Introduction

Different approaches to sociological studies rely not only on a variety of theoretical perspectives and concepts; approaches and perspectives typically also involve the use of sets of concepts that are closely knitted to form coherent frames of understanding. In a discussion of different ways of approaching and discussing motives for action, C. Wright Mills (1963 [1940]) describes how in different times and societies varying vocabularies – sets of terms and concepts – are accepted as standard for explaining motives. He concludes that in order to make sense of these in a sociological way, ‘What is needed is to take all these terminologies of motive and locate them as vocabularies of motive in historic epochs and specified situations. Motives are of no value apart from the delimited societal situations for which they are the appropriate vocabularies’ (p 452, emphasis in original). This way of approaching a set of terms and concepts as vocabularies can also be helpful for understanding differences in approaches to wider sociological phenomena at a given period in sociological research.

The overarching topic of this book relates to social change. In many contemporary discussions of social change, non-specified terms such as modernity, postmodernity, late modernity, post-industrial societies, information society and so forth are widely used. They have become part and parcel of a standard sociological vocabulary. However, as Anderson (1998) points out in an examination of the term ‘postmodernity’, its origin was as an aesthetic category in poetry in Latin America in the 1930s and was first used as an epochal category in the works of the British historian Arnold Toynbee in 1954 and referred to as ‘the post-modern age’ to describe the contemporary historical period in largely negative terms (Anderson, 1998, pp 4-5). Mills (1980 [1959]) also used this term to name the epoch he thought would follow the contemporary modern age with the same foreboding as Toynbee. However, as Anderson observes, in the currently influential writings of Lyotard and Habermas, postmodernity remains vague with reference to time and place – no precise periodisation can be found in their accounts (Anderson, 1998, p 45). Indeed, in all the works Anderson examines in the book, there are problems of demarcation in terms of both time and place (p 78).