler claims, are deeply influenced by a turn toward postmodernism. After ruminating over the postmodernist argument and its broader intellectual currents as well as its impact on studies of what he calls “protest from below” (e.g., Ewick & Silbey 1992; White 1990), he compares this work to earlier, more structurally informed approaches (e.g., Genovese 1974; Stack 1974; Piven & Cloward 1977). Handler believes that this earlier work remains more persuasive. Because the work of the 1970s is firmly rooted in an analysis of politics and economy that forms the basis for a theory of progressive social change, he concludes that it is more compelling, provocative, and socially meaningful. Handler is skeptical about the current research that is influenced by strains of postmodernism, although he does not seem to advocate a wholesale return to the earlier, social-structural approach. Thus, he does not take the difficult step of outlining a more useful and progressive analytical and political strategy

Aesthetics · Epistemology · Postmodernism · Psychoanalysis · Social science · Sociological imagination · Sociology · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · Philosophy · Psychology