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This essay explores Lacan’s analysis of sexual difference within the phallic economy as a case study in intellectual history, interpreting Lacan’s work in this area as a major theoretical achievement accomplished by three critical innovations: first, Lacan radicalises two central streams of twentieth‐century thought – psychoanalysis and structuralism; second, he recontextualises these within a similarly radicalised version of Hegelianism; finally, Lacan completes this reconceptualisation by contributing a set of key notions of his own that, together with the other elements, form the organising principles around which his theory operates. It defends Lacan from charges of phallocentrism and also shows that, while Lacan is aligned closely with structuralism, his theory derives much of its dynamism from the neo‐Hegelianism of Alexandre Kojève and other sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the attitude of contemporary terrorism towards civil society, the intermediate realm between the family and the state that accommodates the free play of economic and cultural forces and individual and group interests. Terrorism now targets not only people and institutions that operate within civil society but civil society itself, i.e., terrorism increasingly targets the very possibility of an autonomous realm of everyday life. This tendency is found in the Islamism of Al-Qaeda, but also in any group that adheres to the “Augustinian paradigm” of civil society that arose in the West and dominates radical ideologies. An exploration of this situation illuminates both the nature and tactics of contemporary terrorism and the role of civil society itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the war on terror and the invasion of Iraq have lifted a veil that was obscuring vital aspects of the global situation. These tragic events have highlighted profound processes of change that are unfolding within global history. Hundreds of millions of people are feeling excluded and alienated from the world system. Large numbers are prepared to engage in militant religious activism, especially as they seek a viable identity that links them simultaneously with the core values of their traditional civilizations, and the imperatives of globalization and modernity with which they are increasingly engaged. This paper introduces a new paradigm that explores this situation, and particularly the links between globalization and the subjective religious tendencies that find expression in outbursts of militant activity. As a case study it focusses on Islamism as a radical political ideology reasserting and valorizing a traditional identity based on civilizational values that cut completely across those of an unobtainable and increasingly reviled globalized modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with a set of phenomena that lies at the intersection of popular culture, genetics, cybertechnology, nanotechnology, biotechnology and other advanced technologies, bio-ethics, science speculation, science fiction, mythology, the New Age Movement, cults, commerce and globalization. At the centre is a radical technophilia that finds representative expression in posthumanism, an Internet-based social movement driven by an extreme scientific utopianism. This set of phenomena constitutes an articulated cultural response to a number of underlying economic, technological and social dynamics that are together transforming the world, and particularly developed societies as they are incorporated into a global system of 'digital capitalism'. This paper first describes posthumanism and transhumanism. It then explores two key notions, teleportation and cyborgs, that receive extensive attention in mainstream media and serve as exemplars of this scientistic ideology, locating them both in cultural history and contemporary popular culture. The paper argues that posthumanism and associated phenomena are best seen as an ideological interpellation of humanity into an increasingly dominant scientific and technological order based on the cultural and scientific ascendancy of the 'Informational Paradigm' identified by Katherine Hayles in her inquiry into 'How we became posthuman'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of 'identity' is central to much contemporary sociology, reflecting a crisis that manifests itself in two ways. Firstly, there is a view that identity is both vital and problematic in this period of high modernity. Secondly, while this awareness is reflected in sociology, its accounts of identity are inconsistent, under-theorized and incapable of bearing the analytical load required. As a result, there is an inherent contradiction between a valuing of identity as so fundamental as to be crucial to personal well-being, and a theorization of 'identity' that sees it as something constructed, fluid, multiple, impermanent and fragmentary. The contemporary crisis of identity thus expresses itself as both a crisis of society, and a crisis of theory. This paper explores the diverse ways in which 'identity' is deployed before turning to case-studies of its use by Anthony Giddens and Manuel Castells. This strategy demonstrates the widespread and diverse concern with identity before exploring how problematic it has become, even in the work of two of the world's leading sociologists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The twentieth century saw the emergence of a new episteme of death that fundamentally revolutionized values relating to mortality and life. Previously this revolution has been seen primarily in terms of the sequestration and denial of death, but it is necessary to go farther and recognize that these are really just an aspect of the industrialization — the Fordism — of death. This takes two major institutional forms: the militarization, and the medicalization of death. Both ensure that death is administered on an industrial scale and in accord with institutional and bureaucratic imperatives and values. The total mobilization of the Great War was the prototype that revealed the potential of this approach. With the subsequent medical revolution of the middle decades of the century the approach was quickly rationalized and refined into a new episteme of administered death, with ‘administer’ being understood in its twin senses of ‘to manage’ and ‘to dispense’ — the two characteristic orientations to death in contemporary society. This new episteme quickly displaced traditional values derived predominantly from religious, philosophical, mythological and traditional sources and has advanced far beyond their responsive capacity, as the many interminable debates around issues of bioethics reveal. While this new episteme might enhance the human condition, it also has great potential for the impoverishment of the human spirit, and for the further reduction of human beings to the status of mere components and functions to be administered within medico-technological systems that are themselves parts of an increasingly globalized economic system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on Jacques Lacan's analysis of death. Development of a critical theory of death in contemporary society; How death is understood in Lacan variously in terms of sacrifice and compulsion; Proposition that Lacan effected a post-Auschwitz reclamation of the Freudian project; Suggested insights for psychoanalysis.

This article explores the proposition that the sociology of deviance and criminology have entered into a state of crisis. This has important implications as these are important fields of applied social science where most forms of sociological inquiry have been utilised. The implication that these approaches are not illuminating relevant problems nor suggesting effective policy responses has obvious consequences for other areas of sociology. This paper reviews the general condition of these fields, the argument that they are in a critical condition, and also explores some innovative responses. It finds that the crisis involves three components: a perceived failure of previous theoretical traditions and intimations of a new paradigm; the deconstruction and purported collapse of foundational concepts; and the discrediting of traditional forms of state interventionism as the central strategy in managing crime and social deviance. It proposes that while these do constitute a crisis, there is also an emerging paradigm, central to which is the proposition that 'the social' is no longer a viable foundational concept. This is exemplified by an emerging 'post-social' Foucaultian neo-liberalism, which is both a response to and a symptom of the crisis, but which is not yet fully convincing as the basis of a new paradigm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the advocacy for a culturally relativistic, contextual understanding of religious phenomena. Resources for a comprehensive model of intercultural understanding; Necessity to avoid absolutism and Eurocentrism; Differences in the functioning of religious psychology.

Critical psychology in Australia must realise its intellectual promise as a critical discourse within psychology and the human sciences generally. This task is made imperative by the rise of globalisation and the social and political challenges it is producing, and by the genetic determinism associated with the Human Genome Project. Critical psychology must also analyse and critique the recent sharp turn towards scientism and the increasing reliance on American taxonomies of psychological 'illness' represented by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. It must also engage with the rise of identity politics and the emergence of new forms of subjectivity under the impact of globalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]