Title: Postmodern Sociology
Headings: Postmodern Sociology
Postmodern Sociology
Notes:
Rendered with permission from the book, Understanding the Times: The Collision of Today’s Competing Worldviews (Rev. 2 nd ed), David Noebel, Summit Press, 2006. Compliments of John Stonestreet, David Noebel, and the Christian Worldview Ministry at Summit Ministries. All rights reserved in the original.
1 Walter Truett Anderson, The Future of the Self: Exploring the Post-Identity Society (New York, NY: Tarcher/Putnam, 1997), 114.
2 Michel Foucault, History, Discourse and Discontinuity (New York, NY: Semiotex (e), 1996), 48.
3 The French Postmodernists were particularly anti-Roman Catholic.
4 Richard Rorty and Gianni Vattimo, The Future of Religion (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2005), 33. Cited in Philosophia Christi, vol. 7, no. 2 (2005): 525.
5 Robert B. Brandom, ed., Rorty and his Critics (Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishers, 2001), 22.
6 The Weekly Standard, November 14, 2005, 41.
7 Glenn Ward, Postmodernism (Chicago, IL: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2003), 145.
8 Ibid., 146.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid. Sourced to Paul Rabinow, ed., The Foucault Reader: An Introduction to Foucault’s Thought (Eastbourne, UK: Gardners Books, 1991), 297.
11 Mark Lilla, The Reckless Mind: Intellectuals in Politics (New York, NY: New York Review Books, 2001), 142. See the Postmodern Politics section for more on the Marquis de Sade.
12 Walter Truett Anderson, 114.
13 Ibid., 17.
14 For example, see David Stoll, Rigoberta Menchu and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans (Oxford, UK: Westview Press, 1999).
15 Ibid., 18.
16 Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1988), 25: “There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative.”
17 The Washington Times, August 31, 1997, B2.
18 Ibid., p. B2.
19 Ibid.
20 Ibid.
21 Brandom, Rorty and his Critics, 21–22.
22 Larry Elder, “Campus Gulag,” FrontPageMagazine.com, October 2, 2000, http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=2711.
What do you think?

Content: Education’s method of molding is linguistic, and so the language to be used is that which will create a human being sensitive to its racial, sexual, and class identity.” 13
Anderson outlines major shifts in focus in the Postmodern classroom in contrast to the modern classroom: “ Education should emphasize works not in the canon, it should focus on the achievements of non-whites, females and the poor; 14 it should highlight the historical crimes of whites, males, and the rich; and it should teach children that science’s method has no better claim to yielding truth than any other method and, accordingly, that students should be equally receptive to alternative ways of knowing.” 15
Postmodern education teaches that all truth is relative, 16 all cultures are equally deserving of respect (although Western culture comes under severe criticism), and all values are subjective (although racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia are universally evil). Course offerings at colleges and universities in the Postmodern age are also nontraditional, focusing on themes of race, sex, and gender. For example, Stanford University’s Feminist Studies Department offers “Lesbian Communities and Identities.” The catalog describes the course as “Scholarship and research on lesbian experience. Issues of homophobia, lesbian intimacy, and sexuality.