Jeffrey C. Alexander is a Professor at the depatment of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He has been a Fellow at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies and at SCASSS in Sweden. His other books include "Twenty Lectures: Sociological Theory since World War Two" (Columbia, 1987); "Action and its Environments" (Columbia, 1988); "Fin-de-Siecle Social Theory" (Verso, 1995); "Neofunctionalism" (Sage, 1985), "Culture and Society: Contemporary Debates" (with Steven Seidman, Cambridge, 1990).