In recent years, under the impression and the burden of globalization and neoliberalism, debates about the relationship between the theory and practice of progress - including the theory and practice of social critique - have gone through an unexpected and momentous revival, renewal and rejuvenation.

Theorizing Globalization offers a reassessment of mainstream perspectives on globalization, a topic that has become enormously popular in social sciences and cultural studies. Instead of recycling common arguments, Ampuja critically examines the works of key globalization theorists such as Manuel Castells and Arjun Appadurai to demonstrate their excessive fascination with recent changes in media and communications technology. The author argues that these and many other theorists’ media-centric and unhistorical treatment of globalization stands in the way of a critical understanding of how the global media and modern capitalist societies have evolved. Ampuja concludes with a provocative account of how the hegemony of neoliberalism has affected the positions of globalization theorists and, by extension, the development of social theory in general.

A stimulating appraisal of a crucial contemporary theme, this comprehensive analysis of globalizaton offers a distinctively cultural perspective on the social theory of the contemporary world. This perspective considers the world as a whole, going beyond conventional distinctions between the global and the local and between the universal and the particular. Its cultural approach emphasizes the political and economic significance of shifting conceptions of, and forms of participation in, an increasingly compressed world. At the same time the book shows why culture has become a globally contested issue - why, for example, competing conceptions of ′world order′ have political and economic consequences.

The internet has fundamentally transformed society in the past 25 years, yet existing theories of mass or interpersonal communication do not work well in understanding a digital world. Nor has this understanding been helped by disciplinary specialization and a continual focus on the latest innovations. Ralph Schroeder takes a longer-term view, synthesizing perspectives and findings from various social science disciplines in four countries: the United States, Sweden, India and China. His comparison highlights, among other observations, that smartphones are in many respects more important than PC-based internet uses. Social Theory after the Internet focuses on everyday uses and effects of the internet, including information seeking and big data, and explains how the internet has gone beyond traditional media in, for example, enabling Donald Trump and Narendra Modi to come to power. Schroeder puts forward a sophisticated theory of the role of the internet, and how both technological and social forces shape its significance. He provides a sweeping and penetrating study, theoretically ambitious and at the same time always empirically grounded.The book will be of great interest to students and scholars of digital media and society, the internet and politics, and the social implications of big data.

The Follies of Globalisation Theory is an erudite and lively critique arguing that current fashionable preoccupations, such as the concern with spatiality, have generated deep intellectual confusions that stand in the way of a clear understanding of the modern world. It shows how and why these confusions ultimately condemn the globalization theorists themselves to a peculiar and quixotic stance: the more clearly they attempt to articulate their arguments, the more equivocal and evasive those arguments become, yielding at best the intellectual equivalent of an architectural folly.

Globalization has accelerated the process of social, political, cultural, and especially economic transformations since the 1990s. Examining the choices of modern society, Dahms and contributors ask: what are the social costs of “progress”?

In this accomplished, sophisticated and up-to-date account of the state of critical social theory today, Craig Browne explores the key concepts in critical theory (like critique, ideology, and alienation), and crucially, goes on to relate them to major contemporary developments such as globalization, social conflict and neo-liberal capitalism. Critical theory here is not solely the work of Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse and Habermas. The book begins with the Frankfurt School but uses this as a base to then explore more contemporary figures such as: Nancy Fraser Axel Honneth Luc Boltanski Cornelius Castoriadis Ulrich Beck Anthony Giddens Pierre Bourdieu Hannah Arendt A survey of critical social theory for our times, this is an essential guide for students wishing to grasp a critical understanding of social theory in the modern world.