Postmodernity (Concepts in social thought) - Tapa dura

Postmodernity as idea, critique, cultural experience, and social condition has engendered a sometimes angry, sometimes anxious debate across many disciplines in the social sciences and humanities. In Postmodernity, David Lyon provides a stimulating introduction to this contested concept and the discussions it provokes.

Lyon describes this multilayered notion that encompasses a variety of major social and cultural changes taking place at the end of the twentieth century. Among the key processes he examines:
-- rapid technological change
-- shifting political concerns
-- the rise of social movements
-- globalization

Lyon discusses modernity as a social-cultural entity and questions whether it and the monolithic edifice of Enlightenment rationality and progress are disintegrating. He concludes that a new sort of society is emerging, one structured around consumers and consumption rather than workers and production. This second edition delves more deeply into issues such as globalization and the new postmodern quest for ethics.

David Lyon spent his working life at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, where for over twenty years he looked after the huge ships' plans collection before becoming Curator of Naval Ordnance, then Head of Enquiries and finally Chief of Research of the Maritime Information Centre. He served in the Royal Navy Reserve and having qualified as a diving officer, was instrumental in the development of underwater archaeology in Britain, diving on the "Mary Rose" amongst others. He is a member of the Council of the Society for Nautical Research and of the Nautical Museums Trust. He has written and lectured extensively both in Britain and abroad an his many publications include "The Sailing Navy List", "The Denny List", "Steam, Steel and Torpedoes", and "Sea Battles in Close-up: The Nelson Era". He has first-hand experience of all manner of craft and now shares with his wife a double-ended yole which they sail in the Thames estuary.