scholarly journals The Future as a Subject of Social Theory

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 328-344
Author(s):  
Alexander Pavlov
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Scientific Work ◽  
Social Philosophy ◽  
Low Carbon ◽  
Research Activity ◽  
Digital Capitalism ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Future ◽  
Natural Capitalism

The subject of this article is a critical analysis of the “concept of the future” as proposed by the British social theorist, John Urry (1946–2016). The author briefly examines the intellectual legacy of the sociologist and his contribution to the creation of a new social theory, pointing out that Urry’s books that were translated into Russian do not fully represent his scientific work, but reflect the later period of his research activity. What is the Future?was the sociologist’s last book and was published the same year he died: we can consider it as a kind of last will. This testament, however, reflects many aspects of the writings of the last sixteen years of Urry’s life. As Urry observes, he challenges the social sciences with his book because the social sciences are still not concerned the future as a subject of research, giving it to the mercy of futurology. This article gives an answer to the question of whether we can actually consider Urry’s book as such a challenge. The author argues that some kind of theoretical weakness is inherent in Urry’s concept. Thus, the sociologist calls for the theory of complex developing systems to help to analyze the future, but the conclusions he comes to do not have any heuristic value. However, as the author of the article notes, Urry’s book is valuable not as a theory, but as an attempt to talk about the future from the perspective of social philosophy and its focus on practice. On one hand, the sociologist uses rich empirical material when talking about utopias and dystopias such as fiction, cinema, publicistics, and reports of various organizations, as examples. On the other hand, when discussing such problems as 3D-printing, urban spaces without cars, climate change, dystopias, and so forth, Urry uses the method of scenarios in offering four scenarios for each phenomenon considered. These scenarios by themselves already allow us to imagine what the future might look like. The final chapter of the book is dedicated to a “low-carbon civil society” and the conceptualization of responsible-to-nature “natural capitalism.” The author of the article puts a special emphasis on this, considering that this concept should be supplemented by other ideas about the newest — digital — capitalism. Finally, the article considers the question of the relationship of Urry’s social theory with the theory of postmodernism.

scholarly journals Debates on Civilization in the Muslim World

2017 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 102-106
Author(s):  
Tauseef Ahmad Parray
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
Brief Assessment ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Future ◽  
Recent Addition ◽  
Different Levels

“Civilization,” which plays a significant role in today’s world, is a termthat has been discussed and debated through the ages and remains so today.In the broader context, and at different levels and contexts (e.g., historical,cultural, and political), it is used to describe “the entirety of collective90human values”; “consequential behavior against barbarism” (or simply “theidea of being civilized”); as a “vision of existence and order”; and, aboveall, as “being an abstraction of modernity and secularism.” One of the mostoft-debated concepts in the social sciences, it has largely been framed byWestern assumptions and concerns; although there are non-Western perspectiveson it as well. A recent addition to the multi-faceted debate on civilizationand modernization vis-à-vis the Muslim world is editor LutfiSunar’s Debates on Civilization in the Muslim World. Sunar is a Turkishsociologist who teaches at Istanbul University.This collective endeavor of (predominantly young) Muslim scholarsseeks to evaluate Muslim views on civilization by challenging the “embeddedprejudices within the social theory” and offering “alternative viewpoints”(p. vii). It presents “a complex assessment of key ideas in themodernist discourse from non-ethnocentric perspectives and offers a newunderstanding of civilization” (p. viii).To achieve this objective, the book has been divided into three mainparts. Part 1, “Defining and Discussing Civilization,” consists of threechapters, by Anthony Pagden, Lutfi Sunar, and Mustafa Demirici, respectively,that review, analyze, and discuss definitions of civilization andmodernity and their “Eurocentric” understandings. Part 2, “Debates on theCivilization in the Contemporary Muslim World,” examines non-Westerncivilizations, efforts to resist against being assimilated in Western perspectivesand dominance. These chapters are contributed by Vahdettin Isik,Cemil Aydin, Necmettin Dogan, Halil Ibrahim Yenigun, Seyed Javad Miri,Mahmud Hakki Akin, and Driss Habti, respectively. Part 3, “Modernization,Globalization, and the Future of Civilization Debate,” features chaptersby Syed Farid Alatas, Yunus Kaya, Murat Cemrek, and KhosrowBagheri Noaparast, respectively. The volume’s overall theme is designed“to expose complex issues for further discussion pertaining to modernization,globalization, (de)colonization, and multiculturalism” (p. vii). As it isdifficult to focus on all the chapters, I provide a brief assessment of someselected ones below ...

The Contributions of Patrick Colquhoun to Social Theory and Social Philosophy

2007 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 288-320
Author(s):  
Ralph Pieris
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Formal Education ◽  
Social Philosophy ◽  
Social Regulation ◽  
Childhood And Adolescence ◽  
Grammar School ◽  
The Social ◽  
Local Grammar

AbstractBiographical details of Colquhoun's early life are remarkably scanty. Little is known of his childhood and adolescence. His only formal education was at the local grammar school, where he would have learnt Latin. At the age of sixteen, Colquhoun immigrated to America. During the five years he spent in Virginia, Colquhoun developed an interest in law, political economy, and the social sciences from his legal acquaintances there. In the year of the French Revolution, Colquhoun abandoned the pursuit of commerce and devoted himself to philanthropic and intellectual interests. Colquhoun was far in advance of his time as he argued for the compatibility of social regulation with liberty.

scholarly journals Simmel’s (non-human) humanism: On Simmel’s ‘ethics of endings and futures’

2020 ◽  
pp. 1468795X2091566
Author(s):  
Mark Featherstone
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Georg Simmel ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Classical Sociology ◽  
Contemporary Social Theory

Given the recent non-human turn in sociology and the social sciences, the popularity of theories of entanglement, and contemporary concern with the concept of the anthropocene, it is easy to forget that classical sociology was always-already aware of the relationship between humanity and non-humanity. Although Daniel Chernilo focuses upon the debate between Sartre and Heidegger in his recent Debating Humanity, and contrasts Sartre’s Humanism with Heidegger’s Anti-Humanism to frame his exploration of the limits of the human in contemporary social theory, we could easily locate the same concern with the human and its relationship to the nonhuman in Marx, Tarde, and centrally for the purposes of this article, the work of Georg Simmel. Expanding upon this insight concerning the relevance of Simmel’s work for understanding our ‘entangled present’, the purpose of this article is to explore Simmel’s work and recent interpretations of his sociology that seek to project Simmelian thought into the future in significantly different ways. To this end, the article critically engages with Pyyhtinen’s recent reading of Simmel’s work that focuses upon his legacy with a view of exploring his future through consideration of (1) Fitzi’s exploration of Simmel’s ethics of the individual, (2) Kemple’s turn to Simmel’s religiosity, and finally (3) Beer’s reading of the late Simmel, who, I suggest might inform the emergence of a kind of non-human humanism capable of thinking beyond the mortal limits of the anthropocene that paradoxically imagines its own post-human immortality.

Christ Existing as Community

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Mawson
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Christian Ethics ◽  
Dietrich Bonhoeffer ◽  
Human Community ◽  
The Social ◽  
Theological Study ◽  
Sanctorum Communio ◽  
The Church

How can theologians recognize the church as a historical and human community, while still holding that it has been established by Christ and is a work of the Spirit? How can a theological account of the church draw insights and concepts from the social sciences, without Christian commitments and claims about the church being undermined or displaced? In 1927, the 21-year-old Dietrich Bonhoeffer defended his licentiate dissertation, Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church. This remains his most neglected and misunderstood work. Christ Existing as Community thus retrieves and analyses Bonhoeffer’s engagement with social theory and attempt at ecclesiology. Against standard readings and criticisms of this work, Mawson demonstrates that it contains a rich and nuanced approach to the church, one which displays many of Bonhoeffer’s key influences—especially Luther, Hegel, Troeltsch, and Barth—while being distinctive in its own right. In particular, Mawson argues that Sanctorum Communio’s theology is built around a complex dialectic of creation, sin, and reconciliation. On this basis, he contends that Bonhoeffer’s dissertation has ongoing significance for work in theology and Christian ethics.

Futures Honed

Futures ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 118-134
Author(s):  
Barbara Adam
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Original Work ◽  
Collective Responsibility ◽  
The Past ◽  
Writing Theory ◽  
Time Space ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Future ◽  
Verse Form ◽  
The Way

This chapter comprises an interview between Barbara Adam and the editors, and is followed by Adam’s ‘Honing Futures’, which is presented in four short verses of distilled theory. In the interview Adam reflects on thirty-five years of futures-thinking rooted in her deeply original work on time and temporality, and her innovative response to qualitative and linear definitions of time within the social sciences. The interview continues with a discussion of the way Adam’s thinking on futures intersects in her work with ideas of ethics and collective responsibility politics and concludes with a brief rationale for writing theory in verse form. In ‘Honing Futures’, a piece of futures theory verse form, Adam charts the movements and moments in considerations of the Not Yet and futurity’s active creation: from pluralized imaginings of the future, to an increasingly tangible and narrower anticipated future, to future-making as designing and reality-creating performance. Collectively, the verses identify the varied complex interdependencies of time, space, and matter with the past and future in all iterations of honing and making futures.

Charisma and social phenomenology: Gerda Walther, Herman Schmalenbach and Aron Gurwitsch

2021 ◽  
pp. 1468795X2110496
Author(s):  
Dominik Zelinsky
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Max Weber ◽  
Social Philosophy ◽  
Emotional Dimension ◽  
The Social ◽  
Charismatic Authority ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
Aron Gurwitsch ◽  
Social Phenomenology

This paper explores the contribution of early social phenomenologists working in the 1920s and 1930s in Germany to charisma theory. Specifically, I focus on the works of Gerda Walther, Herman Schmalenbach and Aron Gurwitsch, whose work is now being re-appreciated in the field of social philosophy. Living in the interbellum German-speaking space, these authors were keenly interested in the issue of charismatic authority and leadership introduced into the social sciences by Max Weber, with whom they engaged in an indirect intellectual dialogue. I argue that their phenomenological background equipped them well to understand the intricacies of the experiential and emotional dimension of charisma, and that their insights remain valid even a century after they have been first published.

scholarly journals Fear and retrotopia – Critical reflections on the rise of defensive emotions in liquid modernity

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 94-124
Author(s):  
Michael Hviid Jacobsen
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Critical Social Theory ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Sociology Of Emotions ◽  
Liquid Modernity ◽  
Collective Emotions ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Times ◽  
Contemporary Study

This article critically addresses the contemporary study of what is called 'defensive emotions' such as fear and nostalgia among a number of social theorists. While it may be true that the collective emotions of fear and nostalgia (here framed by the phrase of 'retrotopia') may indeed be on the rise in Western liberal democracies, it is also important to be wary of taking the literature on the matter as a sign that fear and nostalgia actually permeate all levels of culture and everyday life. The article starts out with some reflections on the sociology of emotions and shows how the early interest in emotions (theoretical and empirical) among a small group of sociologists is today supplemented with the rise of a critical social theory using collective emotions as a lens for conducting a critical analysis of the times. Then the article in turn deals with the contemporary interest within varuious quarters of the social sciences with describing, analysing and diagnosing the rise of what is here called 'defensive emotions' – emotions that express and symbolize a society under attack and emotions that are mostly interpreted as negative signs of the times. This is followed by some reflections on the collective emotions of fear and nostalgia/retrotopia respectively. The article is concluded with a discussion of how we may understand and assess this relatively new interest in defensive emotions.

scholarly journals THE NOTIONS «MECHANISM» AND «ORGANISM» IN THE SOCIAL ONTOLOGY OF S.L. FRANK

2021 ◽  
pp. 118-141
Author(s):  
Виктор Александрович Куприянов
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Ontology ◽  
German Idealism ◽  
Social Philosophy ◽  
Western Philosophy ◽  
General Context ◽  
The Social ◽  
Xixth Century ◽  
Social Organism ◽  
Organic Theory

Статья посвящена анализу понятий «механизм» и «организм» в социальной философии С.Л. Франка. Социально-философская концепция Франка помещается в широкий контекст философии XIX-начала XX вв. В статье исследуются связи социальной философии Франка и органических теорий государства и общества. Автор статьи приводит обзор органических теорий: демонстрируется их генезис в немецком классическом идеализме и анализируются подходы, наиболее распространенные в XIX в. В статье обосновывается, что органические теории государства исторически связаны с телеологией И. Канта. Именно в философии Канта впервые появляется важное для философии XIX в. противопоставление организма и механизма. В статье указывается, что специфика этого подхода заключается не столько в естественнонаучной аналогии, сколько в интерпретации отношений части и целого. Автор показывает, что оппозиция механизма и организма сыграла важную роль в истории органических представлений об обществе. Русская социально-философская и политологическая мысль рассматривается в контексте общего развития социальных наук XIX в. Русские философы и обществоведы позаимствовали из западной философии идею оппозиции социального механизма и органицизма. На этой основе в России были выработаны аналогичные философско-правовые концепции, которые также можно отнести к традиции органицизма. Автор относит социально-философскую концепцию С.Л. Франка также к указанной традиции социального органицизма. В статье приводится реконструкция социальной философии Франка и отмечается, что его подход близок к идеям, получившим развитие в немецком классической идеализме. Указывается, что Франк критиковал не органическую теорию как таковую, а распространенную в его время натуралистическую концепцию, отождествлявшую общество с организмом. В этой связи автор показывает вклад Франка в историю органических представлений об обществе. The article is devoted to the analysis of the notions «mechanism» and «organism» in S.L. Frank’s social philosophy. The sociophilosophical conception of S.L. Frank is considered in the context of the philosophy of the XIXth - beginning of the XXth centuries. The article deals with the relations of S.L. Frank’s philosophy to the organic theories of society. The author gives an overview of the organic theories: their genesis in the German idealism and analysis of the widespread approaches in the XIXth century philosophy. The article shows that the organic theories were historically connected with the teleology of I. Kant. I. Kant was the first to propose the very opposition of organism and mechanism. The author points out that the speceficity of this approach consists rather in the interpretation of the relations between the part and the whole, than in the scientific analogy. The author shows that this opposition played a significant role in the organic theory of society. Russian social philosophy and political science are considered in the general context of the social sciences of the XIXth century. Russian philosophers and social sciences borrowed the idea of mechanism and organism from the western philosophy. Based on this approach they developed their own conceptions which can also be referred to the organic tradition. The author refers S.L. Frank’s social philosophy to the tradition of social organism. The article reconstructs the Frank’s social philosophy and points out that his approach is derived from the German classical idealism. It is shown that Frank did not criticized the very organic theory, his criticism was directed against naturalistic theories of his time. The author of the article shows the Frank’s contribution to the organic theory of society.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document