Beyond the Cultural Turn: New Directions in the Study of Society and Culture

Nothing has generated more controversy in the social sciences than the turn toward culture, variously known as the linguistic turn, culturalism, or postmodernism. This book examines the impact of the cultural turn on two prominent social science disciplines, history and sociology, and proposes new directions in the theory and practice of historical research.

The editors provide an introduction analyzing the origins and implications of the cultural turn and its postmodernist critiques of know...