Social Postmodernism: Beyond Identity Politics

Cambridge Cultural Social Studies

by Linda J. Nicholson, Steven Seidman

Social Postmodernism offers a transformative political vision and addresses the live questions in identity politics. The postmodern focus on race, sexuality and gender is sharpened by integrating the micro-social concerns of the social movements associated with these issues and macro-institutional and cultural analysis. Social Postmodernism brings together leading theorists to explore further the implications for the discourses of feminism, post-Marxian cultural studies, African-American, Gay, Latino/a and postcolonial studies.

411 pages, Hardcover

First published September 14, 1995

About the author

Linda J. Nicholson was Professor in the Department of Educational Administration and Policy Studies, and Women's Studies at the State University of New York, Albany. She is the author of Gender and History (1986), editor of Feminism/Postmodernism (Routledge, 1990) and the co- editor with Steven Seidman of Social Postmodernism. She is editor of Routledge's Thinking Gender series.

Reviews

[Tristan Bridges · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a wonderful collection on how social postmodernism has been used in a variety of different fields dealing with issues of identity politics and social inequality. I bought it because I was interested in Rosemary Hennessy's chapter, "Queer Visibility in Commodity Culture," which discusses the ways in which gay culture has gradually assumed a larger role in commodity culture writ large. So, we see all sorts of ways in which "gay" objects are becoming increasingly mainstreamed. Hennessy discusses the ways that this is illustrative of a shift in the ways contemporary inequalities are expressed rather than as some kind of challenge to systems of inequality. All of the essays were well-written and the volume did well to incorporate a great interdisciplinary group of scholars with a variety of different topics, dealing with issues of gender, the body, race, ethnicity, postcolonialism, and identity politics more generally.

[The Arcane Master · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent collection of essays.
Queer Visibility in Commodity Culture by Rosemary Hennessy is probably
one of the best papers i've ever read concerning capitalism and identity.
Well worth the read.