William Outhwaite | Newcastle University (original) (raw)
Books by William Outhwaite
"Social Theory and Post communism" undertakes a thorough study of the implications of post-commun... more "Social Theory and Post communism" undertakes a thorough study of the implications of post-communism for sociological theory. Written by two leading social theorists, the book discusses the thesis that the fall of communism has decimated alternative conceptions of social organizations other than capitalism. It analyzes the implications of the fall of communism on social theory. It discusses alternative ideas of social organizations other than capitalism, in the wake of the collapse of communism. It covers state/civil society, globalization, the future of 'modernity', and post-socialism.
Papers by William Outhwaite
Journal of Contemporary European Research, 2021
This commentary examines the EU’s halting development of territorial policy, most recently in mac... more This commentary examines the EU’s halting development of territorial policy, most recently in macro-regional planning, and the responses of member states’ local and national governmental elites. Whether populist or not in their overall programmes, these elites have tended to resist EU initiatives in the name of a perceived national interest or to instrumentalise them in order to maximise their domestic political pay-off. These ‘sovereignty games’ (Adler-Nissen and Gammeltoft-Hansen 2008) have been a constant feature of the European integration process, but transnational territorial initiatives, involving a flexible mix of European and sub-regional bodies as well as national states (both members and non-members of the EU) tend to raise the stakes in these games.
Czech Sociological Review
The centenary of Max Weber's death raises the question of the wider significance of 1920 as marki... more The centenary of Max Weber's death raises the question of the wider significance of 1920 as marking a break in the history of social theory. This essay focuses on Germany and Austria, where the political break with the past was particularly sharp and the discontinuities in the social and intellectual configuration of the social sciences were most obvious. Three trends are particularly striking: the development of neo-Marxist social theory with György Lukács and Karl Korsch and the later emergence of critical theory, the polarisation between neo-positivism and interpretive sociology, and the consolidation of the sociology of knowledge.
Sotsiologicheskoe Obozrenie / Russian Sociological Review, Mar 1, 2019
David Held, one of the most creative and prolific political sociologists of our times, died sudde... more David Held, one of the most creative and prolific political sociologists of our times, died suddenly of cancer in March, 2019. Born in London and the son of German refugees escaping Nazism, he studied at Manchester, MIT, and Cambridge. Held then obtained teaching posts at Cardiff and York, and a chair in Politics and Sociology at the Open University, the UK's innovative distance-learning university established in the 1960s by Prime Minister Harold Wilson and which became a centre of critical thought in the social sciences. In 1980, Held published the first substantial book on Frankfurt critical theory 1 in English. In 1982, with John Thompson, another Cambridge sociologist, Held published an edited book of essays on Habermas by leading scholars from across the world including the editors themselves, and is a publication which remains a fundamental resource on Habermas's early work. 2 Held continued to be deeply influenced by Habermasian critical theory as he began a vast series of authored, co-authored, and edited books on democratic theory and practice. In 1984, he co-founded Polity Press with Anthony Giddens and John Thompson. Polity rapidly became, and remains, one of the leading UK publishers in the social sciences and cultural studies, including a very active translation programme of books from Europe and elsewhere. At the end of the 1980s, the theme of globalization (mondialisation in French) broke over the world, and was reflected in Giddens' published lectures titled Consequences of Modernity 3 and a growing number of other works. 4 In disciplinary terms, the ground had been prepared by a rapprochement between sociology and the newer discipline of inter
the work in its final form. But its use for commercial purposes, of any kind, in any part of the ... more the work in its final form. But its use for commercial purposes, of any kind, in any part of the world, in any language, should be discussed with the Chief Editor of this magazine.). This option has been chosen so that the author retains the right to copy, 2 attractive alternative to democracy, but also no realistic alternative to capitalism. The adjectives reflect our differing evaluations of these two institutions. I am assuming that despite all the irritation we may feel with party politics (nicely expressed in the German term Politikverdrossenheit) 2 , no-one here would reject democracy in principle, whereas quite a lot of us might see the transcendence of capitalism as desirable, if it turned out to be possible. And we have once again, after the eclipse of the communist and most other radical socialist parties in Europe and the transformation of European social democracy towards the centre, the revival of explicitly 'anticapitalist' social movements. One can be sceptical about their propects, as is, for example, Žižek on the European Left, but at least the idea of anticapitalism is around again. 3 2 See Claus Offe's important contribution‚ 'Political Disaffection as an Outcome of
Bauman's Challenge, 2010
... Ian Varcoe also deserve a mention for their superb Festschrift and their own very substantial... more ... Ian Varcoe also deserve a mention for their superb Festschrift and their own very substantial contributions in it. 8. Although no one could seriously deny that Bulgaria and, a fortiori, Poland, are part of Europe, the important point is the fact of division. 9. Yevgeny Yevtushenko, ' '. ...
1968 in Retrospect, 2009
My 1968 began promptly on New Year’s Day when I caught the slow cross-country train from Manchest... more My 1968 began promptly on New Year’s Day when I caught the slow cross-country train from Manchester to Harwich and thence to Hoek van Holland and by train to Basle. After that, the year was substantially one of missed opportunities. I spent the next four months learning German in the Black Forest and a further four months consolidating it in a temporary job in Basle. By then, the German movement was substantially over. (Die Zeit recently published a photo of Ralf Dahrendorf and Daniel Cohn-Bendit debating at an open-air meeting in nearby Freiburg, but that was the previous year.) In Basle, I was only a tram ride from the French border, and crossed it occasionally, but there was nothing to see in the small border town and with the general strike no obvious way of getting to Paris. I again missed seeing Cohn-Bendit when he was replaced on a visit to a student meeting in Basle by another member of the Mouvement du 22 mars, which seemed to have been worried about a personality cult developing round him. There were some more demonstrations and meetings, including one addressed by Elmar Altvater, but that was about it as far as I was concerned. Back in England in the autumn, and beginning to study PPE (Politics, Philosophy, Economics) at Oxford, I went on the big anti-Vietnam demonstration in London at the end of October, which so scared the BBC that they sent programme tapes to Birmingham in case their buildings were occupied, but I opted out of the more adventurous side-trip to attack the US Embassy.
Frontiers in Sociology, 2016
Calls for solidarity are always accompanied by feelings of urgency. This is true both for the mul... more Calls for solidarity are always accompanied by feelings of urgency. This is true both for the multifarious practical expressions of solidarity and for the intellectual usages of the concept. At the outbreak of the war in Iraq, for instance, the word and concept of ‘solidarity’ were brought to the fore by three of the most influential thinkers of our time, Jurgen Habermas, Jacques Derrida and Richard Rorty. However, solidarity is still used as a mere buzzword by a surprisingly broad spectrum of the political world. The book has a twofold central objective: it aims both at proposing a variety of sophisticated historical and theoretical reconceptualisations of solidarity and at exposing and spelling out the practical implications of contemporary expressions of solidarity. These two objectives are tightly related by their common frame of reference: European societies and, possibly in the future, a European polity. Thus, a first, historical and theoretical part explores the emergence, consolidation and challenging of the concept of solidarity in the context of differences in social, religious and political conditions within Europe. A second, more ‘empirical’ part investigates the most crucial challenges posed to solidarity in the European space: the EU integration process itself, immigration, Islam, the relation of Western Europe to Eastern Europe, and to developing countries.
Wenn nicht das, dann eben das 1 Is Europe Cosmopolitan? For some, the cosmopolitan character of E... more Wenn nicht das, dann eben das 1 Is Europe Cosmopolitan? For some, the cosmopolitan character of Europe in general, and the EU in particular, is not in question. Is Europe not par excellence the region where humans emancipated themselves from unreflected traditions and primordial loyalties and preached, sometimes even practised, ideas of the brotherhood of man or, as we would now say, the siblinghood of humanity? And is European integration not by definition a cosmopolitan project, marked in its current version by the powerful image of the West German and French coal and steel industries fused together in the ECSC a mere half decade after the end of the War? There is much to be said for these views, which have been powerfully argued in the recent past by Gerard Delanty, Ulrich Beck and others. Jürgen Habermas (2004), for example, has stressed the way in which Europeans have 'painfully' learned how to handle their differences and to recognise one another in their difference. Delanty (2005) has put forward the idea of Europe as a privileged site of cultural translation, while in Beck and Grande's Cosmopolitan Europe (2004) the adjective is built into the title. The EU's most recent enlargement in 2004 brought in an eminently cosmopolitan, or at least eclectic, mix of three former Soviet republics, one former Yugoslav republic, four members of the Visegrád group of relatively privileged postcommunist countries and one and a half Mediterranean islands. Unfortunately, there is also a good deal to be said also for the contrary, or perhaps complementary, view which sees Europe as the chief defendant in the court of world history, responsible for imperialism, 'scientific' racism, 'scientific' communism, for two world wars and for planning (and almost initiating) the third and final one. 1 Similarly, the EU can be seen as selfobsessed, protectionist and unconcerned or unable to take on a serious role in the governance of the
This series aims to create a forum for debate between different theoretical and philosophical tra... more This series aims to create a forum for debate between different theoretical and philosophical traditions in the social sciences. As well as covering broad schools of thought, the series will also concentrate upon the work of particular thinkers whose ideas have had a major impact on social science (these books appear under the sub-series title of 'Theoretical Traditions in the Social Sciences'). The series is not limited to abstract theoretical discussion-it will also include more substantive works on contemporary capitalism, the state, politics and other subject areas.
The Shape of the New Europe, 2006
The European Union and European identity were until recently the objects of separate branches of ... more The European Union and European identity were until recently the objects of separate branches of scholarship and inquiry. With the entry of Central and Eastern European members into the EU, it has become clear that the future of the European Union can no longer be considered in isolation from the future of European identity. Taking Jurgen Habermas's plea for a European constitution and a normative foundation for the European Union as its starting point, this volume brings together the ideas of distinguished scholars in philosophy, political science, sociology, history, law and theology in order to address the shifting relationship between constitutionality, political culture, history and collective identity. The book argues that the future shape of Europe will not only result from external processes of globalisation but from the interaction between these social spheres within Europe.
Continuity and Change in World Politics, 2009
The New Cambridge Modern History, 1979
The history of the social science disciplines as we know them is a fairly recent one. The word ‘s... more The history of the social science disciplines as we know them is a fairly recent one. The word ‘sociologie’ was invented by Auguste Comte in the 1820s; ‘political economy’ was first used (in French) in 1613 but did not become current until the second half of the eighteenth century. ‘Economics’ was first popularised in its modern sense by Alfred Marshall in his Principles of Economics (1890); in the 1740s the word was still being used as Aristotle had used it, to denote household management, an activity which included the control of slaves and wives among other possessions. The notion of a ‘science’ as a distinct discipline did not emerge clearly in England until well into the nineteenth century, and nor did the word ‘scientist’, invented by Whewell in 1840. Even more significantly, perhaps, the words ‘society’ and ‘social’ acquire their modern meanings in English and French only in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The contrast between society and the state was central to nineteenth-century German thought but rarely made explicit before that time (though it was anticipated by Thomas Paine, who wrote in 1776 that ‘society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness’). Social thought, in other words, was until recently both intellectually diffuse, in the sense that ‘society’ or ‘societies’ had not yet clearly emerged as an object of study, and socially diffuse, in that the occupational role of ‘social scientist’, like that of ‘natural scientist’, had not yet emerged.
Sociology, 2009
This article examines the ‘canonical’ status achieved in recent British sociology by four writers... more This article examines the ‘canonical’ status achieved in recent British sociology by four writers: Zygmunt Bauman, Ulrich Beck, Pierre Bourdieu and Anthony Giddens. Along with other key thinkers of the later 20th century such as Foucault and Habermas, these four sociologists, from different geographical and theoretical bases, transformed the shape of British sociology and its relation to social theory.
Concise Encyclopedia of Comparative Sociology, 2014
Europe's diversity and the multiplicity of its political units make it particularly interesti... more Europe's diversity and the multiplicity of its political units make it particularly interesting as an object of comparative sociology. For the past few centuries, the North and West of Europe have tended to dominate the South and East culturally and economically; this disparity was both counter-balanced and reinforced in the period 1945-1989 by Soviet political domination of much of Central and Eastern Europe. The French Revolution, which removed one of Europe's most powerful monarchs at the end of the 18th century, sets a model for political modernity that has shaped the world. Europe was shaped politically by its empires, both at home and overseas; by its nation-state structure; by democratic and dictatorial politics and, in the past fifty years, by what has become the European Union. The position of Russia remains a major source of theoretical as well as political uncertainty. Keywords: comparative sociology; European Union; nation-state structure; political modernity
Economy and Society, 2009
ABSTRACT Axel Honneth was already recognized as the leading figure in the ‘third generation’ of c... more ABSTRACT Axel Honneth was already recognized as the leading figure in the ‘third generation’ of critical theory, long before he took up, in 1996, Habermas's chair in philosophy at Frankfurt and the directorship of the Institut für Sozialforschung. He has for a long time been reconceptualizing Frankfurt critical theory in terms of an originally Hegelian conception of recognition, and associated notions of respect and disrespect – a model which brings out a concern with human suffering which was a strong feature of the first generation of critical theorists. This volume of translated essays, together with a recent volume in German and his 2005 Tanner Lectures on reification, provides a good opportunity to triangulate Honneth's developing work.
Contemporary Sociology, 1988
... New philosophies of social science: Realism, hermeneutics, and critical theory. Post a Commen... more ... New philosophies of social science: Realism, hermeneutics, and critical theory. Post a Comment. CONTRIBUTORS: ... PAGES (INTRO/BODY): viii, 137 p. SUBJECT(S): Social sciences; Realism; Hermeneutics; Critical theory; Philosophy. DISCIPLINE: No discipline assigned. ...
"Social Theory and Post communism" undertakes a thorough study of the implications of post-commun... more "Social Theory and Post communism" undertakes a thorough study of the implications of post-communism for sociological theory. Written by two leading social theorists, the book discusses the thesis that the fall of communism has decimated alternative conceptions of social organizations other than capitalism. It analyzes the implications of the fall of communism on social theory. It discusses alternative ideas of social organizations other than capitalism, in the wake of the collapse of communism. It covers state/civil society, globalization, the future of 'modernity', and post-socialism.
Journal of Contemporary European Research, 2021
This commentary examines the EU’s halting development of territorial policy, most recently in mac... more This commentary examines the EU’s halting development of territorial policy, most recently in macro-regional planning, and the responses of member states’ local and national governmental elites. Whether populist or not in their overall programmes, these elites have tended to resist EU initiatives in the name of a perceived national interest or to instrumentalise them in order to maximise their domestic political pay-off. These ‘sovereignty games’ (Adler-Nissen and Gammeltoft-Hansen 2008) have been a constant feature of the European integration process, but transnational territorial initiatives, involving a flexible mix of European and sub-regional bodies as well as national states (both members and non-members of the EU) tend to raise the stakes in these games.
Czech Sociological Review
The centenary of Max Weber's death raises the question of the wider significance of 1920 as marki... more The centenary of Max Weber's death raises the question of the wider significance of 1920 as marking a break in the history of social theory. This essay focuses on Germany and Austria, where the political break with the past was particularly sharp and the discontinuities in the social and intellectual configuration of the social sciences were most obvious. Three trends are particularly striking: the development of neo-Marxist social theory with György Lukács and Karl Korsch and the later emergence of critical theory, the polarisation between neo-positivism and interpretive sociology, and the consolidation of the sociology of knowledge.
Sotsiologicheskoe Obozrenie / Russian Sociological Review, Mar 1, 2019
David Held, one of the most creative and prolific political sociologists of our times, died sudde... more David Held, one of the most creative and prolific political sociologists of our times, died suddenly of cancer in March, 2019. Born in London and the son of German refugees escaping Nazism, he studied at Manchester, MIT, and Cambridge. Held then obtained teaching posts at Cardiff and York, and a chair in Politics and Sociology at the Open University, the UK's innovative distance-learning university established in the 1960s by Prime Minister Harold Wilson and which became a centre of critical thought in the social sciences. In 1980, Held published the first substantial book on Frankfurt critical theory 1 in English. In 1982, with John Thompson, another Cambridge sociologist, Held published an edited book of essays on Habermas by leading scholars from across the world including the editors themselves, and is a publication which remains a fundamental resource on Habermas's early work. 2 Held continued to be deeply influenced by Habermasian critical theory as he began a vast series of authored, co-authored, and edited books on democratic theory and practice. In 1984, he co-founded Polity Press with Anthony Giddens and John Thompson. Polity rapidly became, and remains, one of the leading UK publishers in the social sciences and cultural studies, including a very active translation programme of books from Europe and elsewhere. At the end of the 1980s, the theme of globalization (mondialisation in French) broke over the world, and was reflected in Giddens' published lectures titled Consequences of Modernity 3 and a growing number of other works. 4 In disciplinary terms, the ground had been prepared by a rapprochement between sociology and the newer discipline of inter
the work in its final form. But its use for commercial purposes, of any kind, in any part of the ... more the work in its final form. But its use for commercial purposes, of any kind, in any part of the world, in any language, should be discussed with the Chief Editor of this magazine.). This option has been chosen so that the author retains the right to copy, 2 attractive alternative to democracy, but also no realistic alternative to capitalism. The adjectives reflect our differing evaluations of these two institutions. I am assuming that despite all the irritation we may feel with party politics (nicely expressed in the German term Politikverdrossenheit) 2 , no-one here would reject democracy in principle, whereas quite a lot of us might see the transcendence of capitalism as desirable, if it turned out to be possible. And we have once again, after the eclipse of the communist and most other radical socialist parties in Europe and the transformation of European social democracy towards the centre, the revival of explicitly 'anticapitalist' social movements. One can be sceptical about their propects, as is, for example, Žižek on the European Left, but at least the idea of anticapitalism is around again. 3 2 See Claus Offe's important contribution‚ 'Political Disaffection as an Outcome of
Bauman's Challenge, 2010
... Ian Varcoe also deserve a mention for their superb Festschrift and their own very substantial... more ... Ian Varcoe also deserve a mention for their superb Festschrift and their own very substantial contributions in it. 8. Although no one could seriously deny that Bulgaria and, a fortiori, Poland, are part of Europe, the important point is the fact of division. 9. Yevgeny Yevtushenko, ' '. ...
1968 in Retrospect, 2009
My 1968 began promptly on New Year’s Day when I caught the slow cross-country train from Manchest... more My 1968 began promptly on New Year’s Day when I caught the slow cross-country train from Manchester to Harwich and thence to Hoek van Holland and by train to Basle. After that, the year was substantially one of missed opportunities. I spent the next four months learning German in the Black Forest and a further four months consolidating it in a temporary job in Basle. By then, the German movement was substantially over. (Die Zeit recently published a photo of Ralf Dahrendorf and Daniel Cohn-Bendit debating at an open-air meeting in nearby Freiburg, but that was the previous year.) In Basle, I was only a tram ride from the French border, and crossed it occasionally, but there was nothing to see in the small border town and with the general strike no obvious way of getting to Paris. I again missed seeing Cohn-Bendit when he was replaced on a visit to a student meeting in Basle by another member of the Mouvement du 22 mars, which seemed to have been worried about a personality cult developing round him. There were some more demonstrations and meetings, including one addressed by Elmar Altvater, but that was about it as far as I was concerned. Back in England in the autumn, and beginning to study PPE (Politics, Philosophy, Economics) at Oxford, I went on the big anti-Vietnam demonstration in London at the end of October, which so scared the BBC that they sent programme tapes to Birmingham in case their buildings were occupied, but I opted out of the more adventurous side-trip to attack the US Embassy.
Frontiers in Sociology, 2016
Calls for solidarity are always accompanied by feelings of urgency. This is true both for the mul... more Calls for solidarity are always accompanied by feelings of urgency. This is true both for the multifarious practical expressions of solidarity and for the intellectual usages of the concept. At the outbreak of the war in Iraq, for instance, the word and concept of ‘solidarity’ were brought to the fore by three of the most influential thinkers of our time, Jurgen Habermas, Jacques Derrida and Richard Rorty. However, solidarity is still used as a mere buzzword by a surprisingly broad spectrum of the political world. The book has a twofold central objective: it aims both at proposing a variety of sophisticated historical and theoretical reconceptualisations of solidarity and at exposing and spelling out the practical implications of contemporary expressions of solidarity. These two objectives are tightly related by their common frame of reference: European societies and, possibly in the future, a European polity. Thus, a first, historical and theoretical part explores the emergence, consolidation and challenging of the concept of solidarity in the context of differences in social, religious and political conditions within Europe. A second, more ‘empirical’ part investigates the most crucial challenges posed to solidarity in the European space: the EU integration process itself, immigration, Islam, the relation of Western Europe to Eastern Europe, and to developing countries.
Wenn nicht das, dann eben das 1 Is Europe Cosmopolitan? For some, the cosmopolitan character of E... more Wenn nicht das, dann eben das 1 Is Europe Cosmopolitan? For some, the cosmopolitan character of Europe in general, and the EU in particular, is not in question. Is Europe not par excellence the region where humans emancipated themselves from unreflected traditions and primordial loyalties and preached, sometimes even practised, ideas of the brotherhood of man or, as we would now say, the siblinghood of humanity? And is European integration not by definition a cosmopolitan project, marked in its current version by the powerful image of the West German and French coal and steel industries fused together in the ECSC a mere half decade after the end of the War? There is much to be said for these views, which have been powerfully argued in the recent past by Gerard Delanty, Ulrich Beck and others. Jürgen Habermas (2004), for example, has stressed the way in which Europeans have 'painfully' learned how to handle their differences and to recognise one another in their difference. Delanty (2005) has put forward the idea of Europe as a privileged site of cultural translation, while in Beck and Grande's Cosmopolitan Europe (2004) the adjective is built into the title. The EU's most recent enlargement in 2004 brought in an eminently cosmopolitan, or at least eclectic, mix of three former Soviet republics, one former Yugoslav republic, four members of the Visegrád group of relatively privileged postcommunist countries and one and a half Mediterranean islands. Unfortunately, there is also a good deal to be said also for the contrary, or perhaps complementary, view which sees Europe as the chief defendant in the court of world history, responsible for imperialism, 'scientific' racism, 'scientific' communism, for two world wars and for planning (and almost initiating) the third and final one. 1 Similarly, the EU can be seen as selfobsessed, protectionist and unconcerned or unable to take on a serious role in the governance of the
This series aims to create a forum for debate between different theoretical and philosophical tra... more This series aims to create a forum for debate between different theoretical and philosophical traditions in the social sciences. As well as covering broad schools of thought, the series will also concentrate upon the work of particular thinkers whose ideas have had a major impact on social science (these books appear under the sub-series title of 'Theoretical Traditions in the Social Sciences'). The series is not limited to abstract theoretical discussion-it will also include more substantive works on contemporary capitalism, the state, politics and other subject areas.
The Shape of the New Europe, 2006
The European Union and European identity were until recently the objects of separate branches of ... more The European Union and European identity were until recently the objects of separate branches of scholarship and inquiry. With the entry of Central and Eastern European members into the EU, it has become clear that the future of the European Union can no longer be considered in isolation from the future of European identity. Taking Jurgen Habermas's plea for a European constitution and a normative foundation for the European Union as its starting point, this volume brings together the ideas of distinguished scholars in philosophy, political science, sociology, history, law and theology in order to address the shifting relationship between constitutionality, political culture, history and collective identity. The book argues that the future shape of Europe will not only result from external processes of globalisation but from the interaction between these social spheres within Europe.
Continuity and Change in World Politics, 2009
The New Cambridge Modern History, 1979
The history of the social science disciplines as we know them is a fairly recent one. The word ‘s... more The history of the social science disciplines as we know them is a fairly recent one. The word ‘sociologie’ was invented by Auguste Comte in the 1820s; ‘political economy’ was first used (in French) in 1613 but did not become current until the second half of the eighteenth century. ‘Economics’ was first popularised in its modern sense by Alfred Marshall in his Principles of Economics (1890); in the 1740s the word was still being used as Aristotle had used it, to denote household management, an activity which included the control of slaves and wives among other possessions. The notion of a ‘science’ as a distinct discipline did not emerge clearly in England until well into the nineteenth century, and nor did the word ‘scientist’, invented by Whewell in 1840. Even more significantly, perhaps, the words ‘society’ and ‘social’ acquire their modern meanings in English and French only in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The contrast between society and the state was central to nineteenth-century German thought but rarely made explicit before that time (though it was anticipated by Thomas Paine, who wrote in 1776 that ‘society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness’). Social thought, in other words, was until recently both intellectually diffuse, in the sense that ‘society’ or ‘societies’ had not yet clearly emerged as an object of study, and socially diffuse, in that the occupational role of ‘social scientist’, like that of ‘natural scientist’, had not yet emerged.
Sociology, 2009
This article examines the ‘canonical’ status achieved in recent British sociology by four writers... more This article examines the ‘canonical’ status achieved in recent British sociology by four writers: Zygmunt Bauman, Ulrich Beck, Pierre Bourdieu and Anthony Giddens. Along with other key thinkers of the later 20th century such as Foucault and Habermas, these four sociologists, from different geographical and theoretical bases, transformed the shape of British sociology and its relation to social theory.
Concise Encyclopedia of Comparative Sociology, 2014
Europe's diversity and the multiplicity of its political units make it particularly interesti... more Europe's diversity and the multiplicity of its political units make it particularly interesting as an object of comparative sociology. For the past few centuries, the North and West of Europe have tended to dominate the South and East culturally and economically; this disparity was both counter-balanced and reinforced in the period 1945-1989 by Soviet political domination of much of Central and Eastern Europe. The French Revolution, which removed one of Europe's most powerful monarchs at the end of the 18th century, sets a model for political modernity that has shaped the world. Europe was shaped politically by its empires, both at home and overseas; by its nation-state structure; by democratic and dictatorial politics and, in the past fifty years, by what has become the European Union. The position of Russia remains a major source of theoretical as well as political uncertainty. Keywords: comparative sociology; European Union; nation-state structure; political modernity
Economy and Society, 2009
ABSTRACT Axel Honneth was already recognized as the leading figure in the ‘third generation’ of c... more ABSTRACT Axel Honneth was already recognized as the leading figure in the ‘third generation’ of critical theory, long before he took up, in 1996, Habermas's chair in philosophy at Frankfurt and the directorship of the Institut für Sozialforschung. He has for a long time been reconceptualizing Frankfurt critical theory in terms of an originally Hegelian conception of recognition, and associated notions of respect and disrespect – a model which brings out a concern with human suffering which was a strong feature of the first generation of critical theorists. This volume of translated essays, together with a recent volume in German and his 2005 Tanner Lectures on reification, provides a good opportunity to triangulate Honneth's developing work.
Contemporary Sociology, 1988
... New philosophies of social science: Realism, hermeneutics, and critical theory. Post a Commen... more ... New philosophies of social science: Realism, hermeneutics, and critical theory. Post a Comment. CONTRIBUTORS: ... PAGES (INTRO/BODY): viii, 137 p. SUBJECT(S): Social sciences; Realism; Hermeneutics; Critical theory; Philosophy. DISCIPLINE: No discipline assigned. ...
Comparative Sociology, 2011
Contrary to Popper’s classic article with this title, it can be argued that the principal failure... more Contrary to Popper’s classic article with this title, it can be argued that the principal failure of Western analyses of communism was not the failure to predict the collapse of most of the communist regimes in and around 1989 but more a failure of prophecy, in the sense of a more speculative theory of the contradictions of those regimes and their unsustainability. The reasons can be found in the polarisation between overblown theories of totalitarianism and excessively bland comparative approaches couched in terms of the, then popular, theories of industrial society and, often, convergence. There were also methodological reasons arising from the positivist shibboleths of factual documentation, with the consequence that dubious statistics were considered better than none, and value-freedom.