First Published in 1995. The question of 'postmodernity' that has swept Western academic and intellectual circles raises critical comparative questions. Do societies that have not experienced the same historical development as the West pass inevitably through modernity into postmodernity, or can they skip such stages altogether? Japan, the only non-Western society to develop independently a fully-fledged capitalist-industrialist economy, poses such fundamental questions to social theory. Is Japan in fact 'unique' and as such is it a society which escapes the net of conventional sociological abstractions? The book questions how special Japanese society really is, the limitations of Western social theory in grasping the fullness of this dynamic and a complex Asian society, and inquires as to how Japan in turn may speak to social theory and deepen and broaden the principles on which social theory attempts to explore and categorize the social and cultural worlds.

The question of ‘postmodernity’ that has swept Western academic and intellectual circles raises critical comparative questions. Do societies that have not experienced the same historical development as the West pass inevitably through modernity into postmodernity, or can they skip such stages altogether? Japan, the only non-Western society to develop independently a fully-fledged capitalist-industrialist economy, poses such fundamental questions to social theory. Is Japan in fact ‘unique’ and as such is it a society which escapes the net of conventional sociological abstractions? The book questions how special Japanese society really is, the limitations of Western social theory in grasping the fullness of this dynamic and a complex Asian society, and inquires as to how Japan in turn may speak to social theory and deepen and broaden the principles on which social theory attempts to explore and categorize the social and cultural worlds.

An urgent and passionate plea for a new and ecologically sustainable vision of the good life. The reality of runaway climate change is inextricably linked with the mass consumerist, capitalist society in which we live. And the cult of endless growth, and endless consumption of cheap disposable commodities isn't only destroying the world, it is damaging ourselves and our way of being. How do we stop the impending catastrophe, and how can we create a movement capable of confronting it head-on? In Post-Growth Living, philosopher Kate Soper offers an urgent plea for a new vision of the good life, one that is capable of delinking prosperity from endless growth. Instead, she calls for a renewed emphasis on the joys of being, one that is capable of collective happiness not in consumption but by creating a future that allows not only for more free time, and less conventional and more creative ways of using it, but also for more fulfilling ways of working and existing. This is an urgent and necessary intervention into debates on climate change.

In this major new work, which Zygmunt Bauman calls a '"tour de force" of breathtaking erudition and clarity', Jock Young charts the movement of the social fabric in the last third of the twenthieth century from an inclusive society of stability and homogeneity to an exclusive society of change and division. Jock Young, one of the foremost criminologists of our time, explores exclusion on three levels: economic exclusion from the labour market; social exclusion between people in civil society; and the ever-expanding exclusionary activities of the criminal justice system. Taking account of the massive dramatic structural and cultural changes that have beset our society and relating these to the quantum leap in crime and incivilities, Jock Young develops a major new theory based on a new citizenship and a reflexive modernity.

This volume consists of a collection of essays, mostly by European scholars, on the ways modern poets have dealt with the crucial concept of "difference" in their practice of poetic composition. What is examined here through the works of Stevens, Roethke, Yeats, Pound, Ammons, Graham, Laviera, Reznikoff, and Kinsella is the range of strategies used in poetry to convey a sense of disruption, estrangement, disturbance, indeterminacy. The aim is to track down the many kinds of "difference" that these poets' works illustrate and the challenges they pose to the critic.

Focusing on British broadsheets such as The Times and The Guardian, and tabloid publications such as The Sun and The Daily Mail, this book looks at the visualization of post-colonial Britain through cartoons. Tahnia Ahmed examines how Irish, Jewish, Sikh and Muslim communities are Othered, interrogating the patterns and trends in the way they are depicted – both consciously and unconsciously – by cartoonists in Britain from the 20th century onwards. She reveals how cartoonists such as Nicholas Garland and Peter Brookes present assimilation as the goal for the portrayed minorities. At the same time, this goal is deemed impossible because difference is ontological and unchangeable. Central to the cartoons explored in this book is the construction of identity and the concept of 'us', demonstrating the role cartoons play in the stability and enduring power of the archetype. Ahmed suggests that cartoons illustrate how racial and religious prejudice subtly interface and reinforce one another. A depiction of religious difference, Ahmed argues, is often actually a cover for outright racism.