Summary
Contents
Subject index
This book argues that knowledge is now central to the modern economy and its productive processes. It is also essential for social relations, social cohesion and conflict resolution. We have moved from a society based around heavy commodities to symbolic goods, from situated markets to non-place-specific locations, from machines to software and from things to ideas. These changes produce new forms of social interaction and new perspectives on identity, practice and association. This penetrating book slices through the cliches and blind alleys of discussions around the knowledge society to reveal the tendons of contemporary change. Written with insight and panache the book explains the momentous nature of the changes associated with the know
Fragmentation and Homogenization of Social Life
Fragmentation and Homogenization of Social Life
Not infrequently, the journey is much more interesting than the outcome. Many of the theoretical efforts of the last decades that attempt to come to grips with the unique features of the trajectory of modern societies are couched in the past tense. That is, the developments identified are the signature of an era in which the observers find themselves. It is typically described as if closure had already been achieved. The era of the mass society to which I will first refer, or the modernization and rationalization of society, is captured in terms which suggest that the logic in question is a self-sufficient and independent process that has already worked itself fully into the fabric ...
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