ABSTRACT
During the last two decades of the previous century there took place in the West an enormous growth in negative representations of the possibilities of social, economic and political reform. Drawing on studies from within a very broad range of fields, including ecology, human rights, military history, international relations, criminology, history of science, cultural criticism and political economy, Oliver Bennett (2001) charts this development, identifying four key contemporary ‘narratives of decline’, relating respectively to the environment, morality, intellectual life and political culture.
