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DisConnected offers a new vision of human nature and a new understanding of human behaviour and social problems. Connection is the most essential human trait - it determines our behaviour and our level of well-being. Cruelty is the result of a sense of disconnection, while "goodness" stems from connection. Unfortunately, the most disconnected people gravitate to positions of power, which leads to "pathocracy," the most common form of government during the 20th century. Disconnected societies are patriarchal, hierarchical and warlike. Connected societies are egalitarian, democratic and peaceful. We can measure both social progress and personal development in terms of how far we move along a continuum of connection. At the most essential level, we are always interconnected. Altruism and spirituality are experiences of our fundamental connection. Regaining awareness of our connection is the only way by which we can live in harmony with ourselves, one another, and the world itself

Steve Taylor offers a new vision of the world that is compatible with both modern science and ancient spiritual teachings. Spiritual Science reveals Taylor's 'panspiritist' view of reality, one that transcends both conventional science and religion, and answers many of the riddles that neither can fully explain. The standard model of science has had limited success in explaining many phenomena, including human consciousness, the connection between the mind and the body, altruism and 'anomalous' phenomena such as near-death experiences, psi phenomena and spiritual experiences, to name just a few. But from a 'panspiritist' perspective--which sees spirit or consciousness as a fundamental essence of reality--it is possible to make sense of all these things. Drawing on the insights of philosophers, physicists, mystics, as well as spiritual traditions and indigenous cultures, Steve Taylor makes a case for a spiritual vision of reality. He presents a worldview that is compatible with both modern science and ancient spiritual teachings--a vision of a sacred and interconnected world, and of a meaningful and purposeful human life

This paper examines the pursuit of home within a diasporic British Indian Punjabi community. It is argued that the British Asian transnational pursuit of home is significantly shaped by the dynamic social context of South Asia as well as social processes within Britain and across the South Asian diaspora. Drawing upon a decade of original, transnational, ethnographic research within the UK and India, I analyse the rapidly changing social context of Punjab, India, and the impact of this upon the diasporic Punjabi pursuit of home. I particularly argue that increasing divisions between the UK diasporic group studied and the non-migrant permanent residents of Punjab, which are intrinsically related to processes of inclusion and exclusion within Punjab, especially the changing role and significance of land ownership and changing consumption practices therein, in turn connected to the increasing influence of economic neoliberalization and global consumer culture within India, significantly shapes the (re)production of home and identity amongst the Punjabi diaspora. Recent manifestations of these social processes within Punjab are threatening the very lived Indian home of some diasporic Punjabis, their Indian 'roots'.

Drawing upon a decade of empirical research, this article examines changing meanings of 'home' and ontological security amongst a diasporic British Indian Punjabi community. It is argued that home is pursued, transnationally, by British South Asians and that this is significantly shaped by the dynamic social context of South Asia as well as social processes within Britain and across the South Asian diaspora. Previous studies of Punjabi and South Asian diasporic meanings of home and diasporic identities have focused primarily upon Western and intra-diasporic processes in the (re)production of meanings of home, to the relative neglect of dynamic processes in South Asia. Where the South Asian context has been considered significant, it has been represented as static and unchanging. My investigation of dynamic, contemporary social and cultural processes within Punjab reveals that consumer display is replacing the ownership and control of agricultural land and produce as the primary means through which home and ontological security is pursued by the Punjabi diaspora within India. However, this is, in turn, leading to increasing resentment and conflict between the diaspora and the permanent residents of Punjab—part of wider processes of social inclusion and exclusion which also impact upon the diasporic pursuit of home and ontological security.

Service work is often (mis)represented within western sociology through hyperbolic language, as its increasing incidence and changing character is seen as symptomatic of profound social change. This paper argues that many recent empirical investigations into, and the dominant representations of, the service encounter (employment involving employee-customer interaction which is represented as a particularly 'new' form of work) exaggerate its novelty as 'cultural' work. Through a critical analysis of some recent empirical accounts of the service encounter and drawing upon one example from the author's own ethnographic research into service encounters within north- eastern England, it is argued that the dominant representations over-emphasise the cultural, and underplay both the economic and gendered, dynamics of the employment experience. More specifically, we argue that it is the active combination of 'the economic' and 'the cultural' - the way in which gendered demands for employees to develop particular norms, values, personalities and identities are embedded within inequitable economic relationships - which can shape the employment experience of service employees. Dominant representations of the service encounter also reject the contemporary relevance of 'traditional' industrial sociological analyses of employment relations. However, given the weak empirical foundations of 'the cultural turn', we argue that this contention cannot be supported. In fact, it is suggested that many 'traditional' industrial sociological analyses precisely examine the interplay between economic, gendered and cultural relations and therefore continue to have relevance for understanding contemporary employment. Finally, our arguments are located within debates about the cultural turn within the wider sociological discipline.