Identity and the Postmodern Condition
Contents SPECIAL FEATURE: Self in Crisis: ldentity and the Postmodern Condition FEATURE EDITOR: Dmitri N. Shalin Modernity, Postmodernism, and Pragmatist Inquiry: An Introduction Dmitri N. Shalin Goffman Against Postmodernism: Emotion and the Reality of the Self Michael L. Schwalbe Uncomfortably Numb: Countercultural Impulses in the Postmodern Era Simon Gottschalk Marginalizing the Self: A Study of Citizenship, Color, and Ethnoracial ldentity in American Society Stanford M. Lyman ldentity Crisis and Postcommunist Psychology lgor S. Kon The Postmodernization of Death and Dying William Simon, C. Allen Haney, and Russell Buenteo 41 1 INDEX SPECIAL FEATURE Modernity, Postmodernism, and Pragmatist Inquiry: An Introduction Dmitri N. Shalin* University of Nevada, Las Vegas Postmodernism has been around for decades now, but it was not until the 1980s that social scientists in the United States started paying this intellectual current serious attention. Reasons for such a tardy and decidedly half-hearted reception are several. Postmodernists do not look kindly at the social sciences, accusing the latter of aiding the extant powers and furthering domination in society. They also question the philosophical foundations on which social scientists built their edifice-the very possibility of sound communication, objective reporting, valid generalizations, and theoretical knowledge. Characteristically, symbolic interactionists were among the first in the social science community to join issue with postmodernism (e.g., Farberman 1980,1991,1992; Denzin 1986,1989,1990a, 1990b, 1990c, 1991,1992; Clough 1989,1992a, 1992b; Krug and Laurel 1989; Katovich and MacMurray 1991; Kotarba 1991; Manning 1991, 1993; Fontana and Preston 1990; Fontana 1991 ; Shalin 1991; Young 1991; Fee 1992). Their somewhat marginal position in academia might have something to do with this.
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