ABSTRACT
Daniel Bell’s mid-1970s attempt to sketch the sociological background of postmodernism-at that point still exclusively defined as postmodern art, the ‘spirit’ of the 1960s, or both-was not immediately followed up by other sociologists. With a few exceptions, the social sciences ignored the debate on the postmodern until the mid-1980s, when (mainly British) sociologists began to see postmodernism as something worthy of serious attention.1
