In a detailed discussion of post-communist eastern Europe, Islamic revivalism in Iran and the liberation struggle in South Africa, the author argues that modernity is poised between the threat of authoritarian politics of identity on one hand and the promise of opening up new democratic communicative organizations on the other.

`This volume is a preliminary but welcome attempt to extend the analysis of Critical Theory beyond its familiar terrain of Western Europe and North America.... Ray makes a valuable contribution by emphasizing that the colonization of the lifeworld can produce not only movements which challenge the existing system of regulation, but those which aim to protect it as well.... Ray surely has accomplished his modest goal of `opening up analysis to productive interrogation′′ - Political Studies

`Will be of interest both to social theorists and to comparative sociologists and while it may be different parts of the book which attract their initial interest, readers will be repaid for following the argument through to its conclusion′ - British Journal of Sociology

`Ray′s revision of Habermas′s critical theory is profound and a success′ - Choice

I joined the University of Kent in 1998. Before that I was in the Department of Sociology at Lancaster University. In 1996, I was visiting scholar, Victoria University Wellington, New Zealand. At Kent I was Head of the Department of Sociology and then SSPSSR between 1999-2001, and Sub-Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences between 2009-11. I am currently Director of Research for SSPSSR.