ABSTRACT
How new are these ‘New Times’? Are they the dawn of a New Age or only the whisper of an old one? What is ‘new’ about them? How do we assess their contradictory tendencies-are they progressive or regressive? These are some of the questions which the ambiguous discourse of ‘New Times’ poses. They are worth asking, not because ‘New Times’ represents a definitive set of answers to them or even a clear way of resolving the ambiguities inherent in the idea, but because they stimulate the left to open a debate about how society is changing and to offer new descriptions and analyses of the social conditions it seeks to transcend and transform. If it succeeds in this, but accomplishes nothing else the metaphor of ‘New Times’ will have done its work.
