Postmodernism in the Social Sciences

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Postmodernism in the Social Sciences

• Zosimo E. Lee, Ph.D.
• College of Social Sciences and Philosophy
• University of the Philippines

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Main topics

• A narrative of reasons development
• Rationality and critique
• Modernity and progress
• Referent and legitimacy
• Reflection and meta-theory

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A narrative of reasons progress

• The contest between hegemony and tolerance
• Three events that ushered in the Enlightenment
• A. Luthers challenge to the hegemony of the
  Catholic Church
• B. The rise of science and technology

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• C. The rise of the nation-state
• Three implications
• Need for tolerance among conflicting religious
  beliefs.
• Reliance on the ability of reason to solve
  problems and discover laws of nature

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• The conception of human rights and limits to
  authority of the sovereign.

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• Since the hegemonic belief-system from
  Christendom was shattered, citizens had to learn
  to abide by rules they could accept so that they
  could live with one another. It was also possible
  to design social institutions on the basis of
  human principles.

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Rationality and critique

• The development of science and technology during
  the 17th and 18th centuries unleashed creative
  energies and potentials. Colonial discoveries and
  invention in manufacture and engineering.
• Reliance on a conception of objective reason that
  brought about definite results.

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• Reason makes it possible for human beings to
  penetrate the mysteries of nature, or to develop
  forms of government that will ensure human rights
  and expand human liberties.
• Reason provides itself with its own reasons for
  confidence in its procedures and results.

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• Rationality is the guiding principle of practices
  that are rule- and criterion-governed, and that
  engage in the self-corrective adjustment of means
  and ends.

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Varieties of rationality

• A. Ends-means rationality
• B. Rationality within a hierarchical system or
  within a body of thought and practice
• C. Mixed type, e.g. how does an institution
  advance its interests within a larger context.
• These are however linear, and not holistic and
  organic. They are internal to reason and do not
  take an external view.

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Need for foundations or certainty

• Reason had to be able to validate itself.
• What would be its grounds for certainty or
  knowledge?
• Could reason look at itself as a whole? Could it
  realize its own limitations and delusions?

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Modernity and Progress

• Confidence in reason and the possibility of
  progress.
• The notion of master-narratives
• A. positivist science,
• B. Marxism or historical materialism, e.g. the
  view that ideas themselves have a history,
• C. Structuralism, e.g. Freudian psychology and
  the unconscious.

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Despair and discontent

• Wittgensteins critique of the possibility of
  absolute and total knowledge in favor of the
  actual and the common.
• Problems of the 20th century like war, poverty
  and disenchantment with material progress,
  question whether the whole of reason can be
  encapsulated.

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Universality and particularity

• The possibility of reason as a universal
  phenomenon, hence the communicability of
  experience.
• Particular experiences and cultures, and whether
  there are universal grounds. The question of the
  commensurability of human situations.

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Referent and legitimacy

• Discourses and their referent what are being
  talked about when social theorists build their
  systems. What is indicated in the grand
  theorizing?
• How do we know whether what is being said is
  true, or do we have bases for confidence that our
  beliefs are right?

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• Jean Francois Lyotard argues that scientific and
  rationalist discourses have lost their
  legitimacy. How do various discourses and
  disciplines, as well as particular arguments,
  legitimize themselves?

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Post-modernity as a contested idea

• Two views
• Lyotard the modern project is completed, and
  post-structuralist especially anti-foundationalist
  ideas must be incorporated into or supplant
  modern ideas of criticism.

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• Jürgen Habermas the modern project is not
  finished, universality cannot be so lightly
  dispensed with. The modern hope that a more
  careful use of reason might lead to the eventual
  betterment of humankind.

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The postmodernist critique

• Master-narratives are suspect. All hegemonies are
  totalitarian. There must be other bases for
  communicability aside from universal reason.
• What is the legitimacy of this critique itself?

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Context of postmodernity

• Conditions of life prevalent in the late 20th
  century and the early 21st century in the most
  industrialized nations are characterized by
  ubiquity of mass media and mass production,
  unification into national economies of all
  aspects of production, global economic
  arrangements, shift from manufacturing to service
  economies.

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• Discourse as a form of contestation. Are we also
  accepting the Wests description of our own
  situation and dilemma? Is this hegemonic? What
  would be our own understanding of our own
  situation based on our cultural categories?

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Contrasting tendencies

• Modernity
• Master-narratives and meta-narratives of history,
  cultural and national identity
• Faith in totalizing explanations

• Postmodernity
• Suspicion and rejection of master-narratives,
  local narratives, ironic deconstruction
• Rejection of totalizing theories

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• Faith in myths of social and cultural unity,
  hierarchies of social class and ethnic or
  national values.
• Faith in progress through science and technology.

• Social and cultural pluralism, disunity, unclear
  bases for social/national/ ethnic unity.
• Skepticism of progress, anti-technology reactions.

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• Sense of unified, centered self individualism,
  unified identity.
• Ideal of family as central unit of social order.

• Sense of fragmentation and decentered self,
  multiple even conflicting identities.
• Alternative family units.

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• Hierarchy, order, centralized control.
• Faith in depth (meaning, value, content, the
  signified) over surface (appearances, the
  signifier)

• Subverted order, loss of centralized control,
  fragmentation.
• Attention to play of surfaces, images, signifiers
  without concern for depth.

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Justification and the social sciences

• How do the disciplines and various discourses
  prove that they are worthy of serious attention
  or that they should be viewed as reliable and
  authoritative? To what standards, protocols,
  values do and must the disciplines appeal?

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Reflection and meta-theory

• How do we judge whether our own thinking is
  reliable?
• A. concept of evidence or ground, data or
  referent
• B. substance of thought, our ideas and our
  evaluation, based on consistency of reasoning and
  validity of inference

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• Categories of discourses, e.g. advocacy, proving
  or substantiating, proposing, arguing, pleading,
  etc.
• Reflection as awareness of our processes of
  thinking as well as evaluating content.

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• What moves us to act or to believe? When do we
  say that we are convinced and why?

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• How do we classify reasons (acceptable or not,
  valid or not, good reasons as against weak
  reasons)?
• Do we have criteria for what is reasonable?