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Relativism, at least in some of its forms, is antithetical to sociology as traditionally practiced and conceived. (See, for instance, Benton and Crabb, 2001, pp.50‐74 and 93‐1006; Collins 1996a; Mann, 1998; Murphy, 1997; and Taylor‐Gooby, 1994). Hence, sociologists should consider abandoning traditional sociology or rejecting relativism. An example of the sort of relativism I have in mind is the philosophical theory that the truth and falsity of propositions is relative to the social context of their promulgation. Such epistemological relativism is expressed by Newton‐Smith when he says: “The central relativist idea is that what is true for one tribe, social group or age might not be true for an other tribe, social group or age” (Newton‐Smith, 1982, p.107).

Based on an address to the Swedish Marketing Federation, considers how much longer conventional methods of consumer market research can be considered state of the art when academic study has moved into its postmodern phase.

Professor Dewey's pragmatism always strikes me as fundamentally ambiguous, oscillating between a conception of knowledge as “technique,” essentially a biological function, and some vague mystical conception of it in terms of “shared life” or “shared experience.”(Knight, 1936, p. 230)

Draws a distinction, via the edited text of an interview, between a sociology of postmodernity and postmodernism: the latter has an emphasis on theory and its intertextuality while the former would focus more evidently on discontinuities in the empirical world which serve to mark a difference from the ways in which that world has been appropriated and appreciated through a more modernist perspective. For organization theory the difference is articulated in particular by the awareness that there are now counter‐factuals available to challenge some predominant assumptions about the way in which organization occurs. The assumptions have a predominantly “Western” basis; some elements of the challenge come from an increasing knowledge of the specificities of Asian practice. A crucial axis for comparison between relevant tendencies towards “modernism” and “postmodernism” is that of “differentiation”. Proposes that modernist tendencies are towards the increase of differentiation, postmodern towards the increase of de‐differentiation – the throwing into reverse of the tendency towards differentiation. Considers contrasting models of what a postmodern, de‐differentiated future might look like in terms of their democratic potential.

The terms cyprus, conflict, crisis and war have been almost inextricably intertwined throughout the history of this Mediterranean island. The education system played an important role socially and school buildings played an important role visually first in the dissemination of nationalism when the ethno-nationalist movements within the turkish and greek-cypriot communities increased dramatically under British colonial rule (1878-1960), and later in the dissemination of internationalism in the mid-twentieth century. Despite the increased conflict and nationalism, which was reflected by neo-greek architectural elements, the striking impact of the international style turned school buildings into representations of the communities' attitudes towards modernism. By the mid-1940s these attitudes towards modernism also served as a latent way for communities' identity struggles and for the sovereignty of each community to exist. After world war ii the style embodied by many school buildings conveyed science-based modern thought; modernization attempts for political, economic and social reforms; and the strong commitment of the first modernist cypriot architects to the spirit of the time and the philosophy of the modern. Under this scope, postwar school buildings in cyprus are identified as unique artifacts transformed from an ‘ethnicity-based' image into an ‘environment-based' form that is more associated with the modernization, decolonization and nation-building processes from which local nuances of mainstream modernism emerged. At this point the modernization process of the state, identity struggles of the communities and architects' modernist attempts could be interpreted as providing a fertile ground for new social and architectural experiments, and could answer questions about how postwar school architecture managed to avoid reference to historical, ethnic and religious identities when there was an intentional exacerbation of hostility between the two ethnic communities and about school buildings predominantly followed principles of the international style even though both the greek and turkish-cypriot education systems were instrumental in strengthening local nationalisms and even ethnic tensions.

New Towns were exemplars of Utopian social and economic visions allied to Modernist ideas of design and architecture. Initially hailed as the answer to the ailments of the historic European city and the urgent need for housing after the War, they came under considerable scrutiny when the ideas of New Urbanism on design, density and community became one of the most vocal critics on Modernist town planning.

The UK Arts and Humanities Research Council recently funded a New Town Heritage Research Network Project. Drawing on case studies from the network, this chapter will refer to the original questions posed by the above-mentioned network project: How are the Utopian social and economic visions which accompanied the New Town Movement embodied in the masterplanning, urban design and architecture of the New Towns? How can the New Town architectural and urban design heritage be evaluated? How can future planning for these towns accommodate and build on this heritage in a meaningful way, and be integrated into regeneration and growth? How can key stakeholders in New Towns create an identity and pride for their town as well as a sense of belonging, by building cultural capital through their heritage, including architecture, public art and cultural activities?

This chapter will analyse how New Towns and their associated Modernist Heritage have been perceived by different audiences and are positioned in the overall heritage discourse including the question of a shared European Heritage.

This paper aims at interpreting the epistemology of marketing. The paper investigates several research questions, proposing some initial reflections concerning their impact on marketing.

The paper addresses the research questions by conducting an analysis of the marketing literature. An analysis of philosophical postmodern literature is also carried out. The paper's attempt constantly to create links between the level of philosophical elaboration and that of marketing research leads to a proposal of new approach to marketing research: experiential research.

In the paper's review of the marketing literature the traditional pragmatic approach of marketing as a discipline is highlighted. Its strong managerial perspective has partly diverted researchers’ attention from the theory, and focused it mainly on the method. This has created an increasingly marked distinction between the marketing literature aimed at management, and that aimed at the academic community. The postmodern perspective on marketing calls for a rethinking of the “scientific nature” of marketing as an investigative field.

The main point is that marketing cannot be a scientific discipline only by adopting a scientific method. Marketing research is by definition different in nature: it cannot generate better but only different knowledge. This perspective shift has an impact on all research components. First, the field of research widens enormously, because researchers can deal with everything arousing their interest and to which their accumulated knowledge can be applied. Since the discipline does not become scientific, the researcher can use any method. All methods can originate scientific theories, and therefore incremental knowledge. Hence science is neither objective nor absolute.

This paper analyses the philosophical roots of postmodernism, in order to understand its impact on postmodern marketing better. It also focuses on the impact of postmodernism on marketing research, and proposes a new approach. This paper then explores the features of the experiential research in marketing, and its effect on the processes of generating knowledge.

The ‘human being’ and ‘humanism’ have become thoroughly contested terms and widely denounced from a range of intellectual positions from behaviorism to post-modernism. After outlining some elements of the anti-humanist critique, the paper attempts to mount a defence. It concludes by suggesting some of the elements for a ‘critical humanism’, and suggests that postmodernism and humanism need not be incompatible.

The last decade has seen much soul‐searching within the Marketing Academy as it struggles to address what Brown has described as the discipline’s “mid‐life crisis”. Magee terms this tendency “metanoia” and observes that no less a work than “Dante’s Inferno begins with lines that refer to it”. He notes how people reaching this point often “turn in on themselves, and perhaps turn towards religion”. It is with this “metanoid” perspective on marketing theory that the authors of this piece present two possible paths to epistemological paradise; one route representing an inward re‐evaluation and the other more of an outward exploration. Two of the authors combine to take an axiomatic approach to rediscovering the celestial citadel, whereas the third has forsaken the fundamentalist fortress. In his, the second, sermon Brother Nick implores you to reject the foregoing calls to get back to basics, and instead, to embrace a more contemporary, critical orientation to “dat ole time marketing religion”.

The fateful question for our time is what comes after post-modernism, what comes after the after? Building upon the insight of Thomas Mann in Dr. Faustus, the great fictional study of the post-modern composer Adrian Leverkuhn, and upon insights of some of the post-modernists themselves, this after hovers as the lingering but ultimately expunged final (dissonant) chord whose uncanny presence in absence turns cosmic emptiness into the cult of memory, ritualized attentiveness to the faded chord that connects us back to a departed world of meaning by a gossamer thread. A vision of this ritual is acted out in the greatest of all works of deconstruction, The Recovery of Lost Time, in which Marcel Proust guards this attenuating thread with his life like the Wichita lineman, for that is his life. The traveler stranded at the beginning of the epic novel can no longer go forward – there is no more track to lay and no destination to lay it toward – only the obscured recesses of a lost world (long ago when the future still existed), now as fugitive as the years.