'A book which all students of the human sciences will find useful, both for its range of engagements and its pedagogic ambitions. To be read and to be enjoyed' - Nigel Thrift, University of Bristol

This book is the essential roadmap to the key concepts which frame our understanding of society and culture. From cybernetics to quantum theory, from ideology to power, from aesthetics to mimesis, this book spans a range of disciplines to provide an insight into the current scientific and intellectual state of society. Written by the author of the...

Divided into two parts, this book examines the train of social theory from the 19th century, through to the organization of modernity', in relation to ideas of social planning, and as contributors to the rationalistic revolution' of the golden age' of capitalism in the 1950s and 60s. Part two examines key concepts in the social sciences. It begins with some of the broadest concepts used by social scientists: choice, decision, action and institution and moves on to examine the collectivist alternative': the concepts of society, culture and polity, which are often dismissed as untenable by...

This fascinating collection explores the growing range of body modification practices such as piercing, tattooing, branding, cutting and inserting implants, which have sprung up recently in the West. It asks whether this implies that we are returning to traditional tribal practices of inscribing identities onto bodies on the part of 'modern primitives', or is body modification better understood as purely cosmetic and decorative with body markings merely temporary signs of transferable loyalties?

Contributors address the question of the permanence of body transformation through fitness...

No national tradition of social theory has been more seductive to Anglo-American readers than the French.There has been a long-standing fascination with French ideas and debates.

This extraordinarily accomplished book, written by one of Britain's leading commentators on social theory, provides a peerless account of the French tradition.The book: provides a systematic account of French social theory from the aftermath of the French Revolution (St Simon, Bazard and Comte) to the contemporary scene dominated by Kristeva, Deleuze, Bourdieu and Baudrillard; divides French social...

The screenplays and films of Quentin Tarantino raise profound comic and ethical dilemmas. Developing ideas from Lacanian psychoanalysis, Botting and Wilson explore ethical issues in relation to Tarantino's work, postmodernity and recent cultural theory. They argue that Tarantino's texts provide a provocative and telling contribution to theorized accounts of contemporary culture.

The term Tarantinian' has been coined to refer to a set of sampled, self-authorizing signs that are cinematically assembled in processes of consuming-producing-expending' in the general context of a postmodern...

Edited by one of the leading Virilio authority's, this book offers the reader a guide through Virilio's work. Using the interview form, Virilio speaks incisively and at length about a vast assortment of cultural and theoretical topics, including architecture and speed-space', chronopolitics', art and technoculture, modernism, postmodernism and hypermodernism', the time of the trajectory and the information bomb'. His thoughts on Foucault, Baudrillard, Deleuze and Guattari, the performance artist Stelarc, the Persian War and the Kosovo War, are also gathered together.

'The book is an important read for persons who practice or study within the field. Anyone with experience or interest in the topic will come away with a deepened understanding of debates within cultural studies and with an array of nfew questions and ideas to pursue. The book would make a fine text for graduate level classes dealing with culture and media; the question/debate-orientated structure especially could provide the launching pad for a whole range of discussions, profjects, and papter topics'

The Southern Communication Journal

In this sequel to the...

Sociologists have objected to the rise of cultural studies on the grounds that it produces cultural relativism and lacks a stable research agenda. This book looks at these criticisms and illustrates the relevance of a sociological perspective in the analysis of human practice. It analyzes the principles of belonging and conflict in society.

Couze Venn's book makes an outstanding contribution to our understanding of postcolonial theory and its engagement with significant changes within the contemporary world. Couze Venn forces us to rethink the very parameters of the post-colonial and suggests a new political economy for post-modern times. This critical engagement opens up the possibility to reimagine the world from its current narrow European strictures to a world full of alternative possibilities and modernities. Venn's book adds a new dimension to the scholarly literature on postcolonial studies with the suggestion that such a...

Examines the embodied nature of people's experience in, and of, the modern world. This book argues that bodies in nature are subject to novel, complex and contradictory opportunities of freedom and escape, surveillance and monitoring.