This book represents a remarkable synthesis of recent discussion and debate regarding crucial aspects of postmodernization, religious change and the globalization of world society.

Bryan S.Turner is Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Professor of Sociology at Deakin University, Australia.

Part 1 Orientalism; Chapter 1 Orientalism, postmodernism and religion; Chapter 2 Orientalism and the problem of civil society in Islam While; Chapter 3 Accounting for the Orient; Part 2 II Orientalists; Chapter 4 Conscience in the construction of religion; Chapter 5 Gustave von Grunebaum and the mimesis of Islam; Part 3 III Globalism; Chapter 6 Politics and culture in Islamic globalism; Chapter 7 From orientalism to global sociology; Chapter 8 The concept of 'the world' in sociology; Part 4 IV Intellectuals and postmodernism; Chapter 9 Nostalgia, postmodernism and the critique of mass culture; Chapter 10 The two faces of sociology: global or national?; Chapter 11 Ideology and utopia in the formation of an intelligentsia; Part 5 V Modernity; Chapter 12 From regulation to risk; Chapter 13 The self and reflexive modernity; Chapter 14 Conclusion ReferencesIndex;