When I decided to write about edgework over twenty-five years ago, I had no idea that I had put myself on a pathway of sustained engagement with one of the most important sociologists of the twentieth century. As an academic sociologist in the early stages of my career, I felt that I had a good general understanding of Erving Goffman’s most important ideas and a proper appreciation of his uniqu...

This article explores the concept of 'modernity' that is often associated with West. Using Malaysia's modernisation project as a case study, it offers insight into Malaysian modernity in post-Mahathir era. Apart from dealing question what version government intends to achieve, this also highlights issues identity, Asian values, multiculturalism and religion. It places Malaysia discourse argues ...

Starting from the postmodern, the philosophical and sociological speculation by Zygmunt Bauman, opens - through the analysis of the phenomenon of globalization - to the meta-level of life, and then circumscribes the most recent thinking on political life, until reaching the liquid modernity: overcoming postmodernity itself. As a result individual, society, ethics, power, religion become those w...

This article seeks to contribute to a more adequate understanding of the adoption of modern audiovisual mass media by contemporary religious groups. It does so by examining Pentecostal-charismatic churches as well as the Christian mass culture instigated by its popularity, and so-called traditional religion in Ghana, which develop markedly different attitudes towards audiovisual mass media and ...

This article examines the role of outer space technopolitics in post-Soviet Kazakhstan. It explores how space, technological artefact global relevance, works as a postcolonial fetish modernity that is called upon to produce what it represents, is, reality technologically advanced Kazakh nation. The shows its project becoming spacefaring nation country reiterates major incentives have motivated ...

We describe our experiences importing PASS [16] provenance into PLUS [7]. Although both systems import and export provenance that conforms to the Open Provenance Model (OPM) [14], the two systems vary greatly with respect to the granularity of provenance captured, how much semantic knowledge the system contributes, and the completeness of provenance capture. We encountered several problems reco...

In this article the author explains the social role of Muslim woman in a postmodern society through a public symbol of her identity--the veil. The article's thesis is that the Muslim women's manifestation of their Islamic denomination through veiling and wearing appropriate clothes (in the case of men through growing beards and wearing clothes considered appropriate for them) signifies an expre...