Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

"Altered States looks back at the election of 1992 in the light of postmodern political theory and highlights some of the lessons to be learnt from that defeat. The contributors consider where the left is situated now, how the theoretical structures of postmodernism can be used to reassess that position, and suggest ways of forecasting the future." "Wide-ranging and polemical, Altered States rethinks the tenets of socialism, taking into account the globalisation of the media, diversity and identity and the new 'city-states', in a collection which both centres current debate and takes the discussion forward, laying a ground plan for a new and radical democracy."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

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CHOICE Review

These authors seek a reconstituted collective identity for British socialism. In a state of despair, they search for a new social movement of collective consumption and entitlements supporting policy proposals such as infrastructural investment, education, health care, and urban planning regulations oriented toward repairing the damage done to the middle classes by past "welfare compromises." Wendy Wheller defines postmodernism as the desire to return to a nonalienated home. The postmodern response to "Thatcherism" seeks to articulate a politics that is not "essentialist, fixed, separatist, divisive, defensive or exclusive." It will address personal and social identities and desires. Anne Sasson in "Rethinking Socialism" concludes that socialists should develop new multicultural and antiracist policies. Socialists need to go beyond Marx and Gramsci, to reformulate their policies and party, and to build on feminist advances. Upper-division undergraduate. M. S. Power; Arkansas State University