It has been argued that globalization assists the USA to gain a hegemonic position, allowing it to export its culture. Because this exportation leads to the domination by American culture of the local cultures of importing countries, which are the key element in sustaining their citizens’ national identity, citizens of these countries are unable to protect state sovereignty from this cultural invasion. In order to prevent a political crisis arising from such an invasion, these countries will adopt the strategy of (...) cultural localization. However, this top-down approach overestimates the influence of hegemonic cultures and, thus, overlooks the dynamic nature of cultural development that is generated by people’s agency. This essay rejects this top-down model by arguing that texts cannot dominate people, and that people influence their existence and value. (shrink)

A connection is often made between postmodernism and nihilism, but the full meaning of such a connection is rarely explored. The contemporary Italian philosopher Gianni Vattimo is one of the few philosophers to have devoted much work to explaining this connection. Vattimo extrapolates the relevance of Nietzsche’s theory of nihilism for the postmodern condition, arguing that the concept of the postmodern can only be thought rigorously in relation to the nihilistic destiny of the West. This article explores Vattimo’s postmodern reading (...) of Nietzsche and argues that this reading helps to illuminate (1) the connection between nihilism and the postmodern; (2) the postmodern transformation of nihilism, which was originally a theory of the ails of modernity rather than of postmodernity; and (3) why postmodernists may wish to affirm nihilism rather than take the accusation that postmodernism is nihilistic as a charge that must be refuted. (shrink)

School reforms in the late 19th century, mirroring larger social, economic, and political changes in American society, account für the permanent lodging of science into the high school curriculum. Major changes in science courses, texts, and instruction occurred in these years. These changes then and since, however, were marked by ideological struggles among groups of reformers representing university academics, policy makers, and educators over why science knowledge and pedagogy reflected deeply embedded value conflicts in American democracy and over the purposes (...) of the high school in such a society. (shrink)

Many critics have questioned the ethics of advertising as an institution in current American society. The purpose of this paper is to critically examine three negative social trends that have been attributed to advertising: (a) the elevation of consumption over other social values, (b) the increasing use of goods to satisfy social needs, and (c) the increasing dissatisfaction of individual consumers. This explanation yields a defense of advertising which argues that the underlying cause of these negative trends is not advertising, (...) but a larger social factor - capitalism. Solutions that address the capitalistic roots of these negative social trends are suggested. (shrink)

Concern about the environment and sustainable growth has raised questions related to resource availability and limits regarding the ability of the planet to provide everyone with an improved material standard of living. Such concerns lead to charges that the industrialized world, particularly the United states, is living beyond its means and taking more than its share of resources to produce a life style that is not sustainable. Whether overconsumption is a legitimate problem and changing patterns of consumption are necessary are (...) questions that need discussion. The Protestant Ethic provided moral limits on consumption during the early stages of industrialization in Western Europe and the United States. This ethic weakened during the development of a consumer society, prompting speculation that a new environmental ethic is needed to perform the same function in modern society. (shrink)

: This essay expresses ambivalence about the use of the term "evil" in analyses of terrorism in light of the association of the two in speeches intended to justify the United States' "war on terrorism." At the same time, the essay suggests that terrorism can be regarded as "evil" but only when considered among a multiplicity of "evils" comparable to it, for example: rape, war crimes, and repression.

This chapter explores the personal and professional obstacles faced by Humanities and Social Science scholars contemplating pre-publication of their scholarly work in an on-line network. Borrowing a theoretical framework from the radical educational theorist Ivan Illich, it also develops the idea that pre-publication networks offer higher education a bottom-up, decentralized alternative to business-modeled e-learning. If learners would only embrace this more anarchical medium, appreciating writing for pre-publication as a process of open-ended discovery rather than product delivery, then the prospect of (...) deinstitutionalizing e-learning could become an exciting new reality. The chapter’s methodology is a combination of normative-theoretical analysis and small sample (n=2) case study based on the author’s personal and professional experiences. While the generalizability (or external validity) of the conclusions is limited, the author hopes to motivate further inquiry into the connection between on-line pre-publication and e-learning. (shrink)

This paper addresses the relations between art and everyday life in the city from the vantage points of urban aesthetics and sociology, where the “city” refers as well to a normative world. The aim is to show how art/artistic life contributed to the normative change and new urban lifestyles. First, I focus on Baudelaire’s theory of beauty and life in modern metropolis or the city as “poetic object” and dandyism as an art of the self, seen as a crucial normative (...) change: the emergence of new norms of excellence and art of living, such as creativity and self-fashioning. Second, I discuss a recent yet related normative change, described by Boltanski and Chiapello as a passage to the “project-oriented city”, seen as a new way of working and living that fuses cultures of creativity and uncertainty. Third, I tackle the “creative city” hailed by Florida, where the creative lifestyle of “creative people” is the new mainstream setting the norms for society: individuality, diversity and openness, but also impermanent relationships and loose ties. I will argue that extending the hyper-mobile and flexible creative lifestyle from the extraordinary figure of the artist to ordinary people, as everyday urban life, triggers both benefits and risks. (shrink)

Despite the fact that the sociological notion ‘individualization’ contains the most heterogeneous phenomena, the article develops an interpretation of the fate of individualization in Western capitalism today. After having differentiated three different meanings of that notion with the help of Georg Simmel, the position is defended that the claims to individual self-realization, which have rapidly multiplied in the Western societies of thirty or forty years ago, have become so much a feature of the institutionalized expectations inherent in social reproduction that (...) the particular goals of such claims are lost and they are transmuted into a support of the system’s legitimacy. The result of this paradoxical reversal, where the processes which once promised an increase of qualitative freedom are henceforth altered into an ideology of de-institutionalization, is the emergence in individuals of a number of symptoms of inner emptiness, of feeling oneself to be superfluous, and of absence of purpose. (shrink)

This chapter proposes the concept of the mindsponge and its underlying themes that explain why and how executives, managers, and corporations could replace waning values in their mindsets with those absorbed during their exposure to multicultural and global settings. It first provides a brief literature review on global mindset and cultural values, which suggests that not only can a mindset be improved, but that it is learning mechanism can also be developed. Then the chapter offers a conceptual framework, called the (...) 'mindsponge', which builds upon earlier works linking mindset to themes of multi-filtering. The process is proposed to help identify emerging values in the transition economy of Vietnam and also to reconfirm existing core values. The concept of mindsponge provides executives, managers, and organizations with not only a practical framework for improving their global mind-set by identifying and strengthening core values, but also capturing emerging opportunities. (shrink)

The monograph presents the ideas about the main changes that occurred in the development of technologies from the emergence of Homo sapiens till present time and outlines the prospects of their development in the next 30–60 years and in some respect until the end of the twenty-first century. What determines the transition of a society from one level of development to another? One of the most fundamental causes is the global technological transformations. Among all major technological breakthroughs in history the (...) most important are three production revolutions: 1) the Agrarian Revolution; 2) the Industrial Revolution; and 3) the Cybernetic one. The book introduces the theory of production revolutions which is a new valuable explanatory paradigm that analyzes causes and trends of dramatic shifts in historical process. The authors describe the course of technological transformations in history and demonstrate a possible application of the theory to explain the present and forthcoming technological changes. They analyze the technological shifts which took place in the second half of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and forecast the main shifts in the next half a century. On this basis the authors present a detailed analysis of the latest production revolution which is denoted as ‘Сybernetic’. They make some predictions about its development in the nearest five decades and up to the end of the twenty-first century and show that the development of various self-regulating systems will be the main trend of this revolution. The authors argue that the transition to the starting final phase of the Cybernetic Revolution (in the 2030–2040s) will first occur in the field of medicine (in some its innovative branches). In future we will deal with the started convergence of innovative technologies which will form the system of MANBRIC-technologies (i.e. the technological paradigm based on medicine, additive, nano- and bio- technologies, robotics, IT and cognitive technologies). The monograph gives an outline of the future breakthroughs in medicine and some other technologies (between the 2010s and 2070s). (shrink)

This article proceeds from the assumption that the transition to socialism must take account of individuals as they are, not as they might be. The emphasis on the individual appears to be inconsistent with the marxian basis of socialist thought. Attempts to resolve this inconsistency have led marxists to concentrate on cultural and psychological explanations of people within capitalist society. We criticise these attempts, and argue for a view of the individual in society which recognises personal autonomy yet acknowledges the (...) role of structural forces in social change. Given this model, we then ask if there is any indication of individual changes within contemporary capitalism which promote the transition to socialism. In contrast to the pessimistic interpretations which dominate the literature, we argue that the present psychological and cultural states of individuals within capitalism can engender socialist change. (shrink)

In this address I examine the challenges of achieving food system sustainability. Starting from the position that most people want a food system that is “sustainable” and that we have a great reservoir of unapplied technical knowledge applicable to increasing sustainability, I argue that the big issue is collective decision-making to accomplish the goal of sustainability. Using the metaphor of a sailing ship, I raise three questions about steering collectively toward sustainability: What do we want? What are our options? And, (...) how do we decide among the options? (shrink)

Are we rapidly approaching the end of the work-centered society? This article contends that at the century's end we may witness the disappearance of the great productivist utopias of the 1920s and 1930s. The crisis of productivist systems and ideologies may be far more significant than the more narrowly defined crisis of communism, or of `Fordism', that many critics have identified. Shifts in the forms of metaphor and the technology of work are taking place which call into question traditional notions (...) of the biopolitics of work. Modern productivism - the productivism of the industrial revolution - was governed by the belief that human society and nature are linked by the primacy and ultimate interchangeability (convertibility) of all productive activity. It presupposes a metaphor of the motor which first appeared during the first quarter of the 19th century. With the eclipse of the metaphor of the human motor, we can ask whether the end of the `work-centered model of society' might be attributed to the decline of its most compelling metaphor. If the body no longer occupies the central metaphor of productivism, what does this mean for the new configuration of labor and the model of labor based on information processing rather than the generation of things or the conversion of force? (shrink)

This article develops a concept of lyrical sociology, a sociology I oppose to narrative sociology, by which I mean standard quantitative inquiry with its "narratives" of variables as well as those parts of qualitative sociology that take a narrative and explanatory approach to social life. Lyrical sociology is characterized by an engaged, nonironic stance toward its object of analysis, by specific location of both its subject and its object in social space, and by a momentaneous conception of social time. Lyrical (...) sociology typically uses strong figuration and personification, and aims to communicate its author's emotional stance toward his or her object of study, rather than to "explain" that object. The analysis considers many examples and draws on literary criticism, the philosophy of time, and the theory of emotion. It also addresses contemporary debates in ethnography. (shrink)

Across the globe, radical conservative political forces and ideas are influencing and even transforming the landscape of international politics. Yet IR is remarkably ill-equipped to understand and engage these new challenges. Unlike political theory or domestic political analyses, conservatism has no distinctive place in the fields’ defining alternatives of realism, liberalism, Marxism, and constructivism. This paper seeks to provide a point of entry for such engagement by bringing together what may seem the most unlikely of partners: critical theory and the (...) New Right. Important parts of today’s New Right represent self-conscious appropriations of Critical themes and thinkers—turning them to self-declared “reactionary” ends. Developing outside the confines of the academy, these forms of thought have woven insights from across Critical theory into new and mobilizing forms of conservative ideology, seeking to link that ideology to social forces that play increasingly active roles in global politics. Our intention here is not to somehow blame Critical perspectives for the ideas of the New Right, either directly or by association. Rather, we seek to show how an engagement with Critical theory helps us understand the New Right, while also demonstrating some of the direct challenges the New Right poses for critical perspectives. (shrink)

This review explores the present fashion for aesthetics in contemporary sociology. It evaluates the claims that society is undergoing a deep-seated process of aestheticization, and that sociology is experiencing an aestheticization of its epistemological concerns. The aestheticization literature is divided as follows: (1) the re-reading of classical sociological theory through the aesthetic dimension of modernity; (2) the claim that postmodern society involves an `aestheticization of everyday life'; and (3) those sociological theories which stress that contemporary society is more and more (...) like a work of art in its form. The argument is made that the discovery of aesthetics as a way of problematizing sociological reasoning is to some extent rediscovery, returning to various Kantian precepts: the disinterestedness characteristic of aesthetic experiences; the antinomy between the individual and the social aspects of taste; and the work of art as an organism predicated on an inner teleology. (shrink)

Kendal Mobley replies to Christopher Catherwood's article ‘Nationalism, ethnicity and tolerance: some historical, political and biblical perspectives’, published in Transformation, Vol 14, no. 1, January 1997, p. 10.

Business research and teaching institutions play an important role in shaping the way businesses perceive their relations to the broader society and its moral expectations. Hence, as ethical scandals recently arose in the business world, questions related to the civic responsibilities of business scholars and to the role business schools play in society have gained wider interest. In this article, I argue that these ethical shortcomings are at least partly resulting from the mainstream business model with its taken-for granted basic (...) assumptions such as specialization or the value-neutrality of business research. Redefining the roles and civic responsibilities of business scholars for business practice implies therefore a thorough analysis of these assumptions if not their redefinition. The takenforgrantedness of the mainstream business model is questioned by the transformation of the societal context in which business activities are embedded. Its value-neutrality in turn is challenged by self-fulfilling prophecy effects, which highlight the normative influence of business schools. In order to critically discuss some basic assumptions of mainstream business theory, I propose to draw parallels with the corporate citizenship concept and the stakeholder theory. Their integrated approach of the relation between business practice and the broader society provides interesting insights for the social reembedding of business research and teaching. (shrink)

Daniel Bell’s The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism lies at the intersection of the three main theoretical currents of sociological thought, those of Karl Marx, Émile Durkheim and Max Weber. His ‘three realms’ methodology moves away from deterministic accounts that subordinate the political and cultural to the economic realm. By granting each realm an autonomy and principles of their own, Bell locates the contradictions of capitalism in the friction between them. With constant innovation, individual expressiveness and libertarian social values becoming forces (...) in-and-of-themselves, prevailing social structures and the roles within them are left looking increasingly incoherent, illegitimate and meaningless. Likewise, the shift from Protestant asceticism to modernist hedonism creates a sharp tension between the demand for a disciplined and responsible workforce and the demand for economic growth through unrestrained and instantly gratifying consumerism. The result is a complex of crisis scenarios which were manifest with the end of the post-war boom. However, as other commentators have pointed out, Bell’s prophetic theses often seem to fail under the light of subsequent history. (shrink)

Business research and teaching institutions play an important role in shaping the way businesses perceive their relations to the broader society and its moral expectations. Hence, as ethical scandals recently arose in the business world, questions related to the civic responsibilities of business scholars and to the role business schools play in society have gained wider interest. In this article, I argue that these ethical shortcomings are at least partly resulting from the mainstream business model with its taken-for granted basic (...) assumptions such as specialization or the value-neutrality of business research. Redefining the roles and civic responsibilities of business scholars for business practice implies therefore a thorough analysis of these assumptions if not their redefinition. The taken-for-grantedness of the mainstream business model is questioned by the transformation of the societal context in which business activities are embedded. Its value-neutrality in turn is challenged by self-fulfilling prophecy effects, which highlight the normative influence of business schools. In order to critically discuss some basic assumptions of mainstream business theory, I propose to draw parallels with the corporate citizenship concept and the stakeholder theory. Their integrated approach of the relation between business practice and the broader society provides interesting insights for the social reembedding of business research and teaching. (shrink)

Populism’s Challenges to Political Reason can be seen as a consequence of social and cultural trends, the so called ‘emotional culture’, that have been accentuated in recent decades. By considering those trends, this article aims at shedding light on some distinctive marks of contemporary populism in order to argue for a reconfiguration of the public sphere that, without ignoring emotion, recovers argumentation and persuasion based on facts and reason.

The relevance of the research topic. After the World War II the leaders and intellectuals of the world were forced to look for new principles and methods of management. New theories for analysis of complex systems appeared. The D. Meadows’ group from the Club of Rome and other analysts discovered the fact of the deepening humanity in an irreversible and deadly crisis. Up to now, economists and politicians have not offered a way to guarantee rescue. However, there is a consensus (...) that hopes can be linked to the development of education and science in the world. The phrase “internationalization of higher education ” is used more and more often, and the number of scientific works is growing rapidly. However, in our opinion, the phenomenon of IHE is perceived superficially because of inattention to the latest scientific achievements, which are not followed by humanities scholars. This caused our interest and stimulated the desire to prove that global process of IHE started in accordance with the laws of the evolution of industrial production. The purpose of our study is to apply the theory of analysis of very large systems to the phenomena of kinds and variants internationalization to obtain the most probable scenarios for human progress. The task of the study is seen in the critical analysis of the trend we noted in the process of training the PhD-level professional in space and time and transforming the figure of a young worker from a national to an international “product” of the systems of education and training. The methodology of the research was dictated by the chosen goal and tasks under the pressure of the grandiose object – a complex of educational systems in a globalized planet environment. This is due to the use of the means of many sciences, theories of systemic research and a multidisciplinary approach in the conditions of global evolutionism. The results of the study in their essence, are still based on historical methods, in conjunction with the achievements of young sciences – synergetics, theories of complex systems, and others. An original table was created to match the agrarian, industrial and informational societies – those within which the system of higher education had been developed. The direction of its characterization has proven that the autonomy of universities has been diminished at present, the size of the whole system and its orientation towards political and economic demands have increased. It is indicated at the time when the high school began to lose its national character and to acquire features of internationality. It is noted that this coincided with the growth of the volume and impact of globalization and its study mainly within the humanities. The widespread representation of the interaction in higher education with the influences of globalization and internationalization, the basic definitions and differentiation, etc. is presented. The newest data on internationalization within the universities and far beyond them in state and interstate institutions are presented. The conclusions and recommendations formulated and proved the main hypothesis of our study and its main result. It consists in the fact that the higher school in general began to reproduce the path of industry with its variant of internationalization – a combination of products of many countries. We argue that in higher education the division of time and space of educational programs, institutions, places of internship, etc. began. Instead of ensuring PhD competences within a single state, basic schooling is found to be more profitable in one place, the profile secondary is in the other, the baccalaureate or master’s program in the country “A”, postgraduate study somewhere in “B”, the final professional development in the best world’s centers of MBA or some other training in London or Harvard. From this follows the following conclusion: Ukraine’s resources are already inadequate for the preparation of national personnel of the highest world quality. Such a “product” has already become international. (shrink)

Foucault’s understanding of the history and contemporary significance of ascetic practices or exercises of cultivation (ascesis) differs significantly from attempts which consider the renewal of asceticism in spiritual or even religious terms. This paper tries to show that he thought about related problems from the perspective of aesthetic cultivation. The first part will discuss his analysis of sexuality within the broader context of his theory-formation and elaborate on the theoretical structure of his concept of self-cultivation. In the second part I (...) will situate the idea of creative ascesis in a broader historical context. The third part will provide a preliminary perspective on the transcultural significance of relating Foucault and contemporary Chinese philosophy. (shrink)

In Capitalism and the Jews, Jerry Z. Muller attempts to resolve Milton Friedman's paradox: Why is it that Jewish intellectuals have been so hostile to capitalism even though capitalism has so greatly benefited the Jews? In one chapter Muller answers, in effect, that Jewish intellectuals have not been anticapitalist. Elsewhere, however, Muller implicitly explains the leftist tendencies of most intellectuals—Jewish and gentile—by unspooling the anticapitalist thread in the main lines of Western thought, culminating in Marx but by no means ending (...) with him. Thus, Milton Friedman saw a paradox where none existed. This may have been because Friedman was an economist, and economics is the one strand of Western thought that is, by and large, procapitalist. To an economist, opposition to capitalism may be paradoxical; to noneconomists, economics is alienating in its form and in its content. There is thus no mystery as to why intellectuals, including Jewish intellectuals, tend to shun economics and therefore gravitate to the left. (shrink)

The more diverse cultures and values a country perceives to be "normal" even "just", the more it needs to search for a public philosophy. Having developed only recently, China, which is speedily progressing towards a market economy, can be considered this kind of country. This article takes Daniel Bell's concept of modern society and public household as the basis for expatiating on some chief problems and the ways to solve them. It pays special attention to investigating the public ethic while (...) probing public philosophy, and it argues that the public ethic is an ethic that deals with public affairs in the public realm, especially the social political realm; with respect to all people involved, it is a common ethic or an ethic with openness. It is also an ethic that appeals to public opinion and public reason, and tries to find consensus from the demands of different values. Furthermore, because it refers to fundamental public benefits, it has to be a normative ethic of universalism and of baseline holders. (shrink)

The geography of contemporary bohemia is integral to Richard Florida’s thesis of the rise of a new creative class in the USA. The strong correlation between the presence of bohemians and innovative high-tech industries in a number of American cities stands in sharp contrast to the historical image of a bohemian subculture of artists and intellectuals, defined by their antagonistic relationship to bourgeois society. Rather than a sign of social marginality, bohemian life-styles have now become a marker of the ‘new (...) economy’, variously labeled the creative, the cultural or the aesthetic economy. In my paper I want to compare and contrast these two opposed images of bohemia – the 19th-century idea of bohemia as the libertarian other of liberal-bourgeois society and the new, highly topical economic geography of bohemia – with the following questions in mind: How and why does the 19th-century artistic critique of capitalism mutate into an expression of the new spirit of capitalism? Does this change from an antagonistic to an affirmative relationship signal the emergence of a new spirit of art that can be related to the new spirit of capitalism? (shrink)

This essay expresses ambivalence about the use of the term "evil" in analyses of terrorism in light of the association of the two in speeches intended to justify the United States' "war on terrorism." At the same time, the essay suggests that terrorism can be regarded as "evil" but only when considered among a multiplicity of "evils" comparable to it, for example: rape, war crimes, and repression.

This article takes as its starting point the observation that neoliberalism is a concept that is ‘oft-invoked but ill-defined’. It provides a taxonomy of uses of the term neoliberalism to include: an all-purpose denunciatory category; ‘the way things are’; an institutional framework characterizing particular forms of national capitalism, most notably the Anglo-American ones; a dominant ideology of global capitalism; a form of governmentality and hegemony; and a variant within the broad framework of liberalism as both theory and policy discourse. It (...) is argued that this sprawling set of definitions are not mutually compatible, and that uses of the term need to be dramatically narrowed from its current association with anything and everything that a particular author may find objectionable. In particular, it is argued that the uses of the term by Michel Foucault in his 1978–9 lectures, found in The Birth of Biopolitics, are not particularly compatible with its more recent status as a variant of dominant ideology or hegemony theories. It instead proposes understanding neoliberalism in terms of historical institutionalism, with Foucault’s account of historical change complementing Max Weber’s work identifying the distinctive economic sociology of national capitalisms. (shrink)

Annotation A challenge to our perception of how cultures and ideals are formed, this book shows that while structural ideals allow people to co-operate as they work toward goals - their own or those of their community - these images of perfection, so easily accepted as the unalterable structure of our society, can be changed, and are changed by individuals.

Daniel Bell was one of the leading American sociologists in the 20th century, widely read both inside and outside the universities. He produced influential theses about the rise of post-industrial society and about the cultural contradictions of modern capitalism that saw it torn between restraint and hedonism. Bell was also notable for another reason. He was, most certainly on cultural matters, a conservative, and on a number of policy matters he was closely associated with the first generation of American neo-conservative (...) thinkers. Bell’s conservative inclinations were rare in the American academy of his time, and this essay explores the nature and significance of those conservative views. (shrink)

In Capitalism and the Jews, Jerry Z. Muller attempts to resolve Milton Friedman's paradox: Why is it that Jewish intellectuals have been so hostile to capitalism even though capitalism has so greatly benefited the Jews? In one chapter Muller answers, in effect, that Jewish intellectuals have not been anticapitalist. Elsewhere, however, Muller implicitly explains the leftist tendencies of most intellectuals—Jewish and gentile—by unspooling the anticapitalist thread in the main lines of Western thought, culminating in Marx but by no means ending (...) with him. Thus, Milton Friedman saw a paradox where none existed. This may have been because Friedman was an economist, and economics is the one strand of Western thought that is, by and large, procapitalist. To an economist, opposition to capitalism may be paradoxical; to noneconomists, economics is alienating in its form and in its content. There is thus no mystery as to why intellectuals, including Jewish intellectuals, tend to shun economics and therefore gravitate to the left. (shrink)

Through the critical examination of Baudrillard's concept of hyperreality, this article seeks to make a wider contribution to contempor ary debates about postmodernism. It draws on a post-Cartesian, Heideg gerian philosophy to demonstrate the weakness of the concept of hyperreality and reveal its foundation in a Cartesian epistemology. The article goes on to claim that this same Heideggerian tradition suggests a way in which the concept of hyperreality and nihilistic postmodern sociologies more generally might be dialectically superseded. Instead of these (...) theories being seen as saying anything insightful about recent social transformations, the epistemological void in which they position themselves should be inter preted as the intellectual expression of the wider cultural and postmodern trend of transgression. Key Words: Baudrillard • Cartesianism • Heidegger • hyperreality • postmodernism. (shrink)