Paul Heelas, Scott Lash and Paul Morris are the authors and editors of many books and have also worked within the Centre for the Study of Cultural Values at the University of Lancaster. This book is a sequel to Scott Lash and Jonathan Friedman's influential reader, Modernity and Identity, published by Blackwell in 1992.

• Preface. 1. Introduction: Detraditionalization and its Rivals: Paul Heelas.Part I: Losing the Traditional:.2. Individualization and 'Precarious Freedoms': Perspectives and Controversies of a Subject-Oriented Sociology: Ulrick Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim.3. Morality in the Age of Contingency: Zygmunt Bauman.4. Complexity, Structural Contingencies and Value Conflicts: Niklas Luhmann.5. The Privatization of Religion and Morality: Thomas Luckmann.Part II: Detraditionalization and Traditions Today:.6. Tradition and Self in a Mediated World: John B. Thompson.7. Identity, Meaning and Globalization: Detraditionalization in Postmodern Space-Time Compression: Thomas W. Luke.8. Detraditionalization and the Certainty of Uncertain Futures: Barbara Adam.9. Detraditionalization, Character and the Limits to Agency: Colin Campbell.Part III: Detraditionalization, Human Values and Solidarity: .10. The Foreigner: Richard Sennett.11. On Things not Being Worse and the Ethic of Humanity: Paul Heelas.12. Community Beyond Tradition: Paul Morris.13. Tradition and the Limits of Difference: Scott Lash.Part IV: Dissolving Detraditionalization: .14. Databases as Discourse, or Electronic Interpretations: Mark Poster.15. Authority and Genealogy of Subjectivity: Nikolas Rose.Index.

"Essential reading for any scholar interested in what it means to be modern today." David Ingram, Loyola University of Chicago