The culture of affluent societies in the late 20th century was characterized by French postmodern theorist, Jean Baudrillard, as consisting of "ambient consumerism" in which placement in the social hierarchy depends on acquiring products with a "sign" value conveying messages about status and purchasing power. Discusses…

This paper explores the impact of John Dewey on the field of educational psychology. Dewey raised issues and ideas, such as the role of context and the reapproximation of knowledge, that would come to haunt education and psychology for the next century. And yet soon after the turn of the twentieth century, Dewey abandoned psychology and redefined…

Perhaps one of the most taken-for-granted features of contemporary social theory is the ritual and increasingly generic critique of Marxism in terms of its alleged failure to address forms of oppression other than that of "class." Marxism is considered to be theoretically bankrupt and intellectually passe, and class analysis is often savagely…

In choosing a title for what might well be his least successful long poem, W. H. Auden nonetheless succeeded brilliantly in the far more ambitious task of naming an age. Set in his version of the urban Waste Land, a New York bar, "The Age of Anxiety" probes the dislocations of the modern consciousness as its four principal characters move uneasily…

The history of Western social thought may be examined by focusing on the linkage between dominant legitimating ideologies and various institutional structures of the social formation. As society moves in the direction of postindustrialism, the development of a constructivist, rather than deconstructive, form of postmodernism is needed.…

Examines the concept of popular culture in social and educational theory in the context of developing nations, particularly Latin America. Using a poststructuralist literary theory, the article elaborates a notion of the popular that offers a new conceptualization by incorporating a sense of competing identities and ideologies that form it. (SM)

Provides an overview of the main theories, developments, and literature of critically-oriented sociology. Pays particular attention to the politics of meaning including critical discourse analysis, identity politics, racial formation, and political economy and the labor process. Concludes with a discussion of the tensions between postmodern and…