Understanding Self and Others in the Postmodern World is unlike most books directed at giving people insight into themselves in that it is addressed to those who want to think about their lives, relationships with others, and how Western culture has arrived at the Postmodern World. This book examines seven different worldviews that have become dominant for periods of time in the history of Western culture. The author explains that, although all worldviews share the same structure and characteristics, they vary markedly in their contents. Further, a worldview molds those entering it after its own image. Those readers: (1) who identify their own assumptions about the nature of reality, what it means to be a human being, and the truth, will gain insight into themselves. And, identifying the assumptions held by others on these matters will give the reader insight into them. The problem in the Postmodern World is that we live and work with people who live in these different worlds. That situation has invited disagreement and conflict which, unresolved, has led to the chaos that is characteristic of our time. The solution before the nations of the West is that each citizen must grant to all others the same rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness he or she claims for him or herself.

"This is a major work on the connection of theoretical to political practice under postmodernity. At once rigorous and readable, its academic concerns will be both accessible and useful to readers asking -- as contemporary readers indomitably do -- what these debates in cultural theory have to do with the conduct of theirsocial lives." -- Meaghan Morris, author of The Pirate's FiancA(c)e: Feminism, Reading, Postmodernism. "Miller's work is extremely engaging, original, and successful in producing a set of innovative analyses of the formation of cultural subjects." -- Douglas Kellner, University of Texas, Austin

Wood and Zurcher suggest that the social self--its experience and organization--reflects the great transformation of society from industrial to postindustrial. . . . Wood and Zurcher have contributed to our social psychological understanding of self-development in several ways. They pack information about theories of modern self-hood into a well-researched and accessible book. Readers will find a resource on theories of the postmodern self here. The authors also introduce a creative use of computerized content analysis, which they successfully demonstrate by transforming personal documents into social scientific data. Contemporary Sociology According to various observers, the postmodern self represents changes in contemporary culture--from rationality and unemotional performance to irrationality and mysticism; from institutional standards and duty-to-society to individual standards and duty-to-self; from structure and stability to transience and experimentation. Through an analysis of diaries from nineteenth- and twentieth-century Americans, this study deals with the nature of the postmodern self. It provides a framework for understanding the ideas that collectively comprise postmodern self theory and presents empirical data concerning its historical validity. The book reflects the use of a computer approach in which the statistical incidence of particular words is examined over time.

The Poetry of Postmodernity reappraises key Anglo/American poets of the last fifty years in the light of debates about the postmodern situation. It offers fresh critical insights into how their literary contribution gives cogent expression to both the socio-cultural possibilities and the global problems of our recent past, our apparent present and our probable future. The poets considered are late Auden, Ginsberg, Plath, Berryman, Hughes, Hill, Ashbery and late R.S. Thomas.