Deadly Worlds - Annotated by Charles Lemert & Anthony Elliott (Paperback)

About the Book

Deadly Worlds offers an original analysis of one of the unsolved questions of the current age: what are the emotional costs and possibilities of globalization? Lemert and Elliott challenge the dominant interpretations of the late modern world by delving below the surface of cu...

Book Synopsis

Deadly Worlds offers an original analysis of one of the unsolved questions of the current age: what are the emotional costs and possibilities of globalization? Lemert and Elliott challenge the dominant interpretations of the late modern world by delving below the surface of cultural and economic theories to explore theories of the new individualism.

Review Quotes

...the authors...offer an extremely scholarly analysis of recent trends. The book is an enjoyable and informative read which provides powerful insights into the way that human beings today are responding to the complexities and challenges of a globalizing world.

Anthony Elliott and Charles Lemert have infused high theory with a sense of what it means for everyday life. Blending a discussion of theory with case histories they take us into the heart of the contemporary dilemmas of globalization, and the growing inequalities-and awareness of these inequalities-that create a growing sense of unease within even the most prosperous of societies. This is an important contribution to the sociology of a world marked both by increasing fear and unprecedented consumption.

Bringing sociology down to earth the authors force us to confront the disturbing consequences of the new individualism. A powerful account of the implosion of private life.

Deadly Worlds provides us with an original analysis of what is happening to our day-to-day life, and therefore our psyches, under globalization. It offers a stirring social psychology of how the myth of individualism undermines what it purports to uphold: the individual itself. Clearly written and well argued, this book will provide an important tool for anyone struggling to come to terms with our complex world.

Thick with theoretical taxonomies and conclusions, and unburdoned by footnotes, this inquiry moves briskly across genres through six chapters.

About the Author

Charles Lemert is Andrus Professor of Sociology at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, and is the author of many widely read books, including Dark Thoughts: Race and the Eclipse of Society and Postmodernism Is Not What You Think/How Globalization Threatens Modernity. Anthony Elliott is professor of social and political theory at the University of the West of England, where he is director of the Centre for Critical Theory. His recent books include Concepts of the Self, Psychoanalytic Theory: An Introduction, and Critical Visions.