Protestantism

» pink101 - Some Time Ago

.
Some time ago, I was involved in a discussion with Catherine McDonald here in some of these threads. She is a practicing psychic living in Canada and has a degree in sociology if I'm not mistaken. You might remember her login was, Cat.
.
Anyway, in one of the discussions, I was bringing up some ideas about the institutions of American community and she corrected me with a statement that sociology has left structuralist theories behind in this new age. Almost as though structuralism has come to be passe'.
.
It probably doesn't mean a lot to people that structuralism was the highlight of mid twentieth century sociological thinking.
.
The word, postmodernism, has often been discussed by theorists as the period of post-structuralism. Accordingly, it is said that we are losing our sense of structure in that almost anything goes when it comes to our institutions. The family, for example, can be the people with whom you relate at work or church--it doesn't necessarily mean a mother, father, and their children any more.
.
I'm presently working on putting my thoughts about parenting down on paper and one of the main problems I see is the lack of structure for family definitions.
.
While I accept the fact that we are all postmodernists by definition, it doesn't mean that I think postmodernism is a good thing. Except in one sense of the word. What IS good about it is that it is forcing us to look at what we have in a critical way. Perhaps we can come up with a better way of carrying out our day to day experiences and the issues involved.
.

-- posted by pink101