Compact is the story of a blind man living in a city of his own imagining. Confined to his deathbed, he engages in mental walks through the world's capitals. These sightless excursions explode in a plethora of musical arrangements, sexual encounters, and mysterious funeral rites. Meanwhile, a Japanese collector and his transvestite assistant watch over the blind man in exchangeupon the latter's deathfor his magnificent tattooed skin. As a further ordeal, the protagonist finds himself prey to the whims of a sadistic French girl in the next apartment.
The spectacle of major cultural and sporting events can preoccupy modern societies. This book is concerned with contemporary mega-events, like the Olympics and Expos. Using a sociological perspective Roche argues that mega-events reflect the major social changes which now influence our societies, particularly in the West, and that these amount to a new ‘second phase’ of the modernization process. Changes are particularly visible in the media, urban and global locational aspects of mega-events. Thus he suggests that contemporary mega-events, both in their achievements and their vulnerabilities, reflect, in the media sphere, the rise of the internet; in the urban sphere, de-industrialisation and the growing ecological crisis; and in the global sphere, the relative decline of the West and the rise of China and other ‘emerging’ countries.
This analysis explores the social history and politics of mega-events from the late 19th century to the present. Through case studies of events such as the 1851 Crystal Palace Expo, the 1936 Berlin Olympics and the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, Maurice Roche investigates the impact Expos and Olympics have had on national identities, on the marking of public time and space, and on visions of national citizenship and international society in modern times. Historical chapters deal with the production of Expos by power elites, their impacts on mass culture, and the political uses and abuses of international sport and Olympic events. Chapters also deal with the impact of Olympics on cities, the growth of Olympics as media events and the current crisis of the Olympic movement in world politics and culture.
« Compact porte bien son nom. Il s'agit non seulement d'un roman, mais aussi - et surtout - du corps que l'auteur a choisi de façonner, d'aménager en creux, en reliefs, en détours, tout cela enfermé dans les limites d'une forme parfaitement rigoureuse, parfaitement irrégulière : mate et scintillante, selon l'ambiguïté des plans. C'est un livre beau et dur. » Dominique Rolin, l'Observateur, 28 septembre 1966. « Compact est composé selon une recette neuve. (...) L'ensemble donne une impression de nouveauté. » Claude Mauriac, le Figaro, 12 septembre 1966. « Compact est la plus belle réussite de cette conception du roman, qui succède au Nouveau roman, et que l'on a appelé "structuraliste". » Maurice Nadeau, Le roman français depuis la guerre, Gallimard 1970. « Compact est là, comme une expression et un besoin de notre temps. » R.-M. Albérès, les Nouvelles littéraires, 8 septembre 1966. « Tout le livre, dans ses condensations, ses déplacements, est cette errance compacte à la poursuite - comme tactile - d'un nom, qui pourrait être l'espace de notre tombeau, un nom impossible à formuler, puisqu'il serait de toute façon un mot parmi d'autres, un mot d'une langue parmi d'autres, et ne pourrait contenir tous les mots dont nous sommes faits. » Philippe Sollers, les Lettres françaises, 1er septembre 1966.
This is a discerning and relevant book providing an informed analysis of European society which identifies and defines contemporary issues and engages with key social theoretical perspectives. Covering the substantive historical sociological aspects of Europe (Part 1), the historical and comparative sociology of the nation-state (Part 2), and the comparative sociology of welfare capitalism (Part 3) Maurice Roche sets out a clear and effective framework for understanding the sociology of Europe.
Citizenship rights have become vital to our sense of personal identity and social membership in modern society. In this book Maurice Roche argues that today we have to shift from the conventional post-war politics of social rights to a new politics of social obligations and personal responsibility. Recent social changes have created new problems which require rethinking of both social policy and the welfare state. In a wide-ranging discussion Roche provides a new analysis and assessment of citizenship in developed societies. The book is particularly important in its inclusion of an assessment of contemporary debates about the rise of the 'new poverty', the development of an 'underclass', as well as other 'post-industrial' changes affecting employment and family life.
This book looks at two ‘revolutions’ in philosophy – phenomenology and conceptual analysis which have been influential in sociology and psychology. It discusses humanistic psychiatry and sociological approaches to the specific area of mental illness, which counter the ultimately reductionist implications of Freudian psycho-analytic theory. The book, originally published in 1973, concludes by stating the broad underlying themes of the two forms of humanistic philosophy and indicating how they relate to the problems of theory and method in sociology.
This is a work of social theory and philosophy which seeks to make the constitution of social theory a ‘social’ activity. It is essentially a collaborative text, by five authors, committed to a re-awakening of some of the forgotten dimensions of social theorizing. The collaborative work was originally occasioned by an attempt to analyse the notion of social stratification and its treatment in the sociological tradition. The authors’ main concern here is with the nature of social theorizing, and in particular the ‘difference’ between Self and Other, being and beings, Language and Speech. The papers in the book focus on themes that are fundamental to the sense of inquiry and tradition which they are concerned to display. The themes discussed include speech, Language, Identity, Difference, Critical Tradition, Community, Metaphor, Dialectics, Observing and Reading.
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