Nick Lee is Lecturer in Sociology at Keele University. His research explores relations between dignity, presence and materiality. His main contribution so far has been to the sociology of childhood. His publications include 'Childhood and Society: Growing Up in an Age of Uncertainty', Open University Press, 2001.

Rolland Munro is Professor of Organisation Theory and Director of the Centre for Social Theory and Technology at Keele University. Among many articles on culture, identity, information, knowledge and power is a long standing interest in different forms of accountability and belonging. He is currently writing a book on the Euro-American's cultural and social entanglement with technology, provisionally called 'The Demanding Relationship' to clarify ideas like motility, disposal, discretion, punctualising and ethos. He co-edited a 1997 Sociological Review Monograph entitled 'Ideas of Difference: Social Spaces and the Labour of Division'.