The Playing Self: Person And Meaning In The Planetary Society

The Playing Self addresses the impact of the information revolution, globalization, and 'permanent uncertainty' on identity formation and experience of everyday life. Bringing together in a unique combination subjective, cultural and structural dimensions of social change and social action, Melucci provides a brilliant and original phenomenological analysis of the self and its vicissitudes in 'post-industrial society.' Remarkably free of jargon and deeply serious, this text is a 'must' for anyone interested in the challenges to and new opportunities for individual freedom in an increasingly complex world.'-----Jean Cohen, Columbia University

In this groundbreaking book, influential cultural sociologist Alberto Melucci delves deeper into questions about the self as both a psychological and sociocultural entity, particularly in the context of a global society for which information has become a basic resource. He accounts for the self as a site of highly subjective and intimate experiences, such as crying, laughing and loving, and in relation to social structural dynamics, through more impersonal experiences, such as the experience of time, and links of the self to politics.