This contribution to the expanding area of globalization in sociological and cultural studies has two organizing themes: social theory and social change. The contributors, who include Zygmunt Bauman, Jonathan Friedman, Anthony King, Ann Game and Goran Therborn concentrate on the spatialization of social theory, and offer a critique of previous positions on the study of modernity which have tended to prioritize history. This study argues for a self-reflexive approach to modernity, stresses the fluid character of interdependence and movement, and provides a commentary on the interplay between the local and the global, showing how global processes structure personal and social consciousness.
Professor Scott Lash is the Director of the Centre for Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths College, as well as a a project leader in the Goldsmiths Media Research Programme. He is a leading name within sociology and cultural studies, has written numerous books and articles over the last twenty years, and is currently the managing editor for the journal Theory, Culture and Society. Roland Robertson is Professor of Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh. His books include International Systems and the Modernization of Societies (with J P Nettl, 1968) The Sociological Interpretation of Religion (1970) Meaning and Change: Explorations in the Cultural Sociology of Modern Societies (1978), Religion and Global Order (co-edited with William R Garrett, 1991) and Talcott Parsons: Theorist of Modernity (co-edited with Bryan S Turner
Globalization, Modernity and the Spatialization of Social Theory - Mike Featherstone and Scott Lash An Introduction Glocalization - Roland Robertson Time-Space and Homogeneity-Heterogeneity Globalization as Hybridization - Jan Nederveen Pieterse Global System, Globalization and the Parameters of Modernity - Jonathan Friedman New World Order or Neo-World Orders - Timothy W Luke Power, Politics and Ideology in Informationalizing Glocalities The Times and Spaces of Modernity (or Who Needs Postmodernism?) - Anthony D King Routes to/through Modernity - G[um]oran Therborn Searching for a Centre that Holds - Zygmunt Bauman Security, Philosophy and Politics - Michael Dillon Normality - Exception - Counter-knowledge - Benno Wagner On the History of a Modern Fascination Time, Space, Memory with Reference to Bachelard - Ann Game The Soviet Individual - Oleg Kharkhordin Genealogy of a Dissimulating Animal Bio-politics and the Spectre of Incest - Vikki Bell Sexuality and/in the Family The Birth of Identity Politics in the 1960s - Eli Zaretsky Psychoanalysis and the Public/Private Division The Modern Error - Eugene Halton Or, the Unbearable Enlightenment of Being
`A timely contribution to current debates around globalization theory and an excellent introduction to this complex and contradictory field of study. Globalization theory has not simply supplanted postmodernism, but has rather refocused many of the issues raised by postmodernism towards a more serious reappraisal of the whole question of modernity itself' - Habitat International
