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Date:         Mon, 12 May 97 09:15:38 EDT
From: Alan <DAVIDSON@UCONNVM.UCONN.EDU>
Subject:      Re: "Ideology"
To: Dale Albers <dalbers@runet.edu>, socgrad@CSF.COLORADO.EDU,
        Alan <DAVIDSON@UCONNVM.UCONN.EDU>
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 What Postmodernism is is more of a critique than it is an actual technique.
It basically attempts to recast what is knowable and what is worth asking
by tying social science to discourse (how things are talked about), both the
discourse of sociologists and the discourse of those we study.  The most
direct root in America is Ethnomethodology and the interactionist sociology
of science, the most direct roots in Europe being Critical Theory and
French Structuralism.  It usually takes the form of critically analyzing
how the discourses we use (and people use) when dealing with reality guides
what people consider worth asking and paying attention to -- basically
viewing the conduct of science as more of an interpretive process than as
an application of a set of hard and fast rules.