This book examines modernity through the prism of the two sovereigns - of the individual and collectivity. The book attempts to provide a stimulating meditation on the difficult and contradictory experiences of European modernity. It uses the collapse of communism in Eastern and central Europe to explore why the institutions and narratives of modernity found it so difficult to deal with problems like the meaning of freedom, the role and status of intellectuals and the legacy of the past.

Postmodernity is often claimed as a great transformation in society and culture. But is it? In this book, Keith Tester casts a cautious eye on such grandiose claims. Tester draws on a series of themes and stories from European sociology and literature to show that many of the great statements from postmodernity are misplaced. Postmodernity is not the harbinger or expression of a new world. It is a reflection of the unresolved paradoxes and possibilities of modernity. The author establishes a clearly expressed and stimulating model of modernity to demonstrate the stakes and consequences of...

This book argues that study of the media can only be culturally valuable and morally worthwhile if the lessons taught by sociology are remembered.

Keith Tester explores in this text whether we are capable of coming to terms with the world we have made. He argues that we are not. We are so confused by the wonders and the sights and sounds around us that we all try to build safe little homes in which we can, for a while, be consoled by love which is doomed to fail as soon as it is thought about and by commodities which leave us unsatisfied. We all try to make sense of our humanity by turning elsewhere: to inhuman things. All of us, that is, with enough money. This text offers an interpretation of contemporary cultural and social...

Keith Tester explores in this text whether we are capable of coming to terms with the world we have made. He argues that we are not. We are so confused by the wonders and the sights and sounds around us that we all try to build safe little homes in which we can, for a while, be consoled by love which is doomed to fail as soon as it is thought about and by commodities which leave us unsatisfied. We all try to make sense of our humanity by turning elsewhere: to inhuman things. All of us, that is, with enough money. This text offers an interpretation of contemporary cultural and social...

Zygmunt Bauman is one of the leading figures in contemporary social thought. His work ranges across issues of ethics, culture and politics. It never forgets that social thought ought to help men and women make sense of their lives and aspire towards something different. His books and essays always focus on the here and now: violence and moral indifference, globalization, consumerism, politics and individualization. They cast a sharp eye on the panaceas of 'there is no alternative'; the embrace of community and the fads of the 'counselling boom'; through which men and women are told that they...

Zygmunt Bauman is one of the most important contemporary social thinkers. He has changed the way we think about the Holocaust, postmodernity and globalisation. This is the first book to discuss all of Bauman's work, from the first essays in post-Stalinist Poland, through to his participation in 1960s Marxist revisionism, and up to the work for which he is well known in the West. Bauman's work is put into its social and historical context, and it is shown why Bauman matters.

Since the 1950s Eric Rohmer has been one of the major presences in French cinema as critic and director. This book is a sophisticated engagement with his work in which Keith Tester argues that Rohmer is not the naIve realist he is often claimed to be. Instead, his films are revealed as a sustained exercise in Catholic theology."

This unique and original collection by internationally renowned scholars uses critical engagements with ZygmuntBauman's sociology to understand the challenges that face globalized human societies at the start of the 21st century. Includes a concluding chapter by Bauman."

In this volume, the author examines what it means to be moral in contemporary social and cultural life. He takes the step of exploring what the massacres in the Balkans and Rwanda, and the Holocaust might mean to the relatively safe and secure individuals in the West.