Cover; Contents; Foreword; Acknowledgements; Publisher's Acknowledgements; 1 Introduction: the Problem of Justification; 2 Lifestyle and the Social Bond; 3 The Good Order of Nature: Progress and Criticism in Adam Smith's Sociology of Modernity; 4 Autonomy: the Contracting Individual; 5 Intimacy: the Romantic Self; 6 The New Consumer Society and Its Critics; 7 The Welfare State in the Consumer Society; 8 From Pastoral to Epistolary Power; 9 Inner-Directed or Other-Directed Character? Agency and Citizenship in Mass Society; 10 Re-inventing the Social Contract; References; Index
Summary
A provocative and stimulating intervention in a debate of key contemporary importance' - Chris Shilling, Professor of Sociology, University of Kent. Pekka Sulkunen offers a fresh look at the transition from industrial society to consumer capitalism. He asks important questions about how consumer desires are produced and regulated and what it means to attempt to regulate the way we live. This book is stimulating, erudite and important - Sue Scott, Pro Vice Chancellor at Glasgow Caledonian University. How can policy makers justify public intervention into private life? And why does this interfer
