ABSTRACT
Postmodernism has been de®ned in a number of ways but it is best to see it as a critique of modernism. Modernism is described as the idea that society and knowledge form a progression from a less advanced state to a more advanced state. Therefore modernism would be the philosophy that sees that humanity is `progressing' and that the ideals of liberal, democratic societies are becoming universal. From a scienti®c position, modernism is the idea that knowledge grows and gradually we know more about more things. In contradiction to this, postmodernism is a philosophical and cultural view that asserts that there are no `universal truths', no `deeper' structures to uncover and no progression to a better society (Lyotard 1984; Lyon 1994). Postmodernism has been summarised as a concern for the local, a rejection of the grand narratives of social movements/knowledge and respect for the marginalised. Key writers within postmodernism are Foucault, Derrida (Loewenthal and Snell 2003) and Gergen (1999, 2008), Gergen being a particularly important theorist for family therapists.
