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The contemporary social sciences are in a state of theoretical fragmentation. A dizzying array of approaches jostle for attention, each making grander and often increasingly radical claims about the nature of human life and the best method of studying it. The roots of this fragmentation lie in the 1960s, when a deeply held sense of dissatisfaction with mainstream social theory led to the search for alternatives to the positivism that had come to triumph, particularly in the United States, following the end of the Second World War (Wolin 1972). The result of these endeavours is that the contemporary landscape of social science differs from earlier eras in both qualitative and quantitative terms.¹ Quantitatively, the sheer number of different approaches to social science today makes it almost impossible for any scholar to claim expertise in them all. Qualitatively, the depth of disagreement among the various approaches is such as to render virtually impossible the attempt to map the contours of contemporary social theory. Indeed, it is often difficult to say that the theories are attempting to address the same object, or even engaged in the same enterprise. To complicate matters further, theorists of a post-structural or postmodern inclination will reject the very notion of an "object" on the grounds that it essentialises and endows with a spurious fixity what is, in fact, in flux.²

DOI: 10.1057/9780230502079_1

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