ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses the global politics through the lens of the psychoanalysis of D. W. Winnicott. In his essay 'The Location of Cultural Experience', the psychoanalyst Winnicott quotes the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore in order to frame his discussion of the emergence of culture in play and playfulness. In his work on children, Winnicott was never interested in notions of utopia or dystopia, but rather the ways in which kids play, imagine, and create in secure spaces defined by their parents. In 2008, in the teeth of the American-led war on terror, the British political philosopher John Gray wrote about the end of utopia. The book articulates a new ethico-political role for sociology that transcends a concern with the production of 'useful facts' and revolves around the need to oppose the violence of neoliberal capitalism in the name of a liveable future.
