Non-Places: An Introduction to Supermodernity

Description

An ever-increasing proportion of our lives is spent in supermarkets, airports and hotels, on motorways or in front of TVs, computers and cash machines. This invasion of the world by what Marc Auge calls "non-space" results in a profound alteration of awareness: something we perceive, but only in a partial and incoherent manner. Auge uses the concept of "supermodernity" to describe a situation of excessive information and excessive space. In this fascinating essay he seeks to establish an intellectual armature for an anthropology of supermodernity.

MARC AUGE is Director of Studies at the Ecole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales in Paris. He is the author of many books, including The Meaning of Illness, A Sense for the Other: The Timelessness and Relevance of Anthropology, The War of Dreams: Studies in Ethno Fiction, and In the Metro.

"Shopping malls, motorways, airport lounges - we are all familiar with these curious spaces which are both everywhere and nowhere. But only now do we have a coherent analysis of their far-reaching effects on public and private experience. Marc Auge has become their anthropologist, and has written a timely and original book." Patrick Wright, author of The Village That Died for England "Unsettling, elegantly written and illuminating: essential reading for anyone seeking to understand our supermodern condition." The Guardian