Spaces of Culture

In Spaces of Culture an international group of scholars examines the implications of questions such as: What is culture? What is the relationship between social structure and culture in a globalized and networked world? Do critical perspectives still apply, or does the speed and complexity of cultural production demand new forms of analysis?

They explore the key themes in social theory: the nation state; the city; modernity and reflexivity; post-Fordism and the spatial logic of the informational city. The contributors go on to analyze the public sphere, questioning the reductive representation of technology as a form of instrumentality, and demonstrating how new technologies can offer new spaces of culture. This analysis of public space is essential to an understanding of issues like global citizenship and multicultural human rights.

Introduction - Mike Featherstone and Scott Lash
PART ONE: TECHNOLOGICAL SPACE
Growth and Failure - Richard Sennett
The New Political Economy and Its Culture
Simulated Sovereignty, Telematic Territoriality - Timothy W Luke
The Political Economy of Cyberspace
Digital Networks and Power - Saskia Sassen
PART TWO: CULTURAL MAPPING
The Postmodern Urban Condition - Michael Dear and Steven Flusty
Roaming the City - Hilary Radner
Proper Women in Improper Places
PART THREE: REFLEXIVE SPACE
Not All That Is Solid Melts into Air - Heidrun Friese and Peter Wagner
Modernity and Contingency
Moving Culture - Ron Eyerman
Radiated Identities - Barbara Adam
In Pursuit of the Temporal Complexity of Conceptual Cultural Practices
PART FOUR: CARTOGRAPHIES OF A NATION
Triumphalist Geographies - Michael J Shapiro
The Anti-Reflexivist Revolution - G[um]oran Dahl
On the Affirmationism of the New Right
PART FIVE: TRANSCULTURAL PLACE
Transculturality - Wolfgang Welsch
The Puzzling Form of Cultures Today
Towards a Multicultural Conception of Human Rights - Boaventura de Sousa Santos
The Hybridization of Roots and the Abhorrence of the Bush - Jonathan Friedman
Narrating the Postcolonial - Couze Venn