Governing and Ruling: The Political Logic of Taxation in China

cuse referred to as ‘‘repressive desublimation’’ or the proliferation of transgressive experiences that do not serve genuine transformational ends but merely end by shoring up the very systemic logics that they are supposed to be against. In the end, Thorpe succeeds in diagnosing the role of sociology as a handmaiden in the reproduction of our pathological social reality rather than a genuine means to undermine it. The hyper-subjectivism and social atomization created by neoliberalism has meant the dissolution of social solidarism and the decline of the possibility of a critical form of social knowledge with democratic, public aims. Sociology in Post-Normal Times is a book that should be read and discussed widely, for this reviewer fears that, if Thorpe is right, such books will be fewer and farther between.