This book traces the lineaments of a still inchoate intellectual movement, of which the anthology's contributors are the vanguard. It is concerned with the nature and modalities of power and legitimacy in society, and deals with the nature and modalities of the "self" or "subject."

Foreword -- A Note on the Editing -- Credits -- Introduction -- Cultured Bodies -- Structures, Habitus, Practices -- Gender and Identity in the New Guinea Highlands -- Discipline -- Matters and Ideas -- Politics Unbound -- Progress Exposed as Fate? -- Modernity and the Planes of Historicity -- The Totalitarian Disease -- Individualism and the Ideology of Romantic Love -- The Contemporary Codification of Intimacy -- Acts and Reasons -- Communicative Versus Subject-Centered Reason -- The Contemporary Pragmatics of Scientific Knowledge -- Economies and Societies -- Post-Industrial Classes -- On Consumer Society