Description
Book SynopsisThe defining feature of modern society is change - it never rests or provides its members or researchers the comfort and certainty of having attained an adequate understanding of its operations, how it functions, or where it is. Society in Flux: Two Centuries of Social Theory traces how tensions between order, process, structure and agency, and modes of analyzing them have evolved over the last two centuries.
Understanding that modern society is perpetually in flux, albeit not across the board, but in different regards at different times, and in different locations or regions, this volume delves into three modes of theorizing: critical theory, classical theory, and systems theory - each representing a different level of reflexivity and a particular way of approaching modern societies. The authors discuss globally known theorists such as August Comte, Herbert Spencer, Karl Marx, Emil Lederer, Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, and Niklas Luhmann to present perspectives, analyses, and insights that refer to and are relevant in the social world today.
Table of ContentsPART I. A PROGRAMMATIC INTRODUCTION REVISITED (AND UPDATED)
Social theory’s burden: from heteronomy to Vitacide (or, how classical critical theory predicted proliferating rackets, authoritarian personalities, and administered worlds in the 21st century); Harry F. Dahms
PART II. CRITICAL THEORY
Chapter 1. Critical theory, the imagination, and the critique of judgment: Horkheimer’s vision reconsidered; John Levi Martin
Chapter 2. Marx, critical theory, and the treadmill of production of value: why environmental sociology needs a critique of capital; Alexander M. Stoner
PART III. CLASSICAL THEORY
Chapter 3. Emil Lederer’s theory of the new middle class: historical and current relevance of a key sociological concept; Sandro Segre
Chapter 4. Figuring the beginning: Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer as founding figures of sociology; Tobias Schlechtriemen
PART IV. SYSTEMS THEORY
Chapter 5. Sociology as social system: Luhmann, enlightenment, and the gap between “facts” and “norms”; Anthony J. Knowles
Chapter 6. Give me an operation and I will give you a system: the psychic in Luhmann’s theory; Santiago Gabriel Calise
