Life-Modes In A Changing World Order

Beskrivelse

Life-Modes in a Changing World Order explores why the global state system is in constant flux. It examines how people's unique cultural life-modes and states' defence strategies drive ongoing and uneven transformations in world order.

An in-depth look at how cultural life-modes and state defence mechanisms shape the evolving global system.

This book introduces the concept of ‘neoculturation’ to explain how individuals work to preserve, enhance, and protect their ways of life, which ironically leads to these life-modes evolving over time. It investigates the ways in which the neoculturation of one life-mode impacts and alters the existence of other life-modes sharing the same society.

The theory presented here suggests that global struggles for recognition result in self-defending states whose cultural life-modes influence one another. This ‘fission theory’ engages critically with both classical and modern cultural and societal theories to clarify why state forms continuously develop and dissolve into interconnected socio-cultural systems composed of essential life-modes.

To support this, the authors delve into the concepts of state, production modes, and culture, using detailed ethnographic research and ethnological analysis to show how life-modes transform. Fieldwork in Denmark and China reveals contrasting views on what constitutes ‘the good life’, including family, professional, community, and societal ideals.

Life-Modes in a Changing World Order traces how life-modes have shifted from the Cold War and high modernity of the 20th century to the 21st century, marked by neoliberal political economies, great power competition, and global challenges like rising inequality, climate change, and biodiversity loss.

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