When Freud wrote his classic Civilization and its Discontents, he was concerned with repression. Modern civilization depends upon the constraint of impulse, the limiting of self expression. Today, in the time of modernity, Bauman argues, Freud's analysis no longer holds good, if it ever did. The regulation of desire turns from an irritating necessity into an assault against individual freedom. In the postmodern era, the liberty of the individual is the overriding value, the criterion in terms of which all social (...) rules and regulations are assessed. Postmodernity is governed by the 'will to happiness': the result, however, is a sacrificing of security. The most prominent anxieties in our society today, Bauman shows, derive from the removal of security. The world is experienced as overwhelmingly uncertain, uncontrollable and frightening. Totalitarian politics frightened by its awesome power; the new social disorder frightens by its lack of consistency and direction. The very pursuit of individual happiness corrupts and undermines those systems of authority needed for a stable life. This book builds imaginatively upon Bauman's earlier contributions to social theory. It consolidates his reputation as the interpreter of postmodernity. The book will appeal to second-year undergraduates and above in sociology, cultural studies, philosophy and anthropology. (shrink)

Ever since its first publication in 1992, The End of History and the Last Man has provoked controversy and debate. Francis Fukuyama's prescient analysis of religious fundamentalism, politics, scientific progress, ethical codes, and war is as essential for a world fighting fundamentalist terrorists as it was for the end of the Cold War. Now updated with a new afterword, The End of History and the Last Man is a modern classic.

_Post-Postmodernism_ begins with a simple premise: we no longer live in the world of "postmodernism," famously dubbed "the cultural logic of late capitalism" by Fredric Jameson in 1984. Far from charting any simple move "beyond" postmodernism since the 1980s, though, this book argues that we've experienced an _intensification_ of postmodern capitalism over the past decades, an increasing saturation of the economic sphere into formerly independent segments of everyday cultural life. If "fragmentation" was the preferred watchword of postmodern America, "intensification" is (...) the dominant cultural logic of our contemporary era. _Post-Postmodernism_ surveys a wide variety of cultural texts in pursuing its analyses—everything from the classic rock of Black Sabbath to the post-Marxism of Antonio Negri, from considerations of the corporate university to the fare at the cineplex, from reading experimental literature to gambling in Las Vegas, from Badiou to the undergraduate classroom. Insofar as cultural realms of all kinds have increasingly been overcoded by the languages and practices of economics, Nealon aims to construct a genealogy of the American present, and to build a vocabulary for understanding the relations between economic production and cultural production today—when American-style capitalism, despite its recent battering, seems nowhere near the point of obsolescence. Post-postmodern capitalism is seldom late but always just in time. As such, it requires an updated conceptual vocabulary for diagnosing and responding to our changed situation. (shrink)

In a globalised world, the issue of language is of paramount importance. Teaching and learning foreign languages has become a social, institutional and professional challenge for the French education system. One consequence of the predominance of English has been to promote its teaching in higher education, so much so that French universities are gradually teaching other subjects through English to students whose language skills do not necessarily match the standards required for such curricula, and by lecturers who are not specialised (...) in English. Against that backdrop, this article addresses what research about “Anglais de spécialité” (ASP) is in the current, institutional context of the ever-developing French “ASP” sector, with a particular focus on English for science and English for law, and hopes to encourage similar studies across Europe. Exploring the epistemological dimension of research in didactics and ASP is essential in order to assess what stage of development it has reached, what directions it is likely to take in France and in Europe, and how a reflection on education and programmes of ASP could be implemented in higher education in different countries. But the present contribution paves the way for a pragmatic approach, since it aims to bring an institutional solution to the debate that has agitated the French academic world for the past decades. (shrink)

This authoritative and revealing book provides the first sociological examination of postmodernism. Lash examines the differences between modernism and postmodernism, providing a clear explanation of why postmodernism is important.