Foucault is often thought to have a great deal to say about the history of madness and sexuality, but little in terms of a general analysis of government and the state.; This volume draws on Foucault's own research to challenge this view, demonstrating the central importance of his work for the study of contemporary politics.; It focuses on liberalism and neo- liberalism, questioning the conceptual opposition of freedom/constraint, state/market and public/private that inform liberal thought.

This is an introductory account of social theory and the central role of enlightenment within it. Tom Osborne argues that: contemporary social theory can only fail when viewed as a "science of society", and rather than focusing upon the question of society or even "modernity" should focus on the question of human nature. The most immediate and central topic of such a social theory should be the question of enlightenment. However, the book departs from traditional accounts locating the vocation of social theory in the system of values established in the original Enlightenment by the French philosophers and others. Rather it makes a strong argument for the ethical status of enlightenment, going on to analyze particular "regimes of enlightenment" in modernity, namely those associated with the social ethics of science, expertise, intellect and art.

Foucault is often thought to have a great deal to say about the history of madness and sexuality, but little in terms of a general analysis of government and the state.; This volume draws on Foucault's own research to challenge this view, demonstrating the central importance of his work for the study of contemporary politics.; It focuses on liberalism and neo- liberalism, questioning the conceptual opposition of freedom/constraint, state/market and public/private that inform liberal thought.

What is the point of cultural theory? Do we even know what it is? This book is at once an introduction to, and, broadly, a defence of modern cultural theory understood as a particular constellation of inquiry, one that may be all the more important in our postmodern times the more seemingly irrelevant it is to current fashions. Focusing on the work of Theodor Adorno, Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault the book argues that in spite of their differences these authors shared particularly 'modern' understandings of culture, creativity and human agency; understandings centred on the ideas of critical autonomy and creativity of thought. Even though all three were committed to scholarly empirical research, for them the function of cultural theory was not just to describe the world positivistically 'as it is' (or was) but to cultivate the conditions for ethical autonomy in their readerships by opening up ways for thinking differently and exposing the fetishisms and blockages that hinder that task. -- .