Comments
Here are some comments about the Theory, Culture & Society journal.
“TCS has been one of my favourite travelling companions on the road of critical theory. It has perfected a difficult balance between radicalism and mainstreaming, provocation and consolidation. It never stopped questioning its own premises and even its own success - a breath of fresh air!”
Rosi Braidotti, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands
“For me, TCS has stood as the one magazine of the past two decades that took over the role that Encounter played in the post war decades - an outlet of intellectual spunkiness and high caliber, and a reassuring voice about cultural potential amidst entropic energies and commercialist noise.”
Donald N Levine, University of Chicago, USA
“Beginning in the early years of Thatcherism, TCS has gone from strength to strength over the past two decades. TCS has redrawn the boundaries of theory, culture and society, thereby showing that intellectual and critical rigour and enterprise can in fact go hand-in-hand!”
John Urry, Lancaster University, UK
“I know there is always going to be something interesting in each and every issue of TCS that crosses my desk, something that will force me to think in a different way, something that will add more theoretical backbone. To keep this up issue after issue for 21 years is surely a quite remarkable achievement.”
Nigel Thrift, University of Bristol, UK
“If the TCS project began as a good idea, today it has become central to the social sciences. With great vision and considerable editorial skill the journal has played a decisive role both as organiser (special issues; themes; etc); and as one of the most significant intellectual sites in cultural theory capable of attracting material of the highest quality. As well as playing a crucial role in introducing new theory (which other journal can claim to have played a key part in introducing Bourdieu and Baudrillard without eclectic indulgence?), TCS has attained an agenda-setting status for social and cultural analysis. On top of that TCS has remained true to an initial resolve to be a journal that is a pleasure to read.”
Mike Gane, Loughborough University, UK
“I am very glad to have been closely involved with TCS since its very early days. Nearly everywhere I have been in the world in the years since TCS has been spoken of with enthusiasm, both for its innovative general coverage and for its specific pathbreaking repositioning of cultural and social theory.”
Roland Robertson, University of Aberdeen, UK, University of Pittsburgh, USA and Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
"TCS or in praise of connectivity. A relevant and searching attitude. A sure mark of being in touch with contemporary societies is the ability to postulate what connects culture, theory and society to establish an indissociable and dynamic whole. The latter indicates a synergy the development of which one is able to predict. The understanding of the postmodernity is based on the ability to respond to such a challenge. This is the particular challenge that TCS seems keen to take up.
Michel Maffesoli, Professor at the Sorbonne, France
“In the beginning, those of us then associated with the American journal Theory and Society felt that TCS was a shameless attempt to piggy bag on our name. Over the years, TCS has in fact won all the bragging rights as social theory's most innovative magazine. No other publication does as much to bring the worlds of social theory together. We in the hinterlands of the Atlantic Diaspora owe you our gratitude and respect for these many years of literary excellence.”
Charles Lemert, Wesleyan University, USA
“From its humble beginnings in the 1980s to its starstudded pages today, TCS spans the critical transformations in interdisciplinary social science in the past few decades. I still remember a conversation with Mike Featherstone in those early days (somewhere in the Netherlands I think) when he expressed doubt whether his perspective on consumer culture made sense. Look where he is now!”
Ien Ang, University of Western Sydney, Australia
“TCS culminated the passage from the legacy of Matthew Arnold to that of Raymond Williams in matters of intellectual discourse and pedagogical commitment. We enter the twenty-first century with TCS as beacon still, and the hospitable platform it has offered to critical reflection and intelligent critique in the past score of years has just become even more crucial than ever. Now itself an institution worthy of critical consideration, TCS stacks most favorably as site of public discourse and as agora of trenchant ideas.”
Djelal Kadir, Pennsylvania State University, USA
