Identity and Social Change examines the thorny problem of modern identity. Trenchant critiques have come from identity politics, focusing on the construction of difference and the solidarity of minorities, and from academic deconstructions of modern subjectivity. This volume places identity in a broader sociological context of destabilizing and reintegrating forces. The contributors first explore identity in light of economic changes, consumerism, and globalization, then focus on the question of identity dissolution. Zygmunt Bauman examines the effects of consumerism and considers the constraints these place on the disadvantaged. Drawing together discourses of the body and globalization, David Harvey considers the growth of the wage labour system worldwide and its consequences for worker consciousness. Mike Featherstone outlines a rethinking of citizenship and identity formation in light of the realities of globalization and new information technologies. Part two opens with Robert Dunn's examination of cultural commodification and the attenuation of social relations. He argues that the media and marketplace are part of a general destabilization of identity formation. Kenneth Gergen maintains that proliferating communications technologies undermine the traditional conceptions of self and community and suggest the need for a new base for building the moral society. In the final chapter, Harvie Ferguson argues that despite the contemporary infatuation with irony, the decline of the notion of the self as an inner depth effectively severs the long connection between irony and identity.

There has been a veritable explosion of writing in recent years about the concept of identity. Amidst this outpouring, the most influential writing has emerged from identity politics and academic postmodernism. These movements focus on the construction of difference, the solidarity of marginal groups, and the epistemological status of the subject. While of far-reaching significance, these movements have also led to a general neglect of the structural and institutional forces behind a wider problem of identity. Identity and Social Change moves beyond these dominant trends to explore neglected but critical terrain. The contributors place the problem of identity in a broader context and approach the formation of identity in a social rather than discursive framework.
The volume is divided into two parts. The first explores identity and subjectivity in light of economic changes, new technologies, consumerism, and globalization, while the second focuses on the much-discussed question of identity dissolution. Zygmunt Bauman examines the effects of consumerism on experiences of time, distance, and place, and considers the constraints these place on the disadvantaged. Drawing together disparate discourses of globalization and the body, David Harvey considers the explosive growth of the wage labor system worldwide and its consequences for worker subjectivity and a global proletariat. Mike Featherstone outlines a rethinking of citizenship and identity-formation in light of the realities of globalization and new information technologies.
The second part opens with Robert G. Dunn's examination of cultural commodification and the attenuation of self and social relations, in which he argues that media, marketplace, and new orders of experience point to a general destabilization of identity formation. Kenneth J. Gergen argues that proliferating communications technologies undermine the traditional conceptions of self and community and suggest the need for a new base for building the moral society. Analyzing psychotherapies that address self-fragmentation. Harvie Ferguson argues that despite the contemporary infatuation with irony, the decline of the notion of the self as an inner depth effectively severs the long connection between irony and identity. This important collection will be of interest to professionals in psychology, sociology, and communications.
Joseph E. Davis is program director at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, and research assistant professor of sociology at the University of Virginia.

Everyday suffering--those conditions or feelings brought on by trying circumstances that arise in everyone's lives--is something that humans have grappled with for millennia. But the last decades have seen a drastic change in the way we approach it. In the past, a person going through a time of difficulty might keep a journal or see a therapist, but now the psychological has been replaced by the biological: instead of treating the heart, soul, and mind, we take a pill to treat the brain. Chemically Imbalanced is a field report on how ordinary people dealing with common problems explain their suffering, how they're increasingly turning to the thin and mechanistic language of the "body/brain," and what these encounters might tell us. Drawing on interviews with people dealing with struggles such as underperformance in school or work, grief after the end of a relationship, or disappointment with how their life is unfolding, Joseph E. Davis reveals the profound revolution in consciousness that is underway. We now see suffering as an imbalance in the brain that needs to be fixed, usually through chemical means. This has rippled into our social and cultural conversations, and it has affected how we, as a society, imagine ourselves and envision what constitutes a good life. Davis warns that what we envision as a neurological revolution, in which suffering is a mechanistic problem, has troubling and entrapping consequences. And he makes the case that by turning away from an interpretive, meaning-making view of ourselves, we thwart our chances to enrich our souls and learn important truths about ourselves and the social conditions under which we live.

Do doctors fix patients? Or do they heal them? For all of modern medicine's many successes, discontent with the quality of patient care has combined with a host of new developments, from aging populations to the resurgence of infectious diseases, which challenge medicine's overreliance on narrowly mechanistic and technical methods of explanation and intervention, or "fixing' patients. The need for a better balance, for more humane "healing" rationales and practices that attend to the social and environmental aspects of health and illness and the experiencing person, is more urgent than ever. Yet, in public health and bioethics, the fields best positioned to offer countervailing values and orientations, the dominant approaches largely extend and reinforce the reductionism and individualism of biomedicine. The collected essays in To Fix or To Heal do more than document the persistence of reductionist approaches and the attendant extension of medicalization to more and more aspects of our lives. The contributors also shed valuable light on why reductionism has persisted and why more holistic models, incorporating social and environmental factors, have gained so little traction. The contributors examine the moral appeal of reductionism, the larger rationalist dream of technological mastery, the growing valuation of health, and the enshrining of individual responsibility as the seemingly non-coercive means of intervention and control. This paradigm-challenging volume advances new lines of criticism of our dominant medical regime, even while proposing ways of bringing medical practice, bioethics, and public health more closely into line with their original goals. Precisely because of the centrality of the biomedical approach to our society, the contributors argue, challenging the reductionist model and its ever-widening effects is perhaps the best way to press for a much-needed renewal of our ethical and political discourse.

Although philosophy, religion, and civic cultures used to help people prepare for aging and dying well, this is no longer the case. Today, aging is frequently seen as a problem to be solved and death as a harsh reality to be masked. In part, our cultural confusion is rooted in an inadequate conception of the human person, which is based on a notion of absolute individual autonomy that cannot but fail in the face of the dependency that comes with aging and decline at the end of life. To help correct the ethical impoverishment at the root of our contemporary social confusion, The Evening of Life provides an interdisciplinary examination of the challenges of aging and dying well. It calls for a re-envisioning of cultural concepts, practices, and virtues that embraces decline, dependency, and finitude rather than stigmatizes them. Bringing together the work of sociologists, anthropologists, philosophers, theologians, and medical practitioners, this collection of essays develops an interrelated set of conceptual tools to discuss the current challenges posed to aging and dying well, such as flourishing, temporality, narrative, and friendship. Above all, it proposes a positive understanding of thriving in old age that is rooted in our shared vulnerability as human beings. It also suggests how some of these tools and concepts can be deployed to create a medical system that better responds to our contemporary needs. The Evening of Life will interest bioethicists, medical practitioners, clinicians, and others involved in the care of the aging and dying. Contributors: Joseph E. Davis, Sharon R. Kaufman, Paul Scherz, Wilfred M. McClay, Kevin Aho, Charles Guignon, Bryan S. Turner, Janelle S. Taylor, Sarah L. Szanton, Janiece Taylor, and Justin Mutter

Although philosophy, religion, and civic cultures used to help people prepare for aging and dying well, this is no longer the case. Today, aging is frequently seen as a problem to be solved and death as a harsh reality to be masked. In part, our cultural confusion is rooted in an inadequate conception of the human person, which is based on a notion of absolute individual autonomy that cannot but fail in the face of the dependency that comes with aging and decline at the end of life. To help correct the ethical impoverishment at the root of our contemporary social confusion, The Evening of Life provides an interdisciplinary examination of the challenges of aging and dying well. It calls for a re-envisioning of cultural concepts, practices, and virtues that embraces decline, dependency, and finitude rather than stigmatizes them. Bringing together the work of sociologists, anthropologists, philosophers, theologians, and medical practitioners, this collection of essays develops an interrelated set of conceptual tools to discuss the current challenges posed to aging and dying well, such as flourishing, temporality, narrative, and friendship. Above all, it proposes a positive understanding of thriving in old age that is rooted in our shared vulnerability as human beings. It also suggests how some of these tools and concepts can be deployed to create a medical system that better responds to our contemporary needs. The Evening of Life will interest bioethicists, medical practitioners, clinicians, and others involved in the care of the aging and dying. Contributors: Joseph E. Davis, Sharon R. Kaufman, Paul Scherz, Wilfred M. McClay, Kevin Aho, Charles Guignon, Bryan S. Turner, Janelle S. Taylor, Sarah L. Szanton, Janiece Taylor, and Justin Mutter

Do doctors fix patients? Or do they heal them? For all of modern medicine's many successes, discontent with the quality of patient care has combined with a host of new developments, from aging populations to the resurgence of infectious diseases, which challenge medicine's overreliance on narrowly mechanistic and technical methods of explanation and intervention, or "fixing' patients. The need for a better balance, for more humane "healing" rationales and practices that attend to the social and environmental aspects of health and illness and the experiencing person, is more urgent than ever. Yet, in public health and bioethics, the fields best positioned to offer countervailing values and orientations, the dominant approaches largely extend and reinforce the reductionism and individualism of biomedicine. The collected essays in To Fix or To Heal do more than document the persistence of reductionist approaches and the attendant extension of medicalization to more and more aspects of our lives. The contributors also shed valuable light on why reductionism has persisted and why more holistic models, incorporating social and environmental factors, have gained so little traction. The contributors examine the moral appeal of reductionism, the larger rationalist dream of technological mastery, the growing valuation of health, and the enshrining of individual responsibility as the seemingly non-coercive means of intervention and control. This paradigm-challenging volume advances new lines of criticism of our dominant medical regime, even while proposing ways of bringing medical practice, bioethics, and public health more closely into line with their original goals. Precisely because of the centrality of the biomedical approach to our society, the contributors argue, challenging the reductionist model and its ever-widening effects is perhaps the best way to press for a much-needed renewal of our ethical and political discourse.

MISSION TO MOSG OW BT JOSEPH E. DAVIES UNITED ST X ES AMBASSADOR TO THE SOVIET UNION FROM 1936 TO 1938 A record of confidential dispatches to the State Department, official and personal correspondence, current diary and journal entries, including notes and comment up to October, 1941 LONDON VICTOR GOLLANCZ LIMITED 1945 TO TWO GREAT WOMEN MY MOTHER and MY WIFE First Published May Second Impression June Third Impression September 1942 Fourth Impression November 1942 Fifth Impression March 1943 Sixth Impression May 1943 Seventh Impression August 1943 Eighth Impression yanuary 1944 Ninth Impression October 1944 Tenth Impression March PRINTKT IN GREAT BRITAIN BY WTT. TJAVf QUOWBS AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BBGCJJBS TABLE OF CONTENTS FOREWORD V AUTHORS NOTE xi I. The Mission Begins November z6 y iggfi-March 30, 1937 13 n. Washington and Points East April 5-June so, 7957 98 HI. The Purge Hits the Red Army June 25-July Sf8 9 1937 109 iv. Russia Through Her Neighbours Eyes July 98-December 24 937 139 v. The Purge Hits Bukharin January i-Marck 17, 1938 172 vi. Moscow Hears the Drums of War March 14-April, 1938 185 vn. Climax of the Mission April 6-July 5, 1938 203 vm. Brief on the Facts June 6, 1938 243 DC. Harvest of the Mission July 6 9 1938-October s8 1941 274 CHRONOLOGY 329 APPENDIX 341 Supplementary Report on the Stalin Conversation 341 Footnote on Sweden 346 The Baltic States Prepare for the Worst 348 Expert Report on Russias War Industries 354 Inventory on Russias Richest Region 356 Memorandum on Soviet Industrial Regions 356 The Port of Odessa 364 Bread-baking hi Odessa 365 The Port of Batum 366 The Batum Oil Refinery 367 The Soviet Atlantic City 374 Mountains of Cement at Novorosbsk376 The Winery at Yalta 379 Recreation Gamps at Yalta 388 Collective Farms in the Ukraine 391 Documentation on the Demarche that Failed 397 Documents on Debt and Trade Talks The Ambassadors Farewell 41 1 We surely cannot deny to any nation that right whereon our own government is founded that every one may govern itself according to its own will, and that it may transact its business through whatever organ it thinks proper, whether king, convention, assembly, committee, preside or anything else it may choose. THOMAS JEFI RSON FOREWORD IT was August 25, 1936. I remember the date because it was my mothers birthday. I was up in the Adirondacks. I received a long distance telephone call from my old friend, Secretary Steve Early at the White House, saying that the President wanted to see me. I went to Washington immediately. The President received me hi the executive offices of the White House. Over a lunch which was served to us on his office desk he told me that he wanted to talk to me about a possible diplomatic appointment abroad. The background of this situation is found in the old days of Presi dent Wilsons dxninistration when we had been young men together, devoted to the raogressive cause in the Democratic Party, both before and dugfng the Wilson Administration. A warm friendship had developedin those old days. We golfed together as regularly as our work would permit, had much in common in our political out look, and saw a great deal of each other. Even in those days he was a marked man. Early in the Wilson Administration we had an organization called the Common Counsel Club, which brought us all together twice a month. It was similar hi character to the Little Cabinet of later days.All of us saw in this tall, handsome young Assistant Secretary of the Navy, the future great progressive liberal whom we were all for in connection with some future elec tion to the presidency. In all of his political campaigns thereafter, along with these other men, I was actively engaged in his interest along with Louis Howe and other political managers. During all these years our friendship has been both warm and steadfast. One of the strongest bonds of our friendship was our mothers...

Since a new sensitivity and orientation to victims of injustice arose in the 1960s, categories of victimization have proliferated. Large numbers of people are now characterized and characterize themselves as sufferers of psychological injury caused by the actions of others. In contrast with the familiar critiques of victim culture, "Accounts of Innocence" offers a new and empirically rich perspective on the question of why we now place such psychological significance on victimization in people's lives.
Focusing on the case of adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse, Joseph E. Davis shows how the idea of innocence shaped the emergence of trauma psychology and continues to inform accounts of the past (and hopes for the future) in therapy with survivor clients. His findings shed new light on the ongoing debate over recovered memories of abuse. They challenge the notion that victim accounts are an evasion of personal responsibility. And they suggest important ways in which trauma psychology has had unintended and negative consequences for how victims see themselves and for how others relate to them.
An important intervention in the study of victimization in our culture, "Accounts of Innocence" will interest scholars of clinical psychology, social work, and sociology, as well as therapists and victim activists.