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Michael Rustin examines Michael Walzer's theory of justice against the background of significant currents in modern socio‐philosophical thought. He argues that Walzer's attempt to revitalize the ideal of equality for contemporary industrial societies ultimately fails to establish equality as a moral goal of post‐modern societies. Rustin examines the extent to which a theory of justice rejecting abstract universality and historicist approaches can retain normative force.

Presents an analysis of the reasons for the post‐modern shift to declining respect for/deference to authority among the publics of advanced industrial societies, and of the accompanying growing support for democracy. The early sections discuss: the changing emphasis on key aspects of life during the shift from modernization to post‐modernization; the authoritarian reflex that occurs in periods of rapid change and insecurity—in contrast to the greater emphasis on individual autonomy and diminishing deference to authority under conditions of prosperity and security that occurs in the post‐modern shift; and declining confidence in hierarchical institutions in post‐modern societies. The later part of the chapter examines predicted and observed changes in cross‐national norms concerning the authority using data from the three waves of the World Values Survey (1981–1997). Using these same data, it also examines the decline of confidence in the most hierarchical institutions of the survey countries over this time period—i.e. the armed forces, the police, and the church, and looks at support for strong leadership in relation to percentage priority to post‐materialist goals.

The three central topics of interest in this chapter — religion, emotion, and late modern society — are all the subject of extensive academic debate, but have not been brought together. This chapter shows how the approach developed in the preceding chapters can shed light on religious emotion in the late modern context. A key theme of the analysis is that relations between social groups, their participants, and symbols are typically out of balance, and that this has destabilizing consequences for some religious emotional regimes, particularly those of historic forms of once ‘mainstream’ religion, most notably Christianity. The widespread destabilization and deregulation of religious emotion does not, however, mean that the late modern environment is inhospitable for religion: while it renders certain forms of emotional regime unsustainable, it opens up new possibilities for others.

Deals with three main topics: the nature and origins of social trust and its importance in society; trends in social trust in Western societies (with some comparisons with less developed societies); and the relations between social and political trust, and their implications for theories of politics and society. In terms of the main concepts and measures of the book, and as outlined in the introductory chapter, social trust is a feature of the most basic level of community, while political trust refers primarily to attitudes about political institutions and leaders. The general assumption seems to be that social and political trust are closely linked, perhaps different sides of the same coin—social trust is regarded as a strong determinant of, or influence upon, political support of various kinds, including support for the political community, confidence in institutions, and trust in political leaders. As a result it is believed that the accumulation of social capital, in the form of social trust, will also result in the accumulation of political capital. Presents theory and evidence questioning these assumptions; it includes evidence comparing social trust in communal and modern societies, and of political trust in early modern and contemporary democracies.

This chapter discusses the theory proposed in this book. It argues that this theory is indeed a liberal theory despite the fact that it is at odds with contemporary liberalism. It presents discussions on political philosophy and modern society, and the liberal archipelago.

Boxing rings, whether in sports arenas or burlesque theaters, afforded men and women stages on which to create larger‐than‐life personas and to test the limits of socially acceptable self‐presentation. Female boxers embraced the sport's physical combat as a strategy for getting ahead in a postwar Germany in which young women outnumbered the battle‐ravaged men in their age group and had increasingly to fend for themselves. Male boxers embraced the marketing potential of the sport by posing for early renditions of the male pin‐up photograph. Women often displayed themselves as “babes” in boxing trunks for the titillation of their public, but the men did, too. These boxers' carefully crafted public images popularized an ideal of working‐class toughness, the promise of upward mobility, and the allure of self‐invention in modern society.

This chapter begins by looking at a very literal form of marks of identity—fingerprints—then examines the obsession of modern societies with issues of identity. While the notion of identity is not new—especially as a philosophical topic—a widespread concern with one's personal identity, and its relations to “the others” among whom one lives, seems to have emerged with greater intensity with the Enlightenment, and to gain force throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and into modern time. To the extent that a characteristic of modernity is a new valuation of the individual, the obsession with identity follows almost inevitably.

This chapter offers some final insights on the dialectic relationships performed by both the motor-bike and hippy cultures, and identifies what constitutes as their cultural politics. Both cultures took the unexplored side, the double edge, of commodities and cultural items around them to express and develop their own meanings. In the course of this cultural development they were also, however, exploring some of the massive contradictions and tensions in modern society. These cultures do not follow the guidelines of official culture, nor do they obey rules provided from outside or above. They are not even often recognized as unified cultures by agencies who pick up various fragmented aspects as ‘social problems’. They have rejected or never received what is known, valued, and revered. They live amid provided, cheap commodities. For all this, they have the essential, rare, irreverent gift of profanity: creativity.

This chapter examines how the study of local history as an “act of self-reassurance” has grown in importance as societies have become mobile and people are less tied to a specific location. Historian Helmut Flachenecker writes of modern society that one is no longer the citizen of a location primarily by birth, but rather by history. This is true to an extreme degree of the Polish city of Wroclaw, whose society came into being as the result of a complete population exchange. Societies of this kind typically yearn for tradition just as much as they lack it. Only by identifying collectively with the history of the city could a coherent citizenry develop out of a random assortment of settlers thrown together by the population shifts of postwar Poland.

This chapter discusses and reviews subjects such as the effects of the heritage of medical reductionism on the care of the dying and the cultural sources of caring in “secular” and late-modern societies such as those in Anglo-Saxon countries.

This chapter takes up several critiques on the early nineteenth-century social and economic order—capitalism—and their interrelations. First, the chapter shows the close relationship and direct contradiction between an early argument in favor of market society and a subsequent principal critique of capitalism. Next, the chapter points to the contradictions between this critique and another diagnosis of the ills from which much of modern capitalist society is said to suffer. And finally the tables are turned on this second critique by yet another set of ideas. In all three cases, the chapter reveals an almost total lack of communication between the conflicting theses.

This chapter examines the connection between John Dewey's pragmatism and his ideas about education, and how his conception of philosophy is related to his views about the character of modern society in general, and modern American society in particular. It first considers the difficulty that many readers have in knowing quite what Dewey wanted to say about philosophy, education, and many other subjects, before expounding on his educational ideas. The focus is on Dewey's early writings—that is, what he wrote during the ten years he was in Chicago and in the years immediately after that. The reason is that on education, these were the years of his greatest inventiveness, and thereafter he mostly defended himself against misunderstanding. On Dewey's politics, the chapter explores his views on American nationalism in the context of World War I.

This chapter opens with a description of four phases in the evolution of human societies. In the first phase, humans formed small hierarchically-organized groups similar to those of other primates. In the second phase, they formed egalitarian groups similar to contemporary hunters and gatherers. In the third phase, they formed tribal coalitions, and in the final phase, they created the large complex societies in which most modern humans live. The unique forms of deference, self-control, altruism, and cooperation that uphold the social structures of modern societies are described, and evidence that human are disposed to behave in these ways is reviewed. Although humans help their offspring and other relatives, engage in simple forms of concrete reciprocity, and display emotional reactions that seem similar to those of other primates, they also help people from third world countries, participate in highly complex systems of cooperation, and communicate their thoughts and feelings symbolically.

This chapter discusses how the notion of luxury in Europe changed over the course of the 18th century. It explains that luxury became the driving force of modern commercial society because it provided an incentive to work. It examines the economic thoughts expressed by the great thinkers in Europe. It also investigates the cultures of enlightenment in a regional context.

This chapter looks at the realms of meaning, created through ritual, as they appeared and formed in both traditional and modern societies, explaining that, in ritual behavior, people influence one another by expression of all kinds and that the meanings of experiences always have something to do with relationships with other humans. It also discusses the neotenic characteristics of humans and their tendency to act out the role of the idealized parent, which serve as the basis for ritual. The chapter furthermore highlights the many similarities between the traditional and modern worlds, which indicate a fundamental sameness despite superficial differences.