New Paradigm for Understanding Today's World

Introduction: A New Paradigm

Part One: When We Referred to Ourselves in Social Terms

1 The Break

9/11

Fear

A world in decline

Where is meaning to be found?

2 Globalization

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

The decline of the national state

Is European unity possible?

The EU and the USA

The European state

European powerlessness

The absence of a European consciousness

4 The End of Societies

The social representation of societies

The European mode of modernization

Society and modernity

The crisis of representation

The three deaths of European society

The irruption of democracy

The return of the political

Farewell to society

The war above us

When system and actors separate off

The rupturing of the social bond

Are we witnessing the end of social movements?

Conclusion

5 Revisiting the Self

What is modernity?

The victory of modernity

The end of social thinking

Emancipatory individualism

Forms of social determinism

From focusing on the world to focusing on the self

The awakening of the subject

Part Two: Now that We Refer to Ourselves in Cultural Terms

6 The Subject

The subject and identity

Sources of the subject

Defence of sociology

The individual subject

Rights

Are we all subjects?

The negation of the subject

A related note

The subject, social movements and the unconscious

Proximity

The subject and religion

The subject and the school

The experience of being a subject

The anti-subject

Between gods and societies

7 Cultural Rights

Political rights and cultural rights

Minorities, multiculturalism, communitarianism

Redistribution and recognition

The new social movements

Modernizations

Entry into the post-social world

Sexual rights

The limits of cultural mixing

About the ‘veil’

Communities and communitarianisms

Liberals and communitarians

Secularism

Inter-cultural communication

Return to new ideas

8 A Society of Women

An altered situation

Equality and difference

Sexuality and gender

The woman-subject

The role of men

Post-feminism

The Argument: By Way of Conclusion

Bibliography

Name Index

Subject Index