Facing Modernity: Ambivalence, Reflexivity and Morality

Barry Smart offers a wide-ranging and critical discussion of how issues of reflexivity, ethics and moral responsibility inform social and political thought. Through a critical discussion of the 'ambivalent fruits' of social analysis, exemplified in particular by the work of Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard, Baudrillard, Vattimo, Beck, Bourdieu, Goffman, Giddens, Levinas and Bauman, this book submits that an important responsibility of social enquiry today is to engage critically with the moral difficulties and ethical dilemmas which have arisen in relation to modernity.

Barry Smart offers a wide-ranging and critical discussion of how issues of reflexivity, ethics and moral responsibility inform social and political thought. Through a critical discussion of the 'ambivalent fruits' of social analysis, exemplified in particular by the work of Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard, Baudrillard, Vattimo, Beck, Bourdieu, Goffman, Giddens, Levinas and Bauman, this book submits that an important responsibility of social enquiry today is to engage critically with the moral difficulties and ethical dilemmas which have arisen in relation to modernity.

Barry has worked at universities in Australia, England, Japan and New Zealand. He was at the University of Sheffield until 1988 and was then Associate-Professor at Auckland University before joining Portsmouth in 1995. Areas of research interest and expertise include classical and contemporary social thought, critical theory, fiscal sociology and economic transformation of modernity, cultural and economic analyses of consumption, environmental consequences of consumerism, as well as social and historical analyses of sport. He is also a member of the International Sociological Association.