Are there any cultural universals left? Does multiculturalism inevitably involve a slide into moral relativism? This timely and insightful book examines questions of politics and identity in the age of multicultures. It draws together the contribution of outstanding contributors such as Fraser, Honneth, O'Neill, Bauman, Lister, Gilroy and De Swann to explore how difference and multiculturalism take on the arguments of universalist humanism. The approach taken derives from the traditions of cultural sociology and cultural studies rather than political science and philosophy.

The book takes seriously the argument that the social bond and recognition are in danger through globalization and deterritorialization. It is a major contribution to the emerging debate on the form of post-national forms of civil society.

In Spaces of Culture an international group of scholars examines the implications of questions such as: What is culture? What is the relationship between social structure and culture in a globalized and networked world? Do critical perspectives still apply, or does the speed and complexity of cultural production demand new forms of analysis? They explore the key themes in social theory: the nation state; the city; modernity and reflexivity; post-Fordism and the spatial logic of the informational city. The contributors go on to analyze the public sphere, questioning the reductive representation of technology as a form of instrumentality, and demonstrating how new technologies can offer new spaces of culture. This analysis of public space is essential to an understanding of issues like global citizenship and multicultural human rights.

What is culture? How are we to understand the relation between social structure and culture in a world that is becoming increasingly global and which new technologies are making increasingly vital? Spaces of Culture is a critical interrogation of the key coordinates of this global and virtual world: the nation state; modernity and reflexivity; post-Fordism and the spatial logic of the informational city. This discussion extends into a complementary analysis of the public sphere, that questions the reductive representation of technology as a forma of instrumentality, demonstrating how new technologies can offer new spaces of culture. The analysis of public space is essential to an understanding of issues like global citizenship and multicultural human rights. Spaces of Culture will be required reading for students and scholars in sociology, social theory and cultural studies. It will be an essential reference in any critical discussion of the relations between globalization and technology; and culture, politics and the public sphere.

Environmental and risk issues are symptomatic of deep-seated social and cultural tensions and transformations in the fabric of contemporary societies. This major contribution to the study of risk, ecology, and the place of social theory in making sense of the environment helps us to understand the politics of ecology and the place of social theory in making sense of environmental issues. The book provides insights into the complex dynamics of change in so-called risk societies. In this volume, the issues of risk and environment are explored at three levels. The contributors offer a critical assessment of dominant institutional ways of thinking and talking about risk and counterpose these with more open, self-critical approaches. They explore individuals' sense of risk and its expression in collective insecurities and they show how political thinking and debate on risk and environmentalism has been, and can further be, transformed. Wide-ranging and accessible, Risk, Environment & Modernity contains contributions from leading scholars, including Ulrich Beck, author of Risk Society. It will rapidly establish itself as the key text in the field and will be required reading by students of sociology, political science, geography, and environmental studies. "This is the strongest edited collection on the relationship between modernity, risk and the environment to be published to date and it deserves a place on the book shelf of every one who takes these issues seriously. Perhaps more importantly this book needs to be read by everyone who thinks that existing responses will ultimately 'solve the environmental problem.' The editors present the collection as a slow manifesto capable of transforming the reductionism and realism they see dominating both natural and social scientific approaches to the environment. In twelve essays, organized into three sections, considerable progress is made toward this ambitious goal. . . . This is a book with an important message one can only hope that it is read and widely debated." --a prepublication review in Environmental Politics

How do global processes affect personal and social consciousness? What interplay exists between local and global forces? In Global Modernities, a stellar cast of contributors--including Zygmunt Bauman, Jonathan Friedman, Ann Game, and Göran Therborn--offer superb commentary and analysis on the interplay between the local and the global across a broad range of areas. Focusing on two major themes--social theory and social change--contributors provide powerful critiques of previous positions on the study of modernity that have tended to prioritize history. They argue for a self-reflexive approach to modernity, stressing the fluid character of interdependence and movement. Identity, memory, association, and practice are viewed as nonreducible to the nation-state. Similarly, the western path of social development is subjected to principled criticism.

"Scott Lash and John Urry's book is an ambitious and provocative account of the transformations that are convulsing 'economies' and 'societies' at the end of the 20th century. . . . Lash and Urry offer a lucid critique of conceptions of economies and societies as bounded systems and also demonstrate the intricate imbrications of politico-economic and sociocultural processes. . . . This is a feast of a book: rich in ideas, bursting with theoretical insights and empirical details, and outlining an immensely challenging political intellectual agenda for the end of the century and beyond." --Contemporary Sociology "This book is a tour de force. The portrait it draws of an increasingly reflexive world of flows is a major contribution to our understanding of society and space." --Nigel Thrift, University of Bristol "The content of this book is creative, challenging, and provocative. Its scope, and therefore relevance, is broad. Of critical value is the recognition that not all societies are organized according to a neo-liberal model, as well as the centrality given to subjective practices and the value of image in determining identity,m and helping to shape individual life-chances. In addition, the questioning of conventional concepts such as society suggests that the message of the book will be considered seriously. There is successful recourse throughout the text to particular studies or examples that illustrate the arguments. Generally, this a well-written and well-organized book. --Michael Biddulph, Department of Civic Design, Univ. of Liverpool "[This volume] deserves to be widely read, disseminated, and debated." --Times Higher Education Supplement "This is a book rich in material for reflecting on contemporary life. It deals with changes in the economy, in urban life, and in work and leisure (the impact of global toursim gets particularly good treatment). The differences between industrial societies - the handling of Germany is especially interesting - are sensitively noted, and used to explain important variations in class structure, ethnic and gender relations. There are also some stimulating observations on our new experience of time and space as a result.... Students of society will be quarrying this book for its important insights for many years to come." --Krishan Kumar in Political Studies "The book is important. It has significant implications for several fields, in particular the analysis of organizations: henceforth, say Lash and Urry, these should be analysed in terms of the flow of various circuits (I would add 'of power') through time, space and meaning. However, it is an important publications; there is a great deal here for fertile imaginzation to work through. If I am not very mistaken this text will set some significant agendas." --Stewart Clegg in Asian Pacific

Contemporary culture, today's capitalism - our global information society - is ever expanding, is ever more extensive. And yet we seem to be experiencing a parallel phenomenon which can only be characterised as intensive. This thought provoking, innovative book is dedicated to the study of such intensive culture. Whilst extensive culture is a culture of the same: a culture of fixed equivalence; intensive culture is a culture of difference, of in-equivalence - the singular. Intensities generate what we encounter. They are virtuals or possibilities, always in process and always in movement. We thus live in a culture that is both extensive and intensive. Indeed the more globally stretched and extensive social relations become the more they simultaneously seem to take on this intensity. Ours is a relational world where each intensity ? whether human, technological or biological ? provides a distinct, specific window onto the whole. Lash tracks the emergence and pervasion of this intensive culture in society, religion, philosophy, language, communications, politics and the neo-liberal economy itself. In so doing he redefines the work of Leibniz, Benjamin, Simmel, and Durkheim and inititates the reader into the ontological structures of our contemporary social relations. In the pursuit of intensive culture the reader is taken on an excursion from Karl Marx's Capital to the 'information theology' in the science fiction of Philip K. Dick. Diverse, engaging and rich in detail the resulting book will be of interest to all those studying social and cultural theory, sociology, media and communication and cultural studies

This penetrating book raises questions about how power operates in contemporary society. It explains how the speed of information flows has eroded the separate space needed for critical reflection. It argues that there is no longer an 'outside' to the global flows of communication and that the critique of information must take place within the information itself.

The operative unit of the information society is the idea. With the demise of depth reflection, reflexivity through the idea now operates external to the subject in its circulation through networks of humans and intelligent machines. It is these ideas that make the critique of information possible. This book is a major testament to the prospects of culture, politics and theory in the global information society.

How do global processes affect personal and social consciousness? What interplay exists between local and global forces? In Global Modernities, a stellar cast of contributors--including Zygmunt Bauman, Jonathan Friedman, Ann Game, and Göran Therborn--offer superb commentary and analysis on the interplay between the local and the global across a broad range of areas. Focusing on two major themes--social theory and social change--contributors provide powerful critiques of previous positions on the study of modernity that have tended to prioritize history. They argue for a self-reflexive approach to modernity, stressing the fluid character of interdependence and movement. Identity, memory, association, and practice are viewed as nonreducible to the nation-state. Similarly, the western path of social development is subjected to principled criticism.