Table of Contents

Editors′ Introduction - Anthony Elliott and Bryan S Turner
Martin Heidegger - Richard Polt
Georges Bataille - Michael Richardson
Maurice Merleau-Ponty - Nick Crossley
Herbert Marcuse - Douglas Kellner
Theodor Adorno - Andrew Bowie
Walter Benjamin - Graeme Gilloch
J[um]urgen Habermas - Patrick Baert
Erving Goffman - Ann Branaman
Peter Berger - Bryan S Turner
Michel Foucault - Stephen Katz
Jean-Fran[ce]cois Lyotard - Victor J Seidler
Jacques Lacan - Anthony Elliott
Jacques Derrida - Christina Howells
Roland Barthes - Chris Rojek
Julia Kristeva - Kelly Oliver
Luce Irigaray - Caroline Bainbridge
Jean Baudrillard - Mike Gane
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guatarri - Paul Patton
Paul Virilio - John Armitage
Henri Lefebvre - Rob Shields
Paul Ricoeur - Kathleen Blamey
Niklas Luhmann - Jakob Arnoldi
Charles Taylor - Marcos Ancelovici and Francis Dupuis-Deri
Richard Rorty - Bryan S Turner
Nancy Chodorow - Geoffrey Gershenson and Michelle Williams
Anthony Giddens - Anthony Elliott
Ulrich Beck - Nick Stevenson
Pierre Bourdieu - Bridget Fowler
Zygmunt Bauman - Barry Smart
Donna J Haraway - Patricia Ticineto Clough and Joseph Schneider
Fredric Jameson - Sean Homer
Stuart Hall - Chris Rojek
Juliet Mitchell - Sarah Wright
Edward Said - Bryan S Turner

About the Author

Bryan S. Turner is Professor of Sociology in the Asian Research Institute (ARI) at the National University of Singapore. Previously he was Professor of Sociology in the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Cambridge from 1998-2005. His research interests include globalization and religion, concentrating on such issues as religious conflict and the modern state, religious authority and electronic information, religious, consumerism and youth cultures, human rights and religion, the human body, medical change, and religious cosmologies. He is Joint Chief Editor of the journal Citizenship Studies and serves on the editorial boards of several prestigious journals.

Reviews

`The publication of this volume will make a dramatic impact, for it shifts the boundaries of current understandings of the field of social theory. It presents a set of cogent, well- informed, well-organized discussions of many authors who are not conventionally seen as relevant to that field. On the other hand, it also reconsiders a number of the field′s established figures and focuses on their contribution to a few thematic concerns, which the editors formulate compellingly in their introduction′ - Gianfranco Poggi, European University Institute `A most innovative and creative collection of essays on contemporary social theory. What stands out about this book is the editors′ choice of thinkers.... Included here are essays not only on many of the most important contemporary social theorists (including some interesting, even surprising, choices), but also on many of the thinkers of the recent past who are having a powerful impact on contemporary social thought. A welcome addition to the personal libraries of not only social theorists, but those in a wide range of specialities in the social sciences′ - George Ritzer, University of Maryland