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This chapter aims to shed light on the impact of postmodern thought on current debates in sociology. In this respect, the shift from modern to postmodern forms of analysis is paradoxical in that it attacks the heart of sociology: namely, its concern with the constitution of "the social". As shall be elucidated in the following sections, contemporary conceptions of "the social" have been significantly influenced by what may be described as the cultural turn¹ in sociology. Sociology is a child of modernity. From a postmodern perspective, recent paradigmatic trends in the social sciences appear to have contributed to converting sociology into a mature adult, aware not only of its own limitations but also of the unrealistic ambitions that shaped its infancy. From a modern point of view, by contrast, the very idea of a "postmodern sociology" is a contradiction in terms. It is not only because of its modern roots, however, that it seems implausible to treat sociology as a postmodern discipline. Furthermore, it is due to two of its most basic assumptions that it is difficult to conceive of sociology — understood in the classical sense – as a postmodern endeavour: on the ontological level, the assumption that "the social" actually exists; and, on the methodological level, the assumption that "the social" can be scientifically studied.

DOI: 10.1057/9781137318237_4

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