THE ART OF LIFE - ON LIVING, LOVE AND DEATH

We are living at a time of great change--largely brought about because of the increasing influence of the market over every part of our lives. In the industrialised countries, changes in patterns of work, gender and consumption have deeply affected the structure of people's intimate lives and experiences.

The dominance of the market in all aspects of life has contributed to an erosion of tradition and any sense of public authority; and this, together with people's increasing personal isolation, has led people to place a much greater emphasis than previously on individuality and self-reliance, and to look for rules of conduct that are personally rather than collectively based--to begin to define their own approach to the art of life

This collection of new essays addresses the question of how to live ethically in the face of this collapsing of wider frameworks of reference. It also attempts the task of beginning to find new languages to fill the gaps in our vocabulary, to enable us to think about a renewed collective impulse for economic justice, personal emancipation and political democracy.

Jonathan Rutherford is Lecturer in Cultural Studies at Middlesex University and author of Forever England: Reflections on Masculinity and Empire (1998). He is editor of Identity: Community, Culture, Difference (revised 1996) and Young Britain (1998).