'Psychoanalytic Mythologies' presents a collection of essays on the theme of what it is to be a human subject in a culture permeated by psychoanalytic imagery. The author disturbs the strongly-held belief of those in thrall to psychoanalysis that it is universally true, and this thesis forms the recurrent motif that binds these essays together. Instead he argues that psychoanalysis functions as something that is only ever locally true. These arguments are elaborated upon in a range of contexts, from night clubs, garages and trains to theme parks, magic circles and yoga, and the different...

'Can We Live Forever?' addresses the modern debate about the Life Extension Project that results from revolutions (actual and predicted) in bio-medicine, transplantation, cosmetic surgery, genetic counseling, stem cell research, cryonics, cloning and so forth that cumulatively promise to deliver eternal life or at least 'prolongevity'. In an engaging and thought-provoking work, the author traces the rise of the Life Extension Project and its claims against an intellectual background of recent analyses of 'waste', sustainable environments and complexity theory.

Although there has...

'The Museum of Bioprospecting, Intellectual Property, and the Public Domain' addresses one of the most heated policy debates of our day: access to genetic resources and the fair and equitable sharing of benefits. Seven scholars - an anthropologist, an economist, a sociologist, and four lawyers - discuss how a museum can flesh out the relevant ethical issues that frustrate any purely technical solution. The visitors to the proposed museum become a source of considered judgments. Commercial movies are screened and discussion follows about some aspect of bioprospecting, intellectual property,...

'Psychoanalytic Mythologies' presents a collection of essays on the theme of what it is to be a human subject in a culture permeated by psychoanalytic imagery. The author disturbs the strongly-held belief of those in thrall to psychoanalysis that it is universally true, and this thesis forms the recurrent motif that binds these essays together. Instead he argues that psychoanalysis functions as something that is only ever locally true. These arguments are elaborated upon in a range of contexts, from night clubs, garages and trains to theme parks, magic circles and yoga, and the different...

Pierre Bourdieu is widely regarded as one of the most influential sociologists of his generation, and yet the reception of his work in different cultural contexts and academic disciplines has been varied and uneven. This volume maps out the legacy of Pierre Bourdieu in contemporary social and political thought from the standpoint of classical European sociology and from the broader perspective of transatlantic social science. It brings together contributions from prominent scholars in the field, providing a range of perspectives on the continuing relevance of Bourdieu's oeuvre to...

This book responds to the some of the twenty-first century's most assuming problems of our times: global warming, sub-national terrorism, natural resource depletion, and economic, environmental and financial crises. It finds short- and long-term solutions to these global woes by looking to the city as the fulcrum for introducing sustainability around the world. Beginning with an outline of a robust strategy of sustainable cities--or sustainable city-regions--that has emerged out of over two-and-a-half decades of theoretical and practical work, the authors show why these portentous problems...

Building on many years of inquiry into the sociology of intellectuals, notably through a series of books on the sociologist, Karl Mannheim, this book brings together the results of ten years of work on the special problems of intellectuals in exile. The historical materials all relate to the emigration from Nazi Germany, not only because this event has generated the richest literature in exile studies, but also because of the author's personal connections to the situation and to a number of outstanding representatives of that exile. Case studies are devoted to the following figures:...

The contemporary importance of A. N. Whitehead (1861-1947) lies in his direct yet productive challenge to the culture of thought inherent in modernity, a challenge that suffuses science, social theory and philosophy alike. Unlike some of the more destructive aspects of postmodernism and poststructuralism, Whitehead's diagnosis of the conceptual fault lines of the modern era does not entail a passive relativism. Instead, he calls for a renewal of our concepts, offering a positive, philosophical approach based on becoming, relativity, and a reconception of subjectivity and the social. This...

There is growing interest in urbanization as currently a third of the world's urban population live in slums, and by 2030 there may be two billion slum dwellers across the globe (Davies 2004, 17). During economic crises, slum dwellers are involved in increasing feats of self-exploitation. The literature on slums and informal settlements tends to focus on economic survival strategies, particularly those of men. But how do women, as the most marginalized and excluded slum-dwellers, survive in the face of poverty and gender oppression? What are the emotional rather than material costs of...

This volume addresses a central problem of contemporary states, namely how to manage the eruption of public religions. While the liberal framework formerly regarded religion as simply a matter of private practice and conscience, in modern states religion has often come to challenge the so-called Westphalian model of church-state relations, and has brought into question many liberal notions of secularism and tolerance. There is much discussion about post-secular society in which religion has to be taken seriously in public affairs. This collection of case studies - looking at Turkey,...