后现代主义思潮与大学生价值观嬗变

进入新时期以来,在西方后现代主义思潮的浸染下,我国大学生的价值观发生了嬗变:由单一向多元转变、集体向个人位移、理想向世俗变动,甚至呈现出与我国社会主义核心价值观相背离的风险。后现代主义语境下的这一嬗变,因循于社会结构的变迁和大学生思维的非真实化变动,并深刻地受到大众传媒低俗化的影响。面对大学生价值观取向的变迁,引导大学生正确认识后现代主义思潮、强化大学生价值观再培育、发挥社会主义核心价值观的整合作用显得尤为重要。     

后现代思潮对我国青少年的影响与对策

出于反思"现代性"而出现的后现代主义,目前已经发展成"带有西方色彩"的全球性社会思潮。它反对理性主义、整体主义、中心主义,主张多元价值取向,注重人文关怀,具有否定的全面性与不彻底性、价值取向的无中心性、传播形式的灵活性与多样性、行为表现的随意性等特点。后现代主义在一定程度上有助于培养我国青少年的批判性思维,有助于青少年的天性成长,但也往往易于模糊青少年的是非判断标准,侵蚀青少年积极有为的责任担当,诱使青少年养成享乐主义的生活习惯。为此,需要从强化社会主义核心价值观的引领作用、加强对西方后现代思潮的理论研究、加强人文精神和心理健康方面的教育、引领网络与大众传播方向等方面做文章。     

Postmodernism, rationality and the evaluation of health care

This paper examines the logic of evaluation of health care services, calling into question the possibility of assessing the extent to which medicine and health care systems are ‘rational’ or ‘irrational’ The paper analyses and rejects claims to rationality made in discourses on evaluation and in particular economic evaluation, by recourse to Weber's distinction between formal and substantive rationalities. The rationality claimed by evaluation is a value-laden and therefore substantive rationality. Similarly, the claims of the rational actor model are seen to over-simplify the ways actors interact in the market. This leads to a postmodernist perspective rejecting the idea of a single rationality, which if it can only be grasped enables the achievement of Truth, and substituting the position of contingent and fragmentary discourse, brought into being to serve the interests of particular groups in determining knowledge and power. With regard to the evaluation of health services, whereas the modernist assumes that the Enlightenment metanarrative of rationality has imbued the provision and delivery of health care, and that the evaluation by another discipline within this metanarrative, for instance health economics, can fine-tune this rational system for efficacy and efficiency, and suggest changes, the postmodern position recognises that both are distinct discursive perspectives, constituted for local reasons. This position is then applied to a case study of the management of surgical services based on ethnographic work conducted by the author. Deconstruction of the ethnography derives an understanding of the disruption of surgery as being a consequence of the arrangements for clinical advice in the committee structure of management.     

Postmodernism and Popularisation: The Cultural Life of Chaos Theory

Popular accounts of science have helped to stimulate greater public interest in the role of science in contemporary society. For example, chaos theory and complexity theory have proven to be highly marketable science "products". These concepts have increasingly travelled into wider culture and, notably, the study of organization. Through an interpretation that promotes a leaning towards uncertainty, unpredictability and ambiguity, these accounts of science have been seen to provoke a (postmodern) re-conceptualisation of our view of the world. Indeed the overtly philosophical style of many of these stories has provided a rich source of material for social scientists seeking to explain and legitimise developments in organization and cultural studies. Concentrating upon the treatment of chaos theory as a "postmodern science", this paper examines and questions the historical and cultural influences that have encouraged the appropriation of theories from the natural science.     

Postmodernism and Sociology: From the Epistemological to the Empirical

This article investigates the place of postmodernism in sociology today by making a distinction between its epistemological and empirical forms. During the 1980s and early 1990s, sociologists exposited, appropriated, and normalized an epistemological postmodernism that thematizes the tentative, reflective, and possibly shifting nature of knowledge. More recently, however, sociologists have recognized the potential of a postmodern theory that turns its attention to empirical concerns. Empirical postmodernists challenge classical modern concepts to develop research programs based on new concepts like time-space reorganization, risk society, consumer capitalism, and postmodern ethics. But they do so with an appreciation for the uncertainty of the social world, ourselves, our concepts, and our commitment to our concepts that results from the encounter with postmodern epistemology. Ultimately, this article suggests that understanding postmodernism as a combination of these two moments can lead to a sociology whose epistemological modesty and empirical sensitivity encourage a deeper and broader approach to the contemporary social world.     

Social Theory and Self-Organization: Toward a Sociology of Postmodernism

Abstract Significant changes which represent a linguistic and semantic turn in social theory occurred between in the mid 1970's and the early 1980's. This turn indicates the importance of the social and public dimensions of symbolic meaning that has been distorted functionally by orthodox modernization theory. Modern society is characterized as penetrating the idea of functional primacy into various areas of social life, but in the 1980's skepticism about modernity increased markedly and fluctuation of modernity was resulted. In this paper I discuss the problem of symbolic meaning and fluctuation of modernity from the viewpoint of self-organization paradigm which emphasizes ‘order from fluctuation’ and self-reference, and review the possibility of a postmodern sociology through claiming the necessity to ask how anti-control systems can be built.     

Symbolic Interaction and Postmodernism: Close Encounter of a Dubious Kind

My aim here is threefold: firstly, to ask those who are attracted to certain aspects of postmodernism to avoid imprudent applications of it to our work; secondly, to assess the accomplishments of Symbolic Interaction as we approach the new millennium and; thirdly, to express the hope that Symbolic Interaction will deliver on it s deepest political and philosophical values by speaking truth to power while remembering whose side it is on.     

Goffman Against Postmodernism: Emotion and the Reality of the Self

Goffman has been read as arguing that selves are no more than images created in conformity with situational expectations. I read Goffman as saying that the reality of selfhood is not an image, but a psychobiological proces shaped by signs and symbols. Seen in this way, the reality of the self is evident, as Goffman suggested, not in conformity but in moments of feeling, resistance, and choice. Drawing out what is implicit in Goffman, this article proposes that all forms of signifying behavior, including self-presentations, are means to sustain the coherence of the self. For this to work, however, people must, as Goffman pointed out, trust each other to respect the rules governing signifying behavior and must care about the feelings attached to selves. The article argues that the inequalities of so-called postmodern society are undermining the trust and care on which the interaction order and coherent selfhood depend. Goffman's ideas about the self are used to develop an optimistic critique of the conditions that have produced these pernicious trends.     

Postmodernism and the sacred: reclaiming connection in our greater-than-human worlds

This article addresses the many faces of postmodernism and offers the critique that postmodernism taken up in a particular extremist way can tend to sacrifice the sacred, the spiritual, and the recognition of our "greater than human" worlds in a quest for the particular. In response to this critique, I speak to a postmodern family therapy practice that is informed by values of connectedness, community, and communion; enacted through love and pragmatics; and committed to recognition of our obligation to ecological practice.     

后现代主义思潮对当代青年的影响及教育对策探析

后现代主义思潮是近代西方盛行的一种综合性的社会文化思潮,其基本特征是反理性主义,反权威主义,消解主体性,解构统一性.后现代主义思潮的广泛传播,对我国当代青年的思想和行为产生了一系列正负交织的影响.引导青年正确认识后现代主义思潮,消除其对青年产生的负面影响,要从提高青年的马克思主义理论水平和增强辨别能力等几个方面作出努力.     

Postmodernism: A Dead End in Social Work Epistemology

Postmodernism continues to have a detrimental influence on social work, questioning the Enlightenment, criticizing established research methods, and challenging scientific authority. The promotion of postmodernism by editors of Social Work and the Journal of Social Work Education has elevated postmodernism, placing it on a par with theoretically guided and empirically based research. The inclusion of postmodernism in the 2008 Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards of the Council on Social Work Education and its 2015 sequel further erode the knowledge-building capacity of social work educators. In relation to other disciplines that have exploited empirical methods, social work’s stature will continue to ebb until postmodernism is rejected in favor of scientific methods for generating knowledge.     

Postmodernism in marriage and family therapy training: doctoral students' understanding and experiences

The purpose of this study is to advance our understanding of how doctoral students perceive postmodernism's influence in the field of Marriage and Family Therapy (MFT). According to the literature, postmodernism has had a profound impact on many fields, including MFT. However, tracking of how postmodernism is actually being rendered in theory, research, practice, and training warrants investigation. This study utilized focus group interviews to investigate the perceptions of MFT doctoral students. Findings suggest that while participants are attracted to postmodern tenets, they also report feeling a mixture of liberation and excitement with confusion and fear regarding how postmodernism is influencing MFT models of therapy.     

On Postmodernism,Pragmatism, and Plasterers: Some Interactionist Thoughts and Queries

Postmodernism is assessed as inherently flawed and largely irrelevant to interactionist work. It is suggested that the stage approach used by postmodernists, in which they define themselves as representing the next, superior stage after modernism, be replaced with a lineage approach in order to assess the possible merits of postmodernism. It is argued that such an approach would reveal postmodernism as a weak approximation of interactionist and pragmatist thought.     

Between Modernism and Postmodernism: Lenski's Power and Privilege in the Study of Inequalities

Gerhard Lenski's classical work on stratification Power and Privilege , was an effort to reconcile and to synthesize different approaches to inequality incorporated into the grand theories of the day. It anticipated a variety of developments in the theoretical and empirical understanding of inequalities. These include recognition of the multiplicity of inequalities; emphasis on race, class, gender, and other sources and systems of domination and subordination; and the intersection of these factors in complex patterns to create different standpoints and life consequences. The result was groundbreaking work that underscored the multidimensionality of stratification systems, the variability of their influences, and the notion that their intersection in itself has implications beyond the sum of component parts. In these ways his work foreshadowed the possibilities of finding common ground between modern and postmodern perspectives, to make Lenski the last grand theorist of modernity and a forerunner of postmodern theories of inequality.     

Postmodernism,symmetry, and cash value: An Isocratean model for practitioners

Postmodern philosophy has presented significant challenges to the practicality, universality, and justice of a pervasive paradigm in public relations theory: Excellence Theory, including the concept of the two-way symmetrical worldview. Conversely, however, the practical value of postmodern public relations remains problematic for current practitioners. This article seeks to show that the symmetrical rhetoric of Isocrates – with its values of moderation, justice, and inclusive discourse – presents a practical, successful model for the infusion of postmodern values into 21st-century symmetry.