Introduction

This introduction outlines the key aims of Cold War Sociology , its contribution to the Contemporary Liminality series and its key concepts. The Cold War was a time and space that by its very nature was liminal. Existing on the precipice between social and economic progress and nuclear annihilation, the twin axes of the welfare and warfare state brought technological innovation to the Northern Hemisphere. Much of the success and danger of these approaches lay in the way in which economy and society used distribution; from the highways of the USA, to nuclear missile silos, to the Internet, distribution is a central function of social operation, which has been overlooked in social sciences, generally, and sociology, specifically, as the discipline has turned towards discrete political interests. This book seeks to redress this imbalance, theoretically through the critical examination of the unintended consequences, which derive from a period of radical innovation in advanced, networked, industrialized or ‘gnostic’ societies. Empirically, it draws upon research conducted throughout the English Midlands, conducted in areas where distribution is paramount in food banking and insecurity, higher education, technology, information veracity and media. While there is a political and social shift towards game theory’s articulation of the win/lose binary found in zero-sum thinking, it is in a positive-sum mindset – which minimized loss during the Cold War – that is seen as the paragon way of living and being human in the 21st century.