NowHere: Space, Time, and Modernity - Softcover

Roger Friedland is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His most recent book is To Rule Jerusalem: The Profane Politics of a Sacred Place, with Richard Hecht (1993). Deirdre Boden is Lecturer in Sociology at Lancaster University in England and the author of Talk and Social Structure (California, 1991).

"NowHere is a fascinating collection of essays, led off by an introduction of shrewd, comprehensive readings of space-time problems in the thought of the leading theorists of modernity and late (post) modernity."—George E. Marcus, Rice University

"NowHere represents one of the liveliest and most original attempts to rethink modernity on the contemporary scene. The focus on real time and real place generates a sense of intensity and urgency that is rare in social science writing."—Sherry B. Ortner, University of Michigan

"Look what Friedland, Boden, and their fellow authors have put into this space: it's about time! . . . They establish the inadequacy of the vacant temporal and spatial geometries most social science adopts unthinkingly, point the way to reflection on time and space as rich, dynamic, interacting media, and have a lot of fun along the way."—Charles Tilly, New School for Social Research

"Modernity is indeed the spatio-temporality of the 'now here.' It is the empty time and space of the disciplines and technology as well as the lived time-space of being in the world. This book is a panoramic and sustained investigation of the 'chronoscape' of la condition moderne—from the negative space of the painter's tableau, to the proximate immediacy of face-to-face communication, to the eschatological time of Judaic myth. All of this is itself located in the concrete rhythm and place of the contemporary city, the workday, the family, the mass media. This book is essential in order to grasp the spatio-temporal recasting of thought in the social and cultural sciences."—Scott Lash, Lancaster University

"NowHere is a fascinating collection of essays, led off by an introduction of shrewd, comprehensive readings of space-time problems in the thought of the leading theorists of modernity and late (post) modernity." George E. Marcus, Rice University

"NowHere represents one of the liveliest and most original attempts to rethink modernity on the contemporary scene. The focus on real time and real place generates a sense of intensity and urgency that is rare in social science writing." Sherry B. Ortner, University of Michigan

"Look what Friedland, Boden, and their fellow authors have put into this space: it's about time! . . . They establish the inadequacy of the vacant temporal and spatial geometries most social science adopts unthinkingly, point the way to reflection on time and space as rich, dynamic, interacting media, and have a lot of fun along the way." Charles Tilly, New School for Social Research

"Modernity is indeed the spatio-temporality of the 'now here.' It is the empty time and space of the disciplines and technology as well as the lived time-space of being in the world. This book is a panoramic and sustained investigation of the 'chronoscape' of la condition moderne from the negative space of the painter's tableau, to the proximate immediacy of face-to-face communication, to the eschatological time of Judaic myth. All of this is itself located in the concrete rhythm and place of the contemporary city, the workday, the family, the mass media. This book is essential in order to grasp the spatio-temporal recasting of thought in the social and cultural sciences." Scott Lash, Lancaster University