This project has been supported by the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council (project number CS170100008); the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science; and the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. ACOLA collaborates with the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences and the New Zealand Royal Society Te Apārangi to deliver the interdisciplinary Horizon Scanning reports to government. The aims of the project which produced this report are: 1. Examine the transformative role that artificial intelligence may play in (...) different sectors of the economy, including the opportunities, risks and challenges that advancement presents. 2. Examine the ethical, legal and social considerations and frameworks required to enable and support broad development and uptake of artificial intelligence. 3. Assess the future education, skills and infrastructure requirements to manage workforce transition and support thriving and internationally competitive artificial intelligence industries. (shrink)

This book is a benchmark critique of Freudian theory in which a dialogue between the Frankfurt School, the Lacanian tradition and post-Lacanian developments in critical and feminist theory is developed. Considering afresh the relations between self and society, Elliot argues for the importance of imagination and the unconscious in understanding issues about the self and self-identity, ideology and power, sexual difference and gender. The second edition surveys the recent changes that have taken place in psychoanalytic social theory.

Preface to second edition -- The textures of society -- The contemporary relevance of the classics -- The frankfurt school -- Structuralism -- Post-structuralism -- Theories of structuration -- Contemporary critical theory -- Feminism and post-feminist theory -- Postmodernity -- Networks, risks, liquids -- Globalization -- Afterword.

Recent social theory has identified various institutional forces operating at a global level promoting novel trends towards “individualization”, “reflexive self-identity” and “new individualism” (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2001; Giddens, 1991, 1992; Elliott and Lemert, 2009, 2009a). This article develops an exploratory overview of the theory of new individualism with reference to Japanese sociologies of self specifically and contemporary Japanese society more generally. Detailing the large-scale societal shift in Japan from traditional forms of identity-construction (based on a citizenship model of social order) (...) to post-traditional forms of identity-construction (promoted by globalization and neoliberal policies), the article distinguishes between four discourses of the self in post-war Japanese society: the age of the ideal; the age of the dream; the age of fiction; and, the age of fragmentation. Moreover, the article examines the Japanese employment system and the emergence of new individualist employment, as well as considering the emotional impacts of a rise in suicides in contemporary Japan. The argument is that the new individualist thesis can contribute to a sociological understanding of recent social transformations in Japan. However, situating new individualism in the context of Japan also highlights significant tensions in processes of new individualism, tensions between individual initiatives and institutional pressures. (shrink)

This is an indispensible book for students, teachers and professional researchers in sociology, cultural studies, politics, feminism and philosophy.

The revised edition of Subject to Ourselves, a lively and provocative book that was a leader on its topic in England, uses psychoanalytic theory as the basis for a fresh reassessment of the nature of modernity and postmodernism. Analyzing changing experiences of selfhood, desire, interpersonal relations, culture and globalization, the author develops a novel account of postmodernity that supplants current understandings of "fragmented selves." Subject to Ourselves includes a diverse set of case studies, including the power of fantasy in military (...) violence and war, the debate over sexual seduction in psychoanalysis, and the cultural uses of media and new information technologies. The book will be essential reading for students and professionals of social and political theory, psychoanalytic studies, psychology and cultural studies, as well as those with an interest in the modernity/postmodernity debate. Praise for the First Edition: 'This book not only fills an important gap in the literature, for it summarises a debate that is scattered across a decade of rather difficult texts, but also offers a resolution that is sensible and grounded in the best current thinking. It will be widely read by graduate students, faculty, and professionals in the humanities and social sciences.' Choice 'This is an informative and enjoyable book, which will be of use to students and academics...It is accessibly written and provides useful summaries of the different theories and debates in cultural and psychoanalytic theory. Recommended.' Radical Philosophy. (shrink)

The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Japanese Social Theory breaks new ground in providing a detailed, systematic appraisal of the major traditions of social theory prominent in Japan today – from theories of identity and individualization to globalization studies. The volume introduces readers to the rich diversity of social-theoretical critique in contemporary Japanese social theory. The editors have brought together some of the most influential Japanese social scientists to assess current trends in Japanese social theory, including Kazuhisa Nishihara, Aiko Kashimura, Masahiro (...) Ogino, Yumiko Ehara and Kiyomitsu Yui. The volume also contains dialogues with these Japanese contributors from authoritative Western social theorists – including, among others, Axel Honneth, Roland Robertson, Bryan S. Turner, Charles Lemert and Anthony Elliott – to reflect on such developments. The result is an exciting, powerful set of intellectual exchanges. The book introduces, contextualizes and critiques social theories in the broader context of Japanese society, culture and politics – with particular emphasis upon Japanese engagements and revisions of major traditions of social thought. Divided into two sections, the book surveys traditions of social thought in Japanese social science and presents the major social issues facing contemporary Japan. The book will appeal to students and scholars of sociology, social theory, critical theory, psychoanalysis, risk, gender studies, feminist studies, self and identity studies, media studies and cultural studies. (shrink)

Key Contemporary Social Theorists is a comprehensive introduction to some of the most significant figures in social, cultural, political and philosophical thought of the twentieth century. This collection of newly commissioned entries offers students and scholars an authoritative guide on current contributions to contemporary social theory and social science. Preceding the entries is a well-organized chart of the main trends of development in social theory. The result is an invaluable reference work for all those concerned with central issues in contemporary (...) social theory. (shrink)

The broad purpose of this article is to explore the theoretical conditions for understanding the new individualist configurations of imagination and identity in contemporary culture and critical discourse. The article begins with a sketch of recent debates in social theory on identity, individualization and new individualism, focusing on the work of Giddens, Beck, and Bauman, as well as Lemert and Elliott. The second part of the article turns to consider, in some detail, the path breaking contributions of Cornelius Castoriadis on (...) the demise of the social imaginary in conditions of advanced capitalism or what he termed the spread of ‘generalized conformism’. Whilst making the argument that the notion of ‘generalized conformism’ is of key importance in grasping the subjective and cultural dynamics promoted by the global electronic economy, the article also underscores the limitations of Castoriadis’s psychoanalytic and political position. The third section of the article offers a pathway beyond such constraint by examining the recent social-theoretical contributions of Julia Kristeva on ‘new maladies of the soul’. Like Castoriadis, Kristeva focuses on the atrophy of imagination in contemporary times, but does so from a more complex psychoanalytic prism. The article concludes that the work of both Castoriadis and Kristeva are essential to grasping contemporary shifts in the new individualism. (shrink)

This article traces recent developments in European social theory and psychoanalysis on the theory of the human subject. Critically examining the recent psychoanalytic departures of Julia Kristeva and Jean Laplanche on the status of primary repression as a condition for the constitution of subjectivity, an analysis is presented of the state of the subject in its unconscious relational world. The article suggests ways in which the analyses set out by Kristeva and Laplanche can be further refined and developed, partly through (...) a reconsideration of the intertwining of unconscious representation and repression as developed in the writings of Cornelius Castoriadis, Thomas Ogden and others. For existing psychoanalytical accounts the article suggests we should substitute the concept of ‘rolling identification’, the psychical basis of the shift from self-referential representational activity to an elementary form of inter-subjectivity. Rolling identifications are defined as a representational flux that permits human subjects to create a relation to the self-as-object and pre-object relations. Such primal identification, the article suggests, operates through a ‘representational wrapping of self and others’. The article concludes with a consideration of the cultural significance of primary repression, and the politicization of identification. (shrink)

This is a new and revised edition of a book which has had a major impact upon the social sciences and public political debate. Anthony Elliott and Charles Lemert's THE NEW INDIVIDUALISM inspired readers with the dramatic suggestion that 'the reinvention craze' - from self-help and therapy culture to management restructurings and corporate downsizings - is central to a 'new individualism' sweeping the globe. Giving particular attention to the narratives of people seeking to define anew their lives in an age (...) of globalization, the authors contend that an endless hunger for instant change and relentless emphasis on self-reinvention is fundamental to grasping the disorientating effects of the new individualism. This edition contains a substantial new Introduction in which Elliott and Lemert reply to some of the standard criticisms made of the theory of the new individualism, and also addresses the escalation of new individualist thinking in the wake of recent global crises. (shrink)

In recent years, there has been a rapidly growing body of work in the social sciences that underscores the prevalence of the phenomenon of ‘social acceleration'—the speeding up of social life— in many parts of the Western world. Although research on social acceleration has tended to analyze the phenomenon on a social-structural level, there is also a need to investigate how social acceleration has ‘ramifications for the socially dominant forms of self-relation’. One way to gain a more in-depth understanding of (...) this facet of social acceleration is to investigate the speeding up of social life through the prism of the self. The central argument of this article is that there are at least five images of the self which can be associated with the social acceleration phenomenon: the ‘detached’ self, the ‘reflexive’ self, the ‘reinventive’ self, the ‘stationary’ self and the ‘decelerating’ self. By explaining how these kinds of self relate to the speeding up process, we seek to advance a more nuanced and sophisticated theory of social acceleration, which captures some of the complexities and paradoxes that the phenomenon involves. (shrink)