Most of the contributions in this volume originated as papers for two workshops of the Anniversary Conference of Tilburg University that was held in Tilburg, the Netherlands , on 26-28 March 2003. The Conference was entitled ""Sustainable Ties in the Information Society."" One of the workshops was on ""The Information Society and Its Discontents: The Search for ‘New' Recipes and Reform""; the other one was on ""Social Cohesion, Information Society and Education."" In light of obvious overlap of themes and content, after the Conference it was decided to join the efforts of the two work shops, and to strive for an integrated publication.
