ABSTRACT
It is common knowledge that we are living in a time of rapid and profound social change. Especially the contemporary integration of Europe, but also the questions of cultural interaction between Europe and other continents, have gained prominence in public discourse. This age of transition has been regarded either as a development which heralds the withering away of small national cultures or as one which produces increasing tolerance of other cultures and leads to a flourishing of national cultures. It is, however, possible to discuss this change at a more general level. Many social scientists have argued that nowadays people have fewer and fewer experiences of traditional, permanent structures and that a whole new type of culture-and, ipso facto, society-is emerging. So radical is this change, they argue, that old sociological theories no longer provide an adequate conceptualization of the changed social reality. Hence a wide range of new concepts have been developed, some of the keywords in our time being ‘post-industrial society’, ‘the media society’, ‘the information society’, and the like.
