Books in the Conversations series

Today the smallest details of our daily lives are tracked and traced more closely than ever before, and those who are monitored often cooperate willingly with the monitors. From London and New York to New Delhi, Shanghai and Rio de Janeiro, video cameras are a familiar and accepted sight in public places.

Dispossession describes the condition of those who have lost land, citizenship, property, and a broader belonging to the world. This thought-provoking book seeks to elaborate our understanding of dispossession outside of the conventional logic of possession, a hallmark of capitalism, liberalism, and humanism.

* Ulrich Beck, one of the most important and influential contemporary social thinkers, reveals and expands his work in a series of conversations with journalist Johannes Willms.

In a series of conversations Manuel Castells, one of the world's best known social scientists, explains and expands his work. He builds on his earlier thinking, opening it to new audiences and taking it into new areas in a highly accessible way.

In this new book, Slavoj i ek and Glyn Daly engage in a series of entertaining conversations which illustrate the originality of i ek's thinking on psychoanalysis, philosophy, multiculturalism, popular/cyber culture, totalitarianism, ethics and politics.

Critical social theorist and philosopher David Theo Goldberg is one of the defining figures in critical race theory.

Discusses the difference between political and sexual identity and inquires whether psychoanalysis can be considered a radical form of thought that can be used fruitfully in dialogue about political struggle.

Born in Tehran in 1957, film-maker Mohsen Ostad Ali Makhmalbaf grew up in the religiously and politically charged atmosphere of the 1960s. In this title, he reflects on the relationship between cinema and violence, tolerance, and social change, as well as the political and artistic importance of the autonomy of the film-maker.

Zygmunt Bauman is one of the leading figures in contemporary social thought. His work ranges across issues of ethics, culture and politics. It never forgets that social thought ought to help men and women make sense of their lives and aspire towards something different. His books and essays always focus on the here and now: violence and moral indifference, globalization, consumerism, politics and individualization. They cast a sharp eye on the panaceas of there is no alternative'; the embrace of community and the fads of the counselling boom'; through which men and women are told that they can achieve biographical solutions to what are, in fact, systemic problems. In this new book, Zygmunt Bauman and Keith Tester engage in five accessible conversations that uncover and explore the assumptions and commitments underpinning Bauman's ground-breaking social thought. The conversations show how those commitments have influenced Bauman's analyses of modernity, postmodernity and liquid modernity'. The book ranges widely, from autobiographical reflection through to pointers for the understanding and future of Bauman's social thought. The conversations illustrate the moral substance of Bauman's refusal to accept that the world cannot be made different. They show why social thought is a human necessity. Conversations with Zygmunt Bauman is a book which will offer fresh insight into Bauman's work for those who are familiar with it, and provide an engaging and helpful entry point for those who are new to it.