ABSTRACT
Late modern society is characterised by a fluidity in ideology and boundaries. The political ideologies of democracy, communism, socialism, liberalism, conservativism are blurring; the modern boundaries between states are collapsing (USSR, Yugoslavia, Rwanda), governments are losing control of their economies (the effect of internationalisation of capital) and cannot contain the internal integrity of the cultural imagery (satellite TV etc). The citizenship of a country does not overlap with a particular cultural imagery and goods, or necessarily constrain the style of the person. Traditional meanings of health, illness, the human body, reproduction, medicine, sexuality, the family, intimacy, love, education, work, leisure, science, religion, art, entertainment, the private and the public are being destroyed or rendered unstable. As these effects bite, nostalgia for the supposed certainties of the past lead to uncomplicated images of the past being represented in the medium of popular culture.
