Late Modernity And Social Change

In this incisive text, Heaphy introduces the work of Giddens, Bauman, Foucault and Baudrillard to show exactly how the arguments of the great contemporary theorists play out against extended examples from real-life.

Recent social changes have had an enormous impact on the lives of young people. The authors ask whether traditional parameters are still relevant, and examine the extent to which 'risk' and 'individualisation' convey an accurate picture of young lives.

This major study develops a new account of modernity and its relation to the self. Building upon the ideas set out in The Consequences of Modernity, Giddens argues that 'high' or 'late' modernity is a post traditional order characterised by a developed institutional reflexivity. In the current period, the globalising tendencies of modern institutions are accompanied by a transformation of day-to-day social life having profound implications for personal activities. The self becomes a 'reflexive project', sustained through a revisable narrative of self identity. The reflexive project of the self, the author seeks to show, is a form of control or mastery which parallels the overall orientation of modern institutions towards 'colonising the future'. Yet it also helps promote tendencies which place that orientation radically in question - and which provide the substance of a new political agenda for late modernity. In this book Giddens concerns himself with themes he has often been accused of unduly neglecting, including especially the psychology of self and self-identity. The volumes are a decisive step in the development of his thinking, and will be essential reading for students and professionals in the areas of social and political theory, sociology, human geography and social psychology.

"Understanding Youth in Late Modernity is a highly readable book which lends itself bothas a solid introduction and a reference point to the historical developments and theoreticaldebates taking place within the discipline of youth studies. This book provides a highly accessible text for anybody interested in the subject of youth and its changing role in late modernity. I thoroughly recommend it." Journal of Contemporary European Studies This illuminating new book embeds our understanding of the youth question within a historical context. It shows how the ideas of past political action, in conjunction with the diverse paradigms of social science disciplines, have shaped modern conceptions of the youth question. This relationship between the political and the academic is then explored through a detailed examination of contemporary debates about youth, in areas such as; transitions, education, crime policy and criminology, consumption and youth culture. From this analysis the book is able to show how the youth question in late modernity is being shaped. This important text includes: A historical overview of the making of modern youth, identifying major changes that took place over three centuries Examples of how political and academic responses construct youth as a social problem An evaluation of the impact of social change in late modernity on our understanding of the youth question and the everyday lives of the young. The book concludes by suggesting that in contemporary understandings of the youth question significant differences exist between the political and the academic. Major challenges exist if this gap is to be addressed and a new public social science needs to emerge that reconstitutes debates about youth within a form of communicative democracy. Understanding Youth in Late Modernity is key reading for students and academics interested in the historical conception of the youth problem, its evolution throughout modernity and endeavours to find a solution.

In times of entrenched social upheaval and multiple crises, we need the kind of social theory that is prepared to look at the big picture, analyze the broad developmental features of modern societies, their structural conditions and dynamics, and point to possible ways out of the crises we face. Over the last couple of decades, two German sociologists, Andreas Reckwitz and Hartmut Rosa, have sought to provide wide-ranging social theories of this kind. While their theories are very different, they share in common the view that the analysis of modernity as a social formation must be kept at the heart of sociology, and that the theory of society should ultimately serve to diagnose the crises of the present. In this book, Andreas Reckwitz and Hartmut Rosa join forces to examine the value and the limits of a theory of society today. They provide clear and concise accounts of their own theories of society, explicate their key concepts – including “singularization” in the case of Reckwitz, “acceleration” and “resonance” in the case of Rosa – and draw out the implications of their theories for understanding the multiple crises we face today. The result is a book that provides both an excellent introduction to the work of two of the most important sociologists writing today and a vivid demonstration of the value of the kind of bold social theory of modern societies that they espouse.

This collection of original essays critically examines the relationship between ritual, embodiment, and social change in the South Pacific. Over the past few decades, the societies of Melanesia have undergone profound and revolutionary social change. Encounters with colonialism, postcolonialism, and the forces of globalization have put indigenous peoples in touch with processes of state formation, late capitalist culture, and the emergence of a complex network of transnational identities. In addition to shaping the contours of the nation state, these developments are having a profound impact on the nature of embodied experience. In recent years, many Melanesian societies have witnessed the rise of charismatic Christianity, changing gender configurations, and the growing use of consumerism as a means of defining new social and political hierarchies. Embodying Modernity and Post-Modernity provides detailed analyses of those social changes that are becoming part of contemporary Melanesia. Written by experts with first-hand fieldwork experience, this volume furnishes novel insights concerning the social implications of modernity and postmodernity. More specifically, it addresses two interrelated themes: how the rise of new social and economic forms has influenced the ways in which Melanesians think about, experience and act upon their bodies, and the ways in which these new forms of bodily experience contribute to the emergence of new social and cultural identities. This book is part of the Ritual Studies Monograph Series, edited by Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strathern, Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh. "While this volume will be of particular interest for regional specialists and theorists of the body, it also makes important contributions to historical analysis of colonial and post-colonial interpretations of modernity and ritual studies. The editor also deserves credit for bringing together a cohesive text, one in which the articles usefully speak to and complement one another." -- Anthropological Forum "This book is a must read for scholars of Melanesia and all scholars of the Anthropology of the Body. There is much to be gleaned theoretically from these ethnographically rich essays." -- Oceania

What is modernity? Do we all experience modernity in the same way? How should we understand contemporary social change? This volume explores questions of modernity through critical engagements with the work of Anthony Giddens, focusing in particular on the relationships between his social theory and political sociology. Three substantive areas - reflexivity, environment and identity - are examined theoretically through the relationships between reflexivity and rationality, life politics and institutional power, and universalism and 'difference'. As well as specifically addressing Giddens' reconstruction of sociology, the contributors also explore a wide variety of critical issues currently occupying centre stage in social theory. These include questions about the character of contemporary societies, the periodisation of social change, the processes of change by which societies are constantly made and remade by people, the relationships between the 'social' and the 'natural', the formation and maintenance of identities and matters of epistemology and methodology in social science. Theorising Modernity will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students of sociology, modern political thought, social geography and social policy and to social scientists trying to make sense of the modernity debate. Martin O'Brien is Research at the University of Derby. Sue Penna is a Lecturer in Applied Social Science at Lancaster University. Colin Hay is a Lecturer in the Department of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Birmingham (UK), a Visiting Fellow of the Department of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US) and Research Affiliate of the Centre for European Studies at Harvard University (US).

Anthony Giddens is widely recognized as one of the most important sociologists of the post-war period. This is the first full-length work to examine Giddens′ social theory. It guides the reader through Giddens′ early attempt to overcome the duality of structure and agency. He saw this duality as a major failing of social theories of modernity. His attempt to resolve the problem can be regarded as the key to the development of his brandmark `structuration theory′. The book is the most complete and thorough assessment of Giddens′ work currently available. It incorporates insights from many different perspectives into his theory of structuration, his work on the formation of cultural identities and the fate of the nation-state. This far-reaching work also touches on issues such as the transformation of modern intimacy and sexuality, and the fate of politics in late modern society.

We live in a time of great uncertainty about the future. Those heady days of the late twentieth century, when the end of the Cold War seemed to be ushering in a new and more optimistic age, now seem like a distant memory. During the last couple of decades, we’ve been battered by one crisis after another and the idea that humanity is on a progressive path to a better future seems like an illusion. It is only now that we can see clearly the real scope and structure of the profound shifts that Western societies have undergone over the last 30 years. Classical industrial society has been transformed into a late-modern society that is molded by polarization and paradoxes. The pervasive singularization of the social, the orientation toward the unique and exceptional, generates systematic asymmetries and disparities, and hence progress and unease go hand in hand. Reckwitz examines this dual structure of singularization and polarization as it plays itself out in the different sectors of our societies and, in so doing, he outlines the central structural features of the present: the new class society, the characteristics of a postindustrial economy, the conflict about culture and identity, the exhaustion of the self resulting from the imperative to seek authentic fulfillment, and the political crisis of liberalism. Building on his path-breaking work The Society of Singularities, this new book will be of great interest to students and scholars in sociology, politics, and the social sciences generally, and to anyone concerned with the great social and political issues of our time.

In this major new work, which Zygmunt Bauman calls a '"tour de force" of breathtaking erudition and clarity', Jock Young charts the movement of the social fabric in the last third of the twenthieth century from an inclusive society of stability and homogeneity to an exclusive society of change and division. Jock Young, one of the foremost criminologists of our time, explores exclusion on three levels: economic exclusion from the labour market; social exclusion between people in civil society; and the ever-expanding exclusionary activities of the criminal justice system. Taking account of the massive dramatic structural and cultural changes that have beset our society and relating these to the quantum leap in crime and incivilities, Jock Young develops a major new theory based on a new citizenship and a reflexive modernity.