1 - Modernity, the enlightenment, and the social sciences The rise of the social sciences The agenda of the social sciences in modernity What is the enlightment? History of the enlightment debates The failure of the enlightment project The ethos of enlightenment 2 - Modernity Modernity as a philosophical concept Modernity in the age of enlightment Modernity as a sociological/historical category 3 - Modernism Cultural modernism and its ambiguities Modern ideas of the self 4 - Reason, methods, values A brief history of the concept of reason Values Methods Naturalism and antinaturalism Pro and anti-enlightnment views Relativism and the sociology of knowledge Value freedom in the social sciences 5 - From critical theory to poststructuralism Critical theory versus structuralism Western marxism and the frankfurt school: early critical theory Critical theory and Freud 6 - Postmodernism, identity, and the self Textuality, and deconstruction Truth, knowledge, and reality Antihumanism Habermas, humanism, and the philosophy of consciousness Postmodernism and self-identity Implications for the social sciences 7 - Postmodernism and society Postmodernist social science Postindustrial society and postmodernism marxism, postmodernism, post-marxism ans postindustrial society Toward a social science of postmodernism 8 - The challenge from critical theory Habernas and critical theory Habernas on modernity Postmodern feminism 9 - Postmodernism: an overview 10 - How postmodernism is changing the social sciences The normative structure of the social sciences Conflict versus consensus The corporate state and liberal social science The americanization of the iron cage Postmodernism and the social sciences Index About the author