Late Modernity in Crisis

In times of entrenched social upheaval and multiple crises, we need the kind of social theory that is prepared to look at the big picture, analyze the broad developmental features of modern societies, their structural conditions and dynamics, and point to possible ways out of the crises we face. Over the last couple of decades, two German sociologists, Andreas Reckwitz and Hartmut Rosa, have sought to provide wide-ranging social theories of this kind. While their theories are very different, they share in common the view that the analysis of modernity as a social formation must be kept at the heart of sociology, and that the theory of society should ultimately serve to diagnose the crises of the present.

In this book, Andreas Reckwitz and Hartmut Rosa join forces to examine the value and the limits of a theory of society today. They provide clear and concise accounts of their own theories of society, explicate their key concepts – including "singularization" in the case of Reckwitz, "acceleration" and “resonance” in the case of Rosa – and draw out the implications of their theories for understanding the multiple crises we face today. The result is a book that provides both an excellent introduction to the work of two of the most important sociologists writing today and a vivid demonstration of the value of the kind of bold social theory of modern societies that they espouse.

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part I

Andreas Reckwitz

The Theory of Society as a Tool

1. Doing Theory

2. Practice theory as Social Theory

3. The Practice of Modernity

4. The Theory of Society at Work: From Bourgeois and Industrial Modernity to Late Modernity

5. Theory as Critical Analytics

6. Coda: The Experimentalism of Theory

Part II

Hartmut Rosa

Best Account: Outlining a Systematic Theory of Modern Society

1. What Is a Theory of Society and What Can It Do?

2. Dynamic Stabilization and the Expansion of Our Share of the World: An Analysis of the Modern Social Formation

3. Desynchronization and Alienation: A Diagnosis and Critique of Modernity

4. Adaptive Stabilization and Resonance: A Therapeutic and Transgressive Outline of an Alternative Horizon

Part III

Modernity and Critique: A Conversation with Martin Bauer

Notes

"For those of us who think that the big picture matters and not just information, empirical data, and small narratives, this book is good news. Two prominent sociologists, each in their own way and both with rigor and erudition, take up the question on the minds of many: What sort of society are we really living in? In what direction are our societies headed? A major contribution to the revitalization of interest in a comprehensive theory of modernity."
—Miroslav Volf, Yale University

"... an admirable attempt to raise the kind of Big Ideas that the founding figures of sociology – Durkheim, Marx, Weber, Simmel, and others – thought were important if we were to understand society as a whole. It might be just what we need at this fraught period in our journey together as a global society."
—The Englewood Review of Books

Andreas Reckwitz is Professor of Social Theory and Cultural Sociology at Humboldt University, Berlin.

Hartmut Rosa is Professor of Sociology at the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Germany, and Director of the Max Weber Center for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies, Erfurt, Germany.