Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

The theme of reflexivity has come to be central to social analysis. In this book three prominent social thinkers discuss the implications of "reflexive modernization" for social and cultural theory today.

Ulrich Beck's vision of the "risk society" has already become extraordinarily influential. He offers a new elaboration of his basic ideas, connecting reflexive modernization with new issues to do with the state and political organization. Giddens offers an in-depth examination of the connections between "institutional reflexivity" and the de-traditionalizing of the modern world. We are entering, he argues, a phase of the development of a global society. A 'global society' is not a world society, but one with universalizing tendencies.

Lash develops the theme of reflexive modernization in relation to aesthetics and the interpretation of culture. In this domain, he suggests, we need to look again at the conventional theories of postmodernism; "aesthetic modernization" has distinctive qualities that need to be uncovered and analysed. In the concluding sections of the book, the three authors offer critical appraisals of each other's viewpoints, providing a synthetic conclusion to the work as a whole.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Preface
• 1 The Reinvention of Politics:Towards a Theory of Reflexive Modernization
• 2 Living in a Post-Traditional Society
• 3 Reflexivity and its Doubles:Structure, Aesthetics, Community
• 4 Replies and Critiques
• Index

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

In separate essays, each author attempts to avoid the pitfalls of the ongoing debate on the status of modernity and postmodernity by developing the concept of "reflexive modernization" to explain the social, cultural, and political changes now being experienced on the global scale. Beck describes the development of a "risk society," and Giddens a "post-traditional society" in which power and control are being wrenched from centers of traditional political power and expertise to be increasingly negotiated by individuals within "sub-political" realms. For Lash, on the other hand, "reflexive modernization" further implies the increased role of cultural and informational networks in the construction of global capitalism, a decentering of the accumulation regime of Fordist industrial production and a growing importance of "aesthetic reflexivity" whereby cultural processes become signposts that express the increased globalization of disorganized capitalism. Each of these essays--as well as the replies and critiques at the end of the book--is exemplary, original, and thoughtful, showing the vital state of social theory in coming to terms with the conditions of late modernity. Graduate students and faculty.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Anthony Giddens, a British sociologist, was educated at Hull, the London School of Economics, and Cambridge, and is a fellow of King's College, Cambridge. His interests have been varied, but they tend to focus on questions related to the macro-order. Much of his theoretical writing deals with stratification, class, and modernity. Although he has concentrated on dynamic issues of social structure, he has also examined how social psychological concerns are part of this broader order of human relations.

(Bowker Author Biography)