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Facing Modernity
Ambivalence, Reflexivity and Morality
- Barry Smart - University of Portsmouth, UK
February 1999 | 224 pages | SAGE Publications Ltd
Barry Smart offers a wide-ranging and critical discussion of how issues of reflexivity, ethics and moral responsibility inform social and political thought. Through a critical discussion of the `ambivalent fruits' of social analysis, exemplified in particular by the work of Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard, Baudrillard, Vattimo, Beck, Bourdieu, Goffman, Giddens, Levinas and Bauman, this book submits that an important responsibility of social enquiry today is to engage critically with the moral difficulties and ethical dilemmas which have arisen in relation to modernity.
Analysis after Ambivalence
Postmodern In(ter)ventions
Reflexivity, Modernity and Sociology
Responsible Subjects
Body, Self, Community
Indeterminate Justice
Morality after Ambivalence
`In the grand tradition of classical social theory, Barry Smart challenges us to face up to the ambivalences of the contemporary moment and to take responsibility for our individual and social existence' - Douglas Kellner, University of California, Los Angeles
` A brilliant excursus through modern social theory, Smart’s book should be read and re-read for its careful analysis of the dilemmas of morality in postmodernism' - Bryan S Turner, University of Cambridge
