The experience of modernisation - the social changes that swept millions of people into the capitalist world - and modernism in art, literature and architecture are integrated in this account.

In the 17th century, the vision of Cosmopolis arose - a rationally ordered society. This vision perpetuated the delusion that human nature and society could be fitted into precise and manageable rational categories. This text confronts that agenda - its illusions and its consequences.

Charles Taylor's latest book sets out to define the modern identity by tracing its genesis.

In this book the author gives an account of the arguments surrounding the proposition of postmodernism and contributes to the debate on what exactly is the nature of current social change.

Examines the theoretical and philosophical contours of the modern era. The book traces the contemporary critiques of modernity back to their philosophical origins in the work of Marx, Nietzsche, Heidegger and others.

Re-telling the history of Western modernity, this title traces the development of a distinct social imaginary. It offers a framework for understanding the structure of modern life in the West and the different forms modernity has taken around the world.

The main argument of this study is that late modernity is a post-traditional order characterized by a developed institutional reflexivity. Under influence of the globalizing tendencies of modern institutions, the self becomes a reflexive project .

This work examines what sociology can teach us about the Holocaust, but more particularly concentrates on the lesson which the Holocaust has for sociology. Baumann argues that the Holocaust has to be understood as deeply involved with the nature of modernity.

The argument of this work is that, rather than a post-modern world, the end of the 20th century should be described as a period of high modernity , which radicalizes prior trends. An account of the nature of modernity, it analyzes the intersections between trust mechanisms and risk profiles.

An influential publication of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. Various analyses in the book concern such phenomena as the detachment of science from practical life, the manipulative nature of entertainment culture, and a paranoid behavioural structure that marks the limits of enlightenment.

In this text, Bauman examines how we have moved away from a heavy and solid , hardware-focused modernity to a light and liquid , software-based modernity. This passage, he argues, has brought profound change to all aspects of the human condition.

Here, for the first time in English, is volume one of Jurgen Habermas's long-awaited magnum opus: The Theory of Communicative Action. This pathbreaking work is guided by three interrelated concerns: (1) to develop a concept of communicative rationality that is no longer tied to the subjective and individualistic premises of modern social and political theory: (2) to construct a two-level concept

In this wide-ranging book Ali challenges assumptions on both sides, arguing that Islamic civilization has an important role in Western modernity, and that what we have experienced with the rise of fundamentalism is the return of history in an horrific form.

Uses C L R James' The Black Jacobins as a point for a reconsideration of colonial and postcolonial concepts of history, politics, and agency.

The first volume in this series focuses on aspects of Realism, Impressionism and Post-Impressionism in Paris between 1848 and 1900. The book demonstrates how some historians view this art as representative of the social, historical and economic circumstances in which it was produced.

Traces the social and cultural history of fashion and its complex relationship to modernity. This work explores the grunge look inspired by bands like Nirvana, the 'boho chic' of the mid 90's, retro-dressing and the meanings of dress from the veil to Beck's pink-varnished toenails.

Collecting David Harvey's work on Paris during the second empire, this title offers insights ranging from the birth of consumerist spectacle on the Parisian boulevards, the creative visions of Balzac, Baudelaire and Zola, and the reactionary cultural politics of the bombastic Sacre Couer.

In this new interpretation of 'modernity', its relationship to capital and to a social ideal, Jameson explores the concepts in a fresh and illuminating manner, helping to clarify our present political and artistic situations.

Casting aside the traditional conception of film as an outgrowth of photography, theatre, and the novel, the essays in this volume reasses the relationship between the emergence of film and the broader culture of modernity.