Altered states : postmodernism, politics, culture / edited by Mark Perryman.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Notes on Contributors / Mark Perryman -- Introduction: The Remaking of the Political -- Loves Labour Lost / Andrew Gamble -- Politics, Media and Public Belief / Greg Philo -- Unfinished Business - From Thatcherite Modernisation to Incomplete Modernity / Mike Rustin -- Nostalgia isn't Nasty - The Postmodernising of Parliamentary Democracy / Wendy Wheeler -- Feminism, Postmodernism and the Real Me / Angela McRobbie -- Postmodernism - The Highest Stage of Cultural Imperialism? / David Morley -- The New 'City-States' / Ken Worpole -- Mongrelisation is our Original State: Interview / David Dabydeen -- Waking Up to New Times - Doubts and Dilemmas on the Left / Kevin Davey -- Radical Democracy - Arguments and Principles / Adam Lent -- Towards a Postmodern Conservatism / Marc-Henri Glendening -- Rethinking Socialism - New Processes, New Thinking / Anne Showstack Sassoon.

Altered States looks back at the election of 1992 in the light of postmodern political theory and highlights some of the lessons to be learnt from that defeat. The contributors consider where the left is situated now, how the theoretical structures of postmodernism can be used to reassess that position, and suggest ways of forecasting the future.

Wide-ranging and polemical, Altered States rethinks the tenets of socialism, taking into account the globalisation of the media, diversity and identity and the new 'city-states', in a collection which both centres current debate and takes the discussion forward, laying a ground plan for a new and radical democracy.