ABSTRACT
Our criticism of postmodernism in the previous chapter is based on the concern that postmodernism, as a social theory, does not allow for the adequate study of social relations in culture and other realms. Some sociologists, including Bauman (1992), have argued that we can have a sociology of postmodernism, if not a postmodernist sociology.This is basically to recognise that society has moved into a stage of postmodernity and that sociology, as an academic discipline, is equipped to explain what is going on in contemporary times. This position is not dissimilar to that of Giddens (1990), except for Bauman’s willingness to embrace the term postmodernity as an epochal characterisation.Although we are more in agreement with Giddens than Bauman, of greater concern to us are positions that imply a retreat from sociology altogether. Central to the discipline of sociology is the idea of ‘the social’. Postmodern theory strikes at the heart of sociology by reducing this idea of ‘the social’ to the status of myth. From a postmodernist theoretical perspective there is no basis for a claim to know ‘the social’, such a claim rests on an erroneous ‘foundationalist’ assumption of the kind found within modernist thought (Owen 1997: 10-11). Postmodernist theory proposes the deconstruction of the sociological project, an assignment that has been described in practical and provocative terms as ‘undoing the social’ (Game 1991). Ultimately, it becomes oxymoronic to speak of postmodernist social theory.As this is so, we believe it is necessary to rely on more traditional approaches to social theory – and sociology – as we believe that a meaningful discussion of the material existence of culture can only be grasped by an understanding of the social relations within which culture and cultural practices transpire. By extension we believe that the link between sociology and a socially informed Cultural Studies is undoable (Inglis and Hughson 2003).
