The Vanishing Society

Juan Antonio Roche Cárcel

ISBN 978-3-8325-3353-3
146 pages, year of publication: 2012
price: 34.50 €
The Vanishing Society

This book deals with the cultural construction of reality and its evolution in modern society, from the Enlightenment to the present. The process has been shaped by the growing of subjectivism, which joined to the course of events, explains the gradual progress toward greater fracture inside the human being, and between them, the world and the society.

Indeed, the flight from reality has been taking over of our civilization to the point that in postmodernity, with the virtualization of the economy, money and computer and the conversion of the space into scenery, is desired to replace the reality by another more subjective, mental, abstract, random, dynamic and evanescent. This replacement of reality has been completed through two models: the virtual or technological and the aesthetic or simulation model. In both cases -that can coexist- the domain of economics is overwhelming, as is the one that settles a new order, defined primarily in economic terms. But always at the expense of reality becomes a merchandise and, as it, an object for sale.

JUAN ANTONIO ROCHE CARCEL is Senior Lecturer of Sociology of Culture and the Arts, at the University of Alicante (Spain). His recent major book titles are The Sociology as one of the Fine Arts. Influence of Literature and Arts in Sociological Thought, 2012; and Spaces and Uncertain Times of Culture, 2007. He has also published other books and journal articles related to the world of culture and the arts -globalization, migration, the meaning of work, the uncertainty of the time, the women love, the fragility of democracy, the architecture of the skyscrapers, the bodies of women in Western art, etc-.