Open AccessBook
Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order
TLDR
In this paper, three prominent social thinkers discuss the implications of "reflexive modernization" for social and cultural theory today, and the three authors offer critical appraisals of each other's viewpoints.Abstract:
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. Beck 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 the 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 analyzed. 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.read more
Citations
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
Cultures of Intimacy and Care beyond ‘the Family’: Personal Life and Social Change in the Early 21st Century:
Sasha Roseneil,Shelley Budgeon +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that if sociologists are to understand the current state, and likely future, of intimacy and care, we should decentre the "family" and the heterosexual couple in our intellectual imaginaries.
Journal ArticleDOI
World Risk Society as Cosmopolitan Society?: Ecological Questions in a Framework of Manufactured Uncertainties
Journal ArticleDOI
Lifestyles, consumption and the environment: The ecological modernization of domestic consumption
Gert Spaargaren,Bas van Vliet +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, a contextual model of domestic consumption is proposed, which combines an actor-oriented approach with a system-of-provision perspective of consumer behaviour, and the relevance of the proposed model for research on the ecological modernisation of domestic Consumption is discussed.
Journal ArticleDOI
Education Policy as a Practice of Power Theoretical Tools, Ethnographic Methods, Democratic Options
TL;DR: In this paper, the concept of appropriation is introduced as a form of creative interpretive practice necessarily engaged in by different people involved in the policy process, and a crucial distinction is made between authorized policy and unauthorized or informal policy; it is argued that when nonauthorized policy actors appropriate policy they are in effect often making new policy in situated locales and communities of practice.
Journal ArticleDOI
Who is in charge here? Governance for sustainable development in a complex world
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore one of the major challenges associated with governance for sustainable development: managing change in a context where power is distributed across diverse societal subsystems, and explore how to manage change in such a context.