The authors in this collection are a new generation of North American critical theorists who do not retreat to European humanism in the face of social, cultural and self transformation. Each one actively encounters and works through the social and theoretical changest that have occurred since Frankfurt-style critical theory. They are neither scholastic nor dogmatic. They do not eschew post-modernism for the hackneyed slogans, nor do they embrace theory as an aesthetic substitute for theory as a socially tranformative practice. They are committed to social theory and social practice, and it is this which unifies the papers in this reader.