ABSTRACT
The importance of post-modernist thought for social history can be described in terms of a challenge, or a series of challenges. Modernism is therefore conceived of as writing the 'grand narratives' of history in which these various essences play leading roles, for instance the narratives of science and progress, and of liberalism, socialism and conservatism. The various challenges to social history, and to the concepts of society and class, have many implications for historical work itself. However, there has been relatively little direct attention among mainstream historians to the history of the ground upon which these various subjects of the social may be said to move, namely 'society' and 'the social' themselves. The emerging history of the defining categories of western modernity described here, that of the discursive practices of the 'social', the 'economic', the 'cultural' and so on, itself invites new accounts of process and structure that will extend and criticize it.
