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Surely the absence of a sociology of morality has to be one of the major weaknesses of academic sociology, and a mysterious one at that. For Durkheim, one of sociology's founding fathers, morality was to have a central place as an object of inquiry; moreover, he was passionately interested in it on the existential level, as was Weber.

Among the master social processes occurring in the modern world have been increased individualization, on the one hand, and the growth of largescale organizations, on the other. Unlike most scholars, who emphasize either one or the other, we focus attention upon certain strategic interrelationships between these master processes. We are thus addressing a fundamental sociological issue while at the same time taking development theorizing in a somewhat new direction.

Annual reporting has moved from the conveyance of “simple” accounting numbers and more towards narrative, graphical, pictorial and broader aesthetic content conveyance. At the same time, there has been a small but growing discussion of the work of Emmanuel Levinas and Zygmunt Bauman and in particular the ethic of the Other. The aim of this paper is to explore the presence of faces in annual reports.

Based on initial observations from the analysis of human representations in the annual reports of 14 companies for all years 1989 to 2003 (210 annual reports), the paper interprets the increase from a Levinasian perspective, drawing substantially from Bauman's articulation of Levinas' ethic of the Other. Particularly within the work of Levinas, this ethic is articulated through the nakedness of the face. Analysis is partly performed through illustration of the site of audiencing, a key visual methodology, in annual report images.

A significant rise in total human representation over time is interpreted in Levinasian terms and the range of sites of audiencing is demonstrated. Arguments are discussed that suggest a counter‐hegemonic understanding of the corporations' responsibility to the Other.

The paper provides a critical analysis of what this kind of face work means within the context of Levinas' ethics of the Other. The paper explores what this kind of face work means for the possibility of Levinasian‐inspired moral development and the potential for a counter‐hegemonic face work that may promote accountability.

The purpose of this paper is to explore economic conditions of contemporary society to provide insight into the ways in which the consequences of disaster, including environmental migration, are accentuated.

This research draws on Zygmunt Bauman’s theory of liquid modernity and notions of development to analyse disaster. From the analysis, a new concept, liquid development, is proposed and critiqued as a contributing factor leading to severe contemporary disaster.

Liquid development provides a new way of making sense of the conditions and consequences of economic growth and a business as usual attitude. It further provides a framework to explore the potential disaster of environmental migration in the Pacific Islands arising from liquid development driven climate change-induced sea level rise.

Analysing these conditions provides greater understanding of the resulting impact of disaster, creating awareness and informing the need for accountability and social policy. This study aims to contribute to further practical and research enquiry that will challenge liquid developers to reconsider their impact and to accept responsibility for vulnerable members of society as part of their business as usual structure.

This paper adds to Bauman’s understanding of the consequences of globalisation through the construct of liquid development. It also continues his debate by giving awareness to the global issue of environmental migration.

Urlauber suchen die Ungebundenheit der Fremde. Aber entfliehen sie wirklich einem normierten, durchrationalisierten, von Rollenfestlegungen, Notwendigkeiten und Bekanntem geprägten “modernen” Alltag, wie es das gängige kulturwissenschaftliche Erklärungsmuster des Urlaubs im Anschluss v.a. an Enzensberger, Cohen und Turner behauptet? Im Urlaub wird nach dieser Auffassung eine Gegenwelt au f Zeit gesucht, in der spielerisch Rollentausch und Identitätsverflssigung möglich wird. Dieses Essay kontrastiert diese Auffassung des Urlaubs mit der Situationsdiagnose der Postmoderne von Zygmunt Bauman: In der Postmoderne ist bereits der Alltag durch spielerischen Wechsel verschiedener Rollen und die Vermeidung von Identitatsfestlegunggeprägt. Im Folgenden werden überraschende Konsequenzen aus Baumans Diagnose für eine veränderte Funktion des Urlaubs aufgezeigt: Wenn der Lifestyleswitch den Alltag selbst zum Unterwegssein in der Fremde werden lässt, dann bleibt das nicht ohne Folgen fr den Urlaub, so die zentrale These: Der Urlaub bleibt ein Kontrast zum Alltag, aber nun gerade indem er dem im Alltag nicht realisierbaren Wunsch nach Beheimatung folgt. Solche regressive touristische Heimatsuche geschieht durch Romantisierung Erleben von Natur und Geselligkeit, Bestätigung von Vorwissen und neuerdings besonders in der Wellness durch reflexive leibliche Selbstbezglichkeit und Spiritualität. Bewegt sich der Alltag in der unvertrauten Fremde, reist der Urlauber in die vertraute Heimat. Ausgehend von dieser These wird das Modell einer durch das Reisen geschulten alltagstauglichen fragmentarischen Identität entwickelt: Es wird gezeigt, dass Urlaub zugleich Verwandlungwie Vergewisserung bewirken kann, wenn im Ausprobieren fremder Kulturmuster spielerische Leichtigkeit mit Authentizität und Sinnverstehen verbunden werden.

The current study explores the ambiguity of accounting technique in the context of a historical study of the Canadian Indian Department under the direction of Deputy Superintendent D.C. Scott at the beginning of the 20th century. Starting from the work of Bauman and his commentators, we argue that modernity viewed as a set of practices and thought patterns, facilitates bureaucratic constructions of the “Indian problem” In turn, this cultural milieu and bureaucratic construction operated as an ideological circle, encouraging the use of accounting techniques of governance that permitted both the distancing of bureaucrats from indigenous peoples and the downplaying of other vantage points. However, as our analysis highlights, numerical re‐presentations also provided the tools and rhetorical spaces for challenges to government policy.

The purpose of this paper is to interrogate the potential for hyper‐local news websites to support and sustain peripheral rural communities by extending and developing the public sphere(s) in which they engage locally and globally.

Theoretical understandings of communicative spaces, monitorial citizenship and “liquid life” and journalism developed by Jurgen Habermas, Michael Schudson, Zygmunt Bauman and Mark Deuze inform this pilot study of a hyper‐local project undertaken by a UK media corporation. Data sets comprising documentation; news‐website content; interviews with journalists; “knowledge café” exploration of audience interactions and questionnaires are analysed to identify themes and sub‐themes in the production and use of media content.

The hyper‐local project was found to have been put in place without engaging effective involvement of the community concerned and the initial conceptualisation, predicated on assumptions of an inward focus for the community, did not recognise the importance of communicative networks which both supported sustainability within the group and situated that community in wider social, cultural, economic and media dimensions. As such the project tended to reinforce, or at least, not mitigate, the community's geographical isolation.

This is a small‐scale pilot project exploring new forms of media/community engagement and, while the results can be regarded as indicative, further research is needed to investigate hyper‐local developments in a wider contextual field.

The paper addresses an important but little‐researched emergent issue: “hyper‐local”. It explores in detail some of the complexities that are beginning to be theorised in broad terms and extends understandings of local‐level practices and processes.

This article looks at the problems Sociology has in theorising modern discourses in the light of the rise and consolidation of Postmodernism. The paper begins with an historical sketch of the emergence of Enlightenment and how its values helped to engender intellectual curiosity amongst the precursors of modernist sociological theorising. Indeed, the paper analyses how Sociology faces up to enlightenment thought and legacy via a critical analysis of the modern‐postmodern debate: its historiography, pathologies, and futurology. At the same time, there has been a huge escalation of neo‐Nietzschean theorists under the label of ‘postmodernist’ who have castigated the enlightenment to the dustbin of the history of ideas, that its metanarratives of ‘progress’ and ‘freedom’ have failed and that western rationality is exhausted (Lyotard, 1984). Subsequently, the paper assesses to what extent the values of the ‘project of modernity’ have to be abandoned, and whether, in turn, sociology can offer the epistemic stretching of postmodern narratives.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the tendencies of liquid consumption in Muslim communities and analyse its impact on Muslims’ consumption practices from the holistic perspective. Liquid consumption refers to a transient and less-materialised mode of consumption that requires both minimal attachment to possessions and hybrid ownership.

This is a conceptual paper that is based on the distinction between Islam as a holistic perspective and Islamic practice as it is applied in different contexts and situations. The Continual Drift Adjustment (CDA) framework of Muslim consumers’ behaviour is developed to be deployed as an analysis framework.

The CDA framework maintains that some problematic cases of Muslim consumption behaviours indicate the drift towards disbalance. Depending on their nature, liquid consumption practices can have different impacts on the drift. Liquid consumption practices underscored by instrumental dissemblance, intellectual insecurity and spiritual scepticism intensify the drift, whereas the incorporation of spiritual sincerity, faithful submission and existential gratefulness into practices and behaviour helps to attenuate the drift.

This research contributes to the theory of liquid consumption by incorporating the religious perspective. Liquid consumption in Islam is a complex area of research, specifically considering the ambivalent meanings of liquidity in Islamic thought.

Marketers of liquid consumption solutions must be aware of these offerings’ double-edged impact on the well-being of Muslim communities. Muslim consumers should be guided towards spiritual sincerity, faithful submission and existential gratefulness in the best way possible, although it must be noted that the customary techniques of marketing would lean towards stimulating the disbalance.

This research is unique because it deals with a topic that has not been researched in the Islamic marketing discipline to this date.

The purpose of this paper is to explain the sense of choice in our contemporary world.

Taking cue from the research of the Institute of Neuroinformatics of Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, and University of Zürich, this paper is meant to highlight that the contemporary individual is gradually abandoning his own freedom of choice: the principle of moral responsibility, and – consequently – sign of humanity.

If today the smartphone is the most used tool, in the future we will soon benefit from a chip under skin which could delegate our choices. It is a piece of technology that is not only inspired by biology to create robots, but could also change our life.

From the massive use of the cell phone to the robots which apparently ‘‘feel’’ and show emotions like humans do. From the wearable exoskeleton to the prototype reproducing the artificial sense of touch, technological progress explodes to the extent of embodying itself in our nakedness.