Contemporary culture, today’s capitalism - our global information society - is ever-expanding-- is ever more extensive. And yet we seem to be experiencing a parallel phenomenon which can only be characterized as intensive. This book is dedicated to the study of such intensive culture. While extensive culture is a culture of the same: a culture of fixed equivalence; intensive culture is a culture of difference, of in-equivalence – the singular. Intensities generate what we encounter. They are virtuals or possibilities, always in process and always in movement. Lash carefully defines and distinguishes the intensive from the extensive tracking this change through key areas of social life including: SociologyReligionPhilosophy Language Politics Communication  

Introduction

Introduction

Culture: Extensive and Intensive

Contemporary culture, today's capitalism – our global information society – is ever expanding, is ever more extensive. There are Starbuck's and McDonald's – indeed many Starbucks and many McDonalds – in not just London, Paris and Berlin, but in seemingly every district of Shanghai and Beijing, Delhi and Bombay, Johannesburg and Lagos, Dubai and Abu Dhabi, Sao Paulo and Mexico City, and also increasingly in Chongqing and Wuhan, in Bangalore and Madras, in Nairobi and Cairo, Buenos Aires and Bogotá. Vodafone has subscribers in all continents, BP petrol stations are ubiquitous in the United States as much as England, Carrefour is everywhere in China and Latin America, Pepsi Cola and Nike are omnipresent in cityscapes around the world. Despite the meltdown ...

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