ABSTRACT
Fashion in politics and in" scholarship alike is often dangerous. Modernity continues to throw up particular fields of social problems ranging from deprivation to the lack of meaning in everyday life; these perennials need to be viewed as central, not marginal. Fashion is arguably a major issue within the social sciences today; given the connection between publishing and commodification, more and more books and papers appear confirming dominant interpretations as they are thrown off, with the attendant marginalisation of alternative views. The increasing implication of scholarship and media produces a kind of hip mainstream for which all other arguments are old hat. But there is, or ought be, more at risk in committed scholarship than this. Call us old-fashioned, but our intention in these essays is to return to older paths where style was connected to clarity, and complexity was no immediate excuse for obscurity.
