2 - A brief introduction to postmodernism

Summary

The value of postmodern knowledge lies in making us aware of and tolerant toward social differences, ambiguity and conflict.

(Seidman 1994b: 5)

Instead of certainty of progress … there is now an awareness of contingency and ambivalence.

(Sarup 1993: 130)

In this chapter, we introduce some basic concepts that are part of or have come from postmodernism. We cannot do justice to this wide and complex area of work in one chapter; we recognize that to those familiar and comfortable with postmodernism, our version, especially those aspects that we feel are less central to demography, may seem too simple and less rich than warranted. However, our intended audience here is those who are not familiar with this area of scholarship; our main goal in this chapter is to offer demographers an overview that is broad and deep enough in order that they might gain some understanding of the richness and usefulness of postmodern scholarship.

Postmodernism is famously difficult to define. That difficulty arises for several reasons. As the term clearly suggests, it is a relational term, something that comes after, perhaps even against, modernism; in fact, for many, postmodernism is especially a critique of previously accepted assumptions and theories in the humanities and the natural and social sciences. A second confusion arises because postmodern theory is regularly discussed, criticized, and critiqued by those who define themselves as outside of such theorists and theories, and those critiques vary in both scope and accuracy. But there are also disagreements among self-declared postmodernists.