Constructing a dialogue between the social theory of Alain Touraine and the philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, this work locates the wellsprings of the renewed intepretative powers of Touraine's recent sociology of the subject and critique of modernity in an implicit and unfinished, but unmistakable 'hermeneutical turn'.

Glenda Ballantyne, Ph.d. (2001) in Sociology, La Trobe University, is Lecturer in Sociology at Swinburne University of Technology, Lilydale. Her research interests include social theory, social movements, multiple modernities, historical sociology, cultural diversity, agency, identity and subjectivity and, hermeneutics.