This interdisciplinary book addresses the key questions posed by the postmodernist challenge: Is it possible to reflect and criticize in an age when every claim to truth is placed under suspicion? Are social critics contaminated by the same ideological distortions they identify in society?

The text reviews different responses to such dilemmas and thus examines ways to reconstruct social theory and critique following the postmodern attack on the traditional foundations of knowledge. Whether looking at political critique and praxis, feminist issues, ideology or teaching practices, the contributions are united by the need to ground a new theoretical and political position in the absence of the foundational certainties once provided by positivism and empiricism.