Objectives_template

Postmodern view of modernity

Looked at from this perspective, thinkers of nineteenth century and most of the progressive thinkers of twentieth century who believed in universal knowledge system, universal progress, utilitarianism, humanism and evolution can be called modernist. This is true for scientists and social scientists also. Modernist influences not only made them look for universally applicable concepts for analysis of socio-economic, cultural and political phenomena but they also believed in universal utopias of progress, humanism and equality. Thus Comte, Durkheim, Marx, Freud and Weber all can be called the modernists. All of them assumed that there was an invariant law of human behavior and it would be possible for them to unearth that by following a certain scientific or universal methodology. Postmodernism represents a break from the above and the postmodernists accuse the modernists for being essentialist and attempting to develop grand narratives of society while the reality is very dynamic, contextual, complex, and reflexive and in its construction the researcher and his methods play as important a role as the reality. What does it mean for action?

Knowledge and Politics

...... the determining impingement on most knowledge produced in the contemporary West (and here I speak mainly about the United States) is that it be nonpolitical, that is, scholarly, academic, impartial, above partisan or small-minded doctrinal belief. One can have no quarrel with such an ambition in theory, perhaps, but in practice the reality is much more problematic. No one has ever devised a method for detaching the scholar from the circumstances of life, from the fact of his involvement (conscious or unconscious) with a class, a set of beliefs, a social position, or from the mere activity of being a member of society. These continue to bear on what he does professionally ......
Said, Edward, W., 2001, Orientalism, Penguin Books, New Delhi, 10.