ABSTRACT
The founding constructions of modernity considered in the previous chapter were infused with Enlightenment ideas about reason, truth and progress. Poststructuralist theories challenged the philosophical and theoretical bases of these constructions, and argued that the modernist ideals they promoted were unrealizable. Poststructuralists critically interrogated modernist social theoretical ideas to reveal the problematic assumptions they were based on, and poststructuralist arguments combined with the deconstructive ideas of radical difference theorists (feminist, queer, postcolonial and so on) to influence a sense of ‘crisis’ with respect to the legitimacy of sociological knowledge. Both poststructuralist and radical difference ideas influenced a further deconstructive movement that was focused on reflexive methodology. This latter movement argued the case for deconstructing the methodologies that underpinned modernist sociology to reveal its involvements with power. This chapter focuses on how these poststructuralist, radical difference and reflexive methodology arguments combined to promote a ‘post’ modernist sociology.
