Economies of Signs and Space [Paperback]

Developing a comparative analysis of the UK and US, the new Germany and Japan, Lash and Urry show how restructuration after organized capitalism has its basis in increasingly reflexive social actors and organizations. The consequence is not only the much-vaunted `postmodern condition' but also a growth in reflexivity.

In exploring this new reflexive world, the authors argue that today's economies are increasingly ones of signs - information, symbols, images, desire - and of space, where both signs and social subThis is a novel account of social change that supplants conventional understandings of `society' and presents a sociology that takes as its main unit of analysis flows through time and across space.

Developing a comparative analysis of the UK and US, the new Germany and Japan, Lash and Urry show how restructuration after organized capitalism has its basis in increasingly reflexive social actors and organizations. The consequence is not only the much-vaunted `postmodern condition' but also a growth in reflexivity.

In exploring this new reflexive world, the authors argue that today's economies are increasingly ones of signs - information, symbols, images, desire - and of space, where both signs and social sub`An indispensable, rich, shrewd, and stimulating characterization of the cultural risks and dilemmas generated by globalization.... [the book supplies] bench marks for the present debate on the sociology of culture.... [the book] is an ambitious study that pursues issues of reflexivity in relation to the commodification of signs and symbols that emerge from service industries. The movement from manufacture to servicelã"