Authored by a scholar-blogger, this engaging book is packed with examples that show how blogging and related genres are changing media and communication. It gives definitions and explains how blogs work, shows how blogs relate to the historical development of publishing and communication and looks at the ways blogs structure social networks.

"This book is a richly document account, based on original research, of how bordering has become dispersed into the interstices of everyday life. Controlling borders is about much more than patrolling territorial boundaries: it now comprises a multitude of practices and processes in local contexts of everyday life"--

Care is a diverse and evolving concept. It is taken as a natural part of life yet it is shaped by philosophical, ideological, political and economic arguments concerning its definition and purpose as well as how, where and to whom it is provided and funded.

a Communitya is one of those words that feels good: it is good a to have a communitya , a to be in a communitya . And a communitya feels good because of the meanings which the word conveys, all of them promising pleasures, and more often than not the kind of pleasures which we would like to experience but seem to miss.

In this major theoretical statement, the author offers a new and provocative interpretation of the institutional transformations associated with modernity. We do not as yet, he argues, live in a post--modern world.

Anthony Giddens has been in the forefront of developments in social theory for the past decade.

This book provides a clear and concise introduction to the concept of consumption and to the wide--ranging debates about the nature and consequences of consumer society. Community and social class appear to be in irreversible decline.