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 ...

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 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.

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.

Relations, Human and Non-human

2020 ◽  
pp. 106-135
Author(s):  
Milja Kurki
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Critical Social Theory ◽  
The Social ◽  
Critical Social

This chapter argues for an extension of how we think relationally via relational cosmology. It places relational cosmology in a conversation with varied relational perspectives in critical social theory and argues that specific kinds of extensions and dialogues emerge from this perspective. In particular, a conversation on how to think relationality without fixing its meaning is advanced. This chapter also discusses in detail how to extend beyond discussion of ‘human’ relationalities towards comprehending the wider ‘mesh’ of relations that matter but are hard to capture for situated knowers in the social sciences and IR. This key chapter seeks to provide the basis for a translation between relational cosmology, critical social theory, critical humanism and International Relations theory.

Stretching Situated Knowledge

2020 ◽  
pp. 87-105
Author(s):  
Milja Kurki
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Critical Social Theory ◽  
Situated Knowledge ◽  
Ir Theory ◽  
The Social ◽  
Standpoint Epistemology ◽  
Critical Social

This chapter, first of three to develop relational cosmology in conversation with critical social theory and IR theory, argues that at the heart of relational cosmology lies a commitment to situated knowledge. This perspective on knowledge production is similar in some regards to standpoint epistemology but also diverges from it in key respects. The chapter argues that IR scholarship can benefit from close engagement with relational cosmology suggestions as to how our knowledge is limited and how we might need to ‘deal with it’, especially in the social sciences, where there is a tendency to glorify the role of the human in knowing the human.

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