"Social Postmodernism is a great book in the most traditional or modern snese-it is useful. This has a great deal to do with the fact that the rich diversity of papers included, covering sexuality, race, multiculturalism, the India Diaspora, feminism, and what's left of universalism, is held up by a thematic concern with the idea of identity." Peter Beilharz, Contemporary Sociology

• Introduction Part I. Critiques of Identity: 1. Interpreting gender Linda Nicholson; 2. Feminist encounters: locating the politics of experience Chandra Talpade Monhanty; 3. Postcolonial criticism and Indian historiography Gyan Prakash; Part II. Critiques of the Deconstruction of Identity: 4. African identities Kwame Anthony Appiah; 5. Deconstructing queer theory or the under-theorization of the social and the ethical Steven Seidman; 6. Queer visibility in commodity culture Rosemary Hennessy; Part III. Postmodern Approaches to the Social: 7. Gender as seriality: thinking about women as a social collective Iris Marion Young; 8. Refiguring social space Cindy Patton; 9. Just framing: ethnicities and racisms in a 'postmodern' framework Ali Rattansi; 10. Politics culture and the public sphere: toward a postmodern conception Nancy Fraser; Part IV. Postmodern Approaches to the Political: 11. Feminism citizenship and radical democratic politics Chantal Mouffe; 12. The space of justice: lesbians and democratic politics Shane Phelan; 13. Against the liberal state: ACT-UP and the emergence of postmodern politics Stanley Aronowitz; 14. Democracies of pleasure: thoughts on the goals of radical sexual politics R. W. Connell.