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Alain Touraine
First published in 2004. The seventeen essays in this volume discuss the work of Alain Touraine and consider his contribution to the social sciences. The text includes his most recent thinkings on the market and communities.
After the Crisis
What effects will the current economic crisis have on the long-term development of our societies? What does the future hold in store when we emerge from the crisis? These two questions lie at the heart of this important new book by the leading French sociologist Alain Touraine. In an era dominated by the global economy and the triumph of individualism, our society has broken away from the old model of integration in place since the industrial revolution. We no longer see ourselves as players in an economic system around which every aspect of society is ordered but rather as individuals with our own rights, capable of creating our own lives in a world in which cultural values prevail. The fin...
New Paradigm for Understanding Today's World
Introduction: A New Paradigm p. 1 Part 1 When We Referred to Ourselves in Social Terms 1 The Break p. 9 9/11 Fear A world in decline Where is meaning to be found? 2 Globalization p. 19 From the post-war states to the globalization of the economy An extreme capitalism The rupturing of societies Alter-globalism From society to war A globalized world 3 Europe: A State without a Nation p. 33 Decline of the national state? Is European unity possible? European Union and United States of America The European state European powerlessness The absence of European consciousness 4 The End of Societies p. 44 The social representation of society The European mode of modernization Society and modernity The...
Can We Live Together?
In this book, a leading French social thinker grapples with the gap between the tendency toward globalization of economic relations and mass culture and the increasingly sectarian nature of our social identities as members of ethnic, religious, or national groups. Though at first glance, it might seem as if the answer to the question Can we live together? is that we already do live togetherwatching the same television programs, buying the same clothes, and even using the same language to communicate from one country to anotherthe author argues that in important ways, we are farther than ever from belonging to the same society or the same culture. Our small societies are not gradually...
Thinking Differently
In his previous books Alain Touraine analysed the great changes that have transformed our personal and collective lives; in this new book he shows that we need to transform our ways of thinking about these changes. The very idea of society is in crisis: globalization and the liberation of desires from taboos have led to the collapse of the old social order. In our societies today, good and evil can no longer be defined by institutions; self-awareness is more important than the awareness of rules and subjects have become their own creators. Taking as his starting point a critique of what he calls the Dominant Interpretive Discourse, which tried throughout the twentieth century to impose the i...
Critique of Modernity
For over two hundred years, the notion of modernity has dominated Western social thought. Yet as we approach the end of the millenium, we find the concept under seige: constantly being challenged, rejected or refined. In Critique of Modernity d, Alain Touraine, one of our leading social thinkers, offers an outstanding analysis and reinterpretation of the modern for the twenty-first century.
What Is Democracy?
In this sequel to A Critique of Modernity, Alain Touraine questions the social and cultural content of democracy today. At a time when state power is being increasingly eroded by the economic might of transnational capital, what possible value can we ascribe to a democratic idea that is defined merely as a set of guarantees against the totalitarian state?If democracy is to survive in the postcommunist world, Touraine argues, it must accomplish two urgent goals: It must somehow protect the power of the nation-state at the same time as it limits that power (for only the state has sufficient means to counterbalance the global corporate wielders of money and information); and it must reconcile s...
Return of the Actor
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Alter-Globalization
Contrary to the common view that globalization undermines social agency, ‘alter-globalization activists', that is, those who contest globalization in its neo-liberal form, have developed new ways to become actors in the global age. They propose alternatives to Washington Consensus policies, implement horizontal and participatory organization models and promote a nascent global public space. Rather than being anti-globalization, these activists have built a truly global movement that has gathered citizens, committed intellectuals, indigenous, farmers, dalits and NGOs against neoliberal policies in street demonstrations and Social Forums all over the world, from Bangalore to Seattle and from Porto Alegre to Nairobi. This book analyses this worldwide movement on the bases of extensive field research conducted since 1999. Alter-Globalization provides a comprehensive account of these critical global forces and their attempts to answer one of the major challenges of our time: How can citizens and civil society contribute to the building of a fairer, sustainable and more democratic co-existence of human beings in a global world?
