ABSTRACT

In the course of this book we have critically considered a number of key perspectives in contemporary social theory. From the Frankfurt School to globalization theories, we have looked at the profound troubles arising from the whole language and culture of modernity. Social theory, we have seen, is vitally engaged with the repression, oppression and indignity of unequal social relations: it is a deeply political, sometimes melancholic, but profoundly humane critique of the structural forces which underlay the self-destructive pathologies of contemporary societies. Indeed, so serious is the damage done to human life today that much social theory insists it is only by confronting the worst and most painful aspects of current global realities that we might hope to develop plausible alternative social and institutional possibilities. Hence the surprising innovations of recent years – post-feminist, queer, postmodern, risk and liquidity theories – which address anew why modernity leaves so large a number of the world’s population unsatisfied, displaced and outcast.