ABSTRACT

Civilization, Modernity, and Critique provides the first comprehensive, cutting-edge engagement with the work of one of the most foundational figures in civilizational analysis: Jóhann P. Árnason. In order to do justice to Árnason’s seminal and wide-ranging contributions to sociology, social theory and history, it brings together distinguished scholars from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds and geographical contexts. Through a critical, interdisciplinary dialogue, it offers an enrichment and expansion of the methodological, theoretical, and applicative scope of civilizational analysis, by addressing some of the most complex and pressing problems of contemporary global society. A unique and timely contribution to the ongoing task of advancing the project of a critical theory of society, this volume will appeal to scholars of sociology and social theory with interests in historical sociology, critical theory and civilizational analysis.

chapter 1|5 pages

Preface

chapter 2|11 pages

Introduction

part I|43 pages

Questions of Theory and Methodology

chapter 3|21 pages

The Being of the Political and Instituting Doing in Question

Reflections on Jóhann P. Árnason's Thought

chapter 4|8 pages

Long-term Developmental Processes as an Unintended Consequence of Human Action

Some Theoretical and Methodological Questions of Historical Sociology

chapter 5|12 pages

World Regions and the Unpacking of Multiple Modernities

A Pluralistic View of Global Sociological Theory *

part II|53 pages

Re-Thinking the Concept of Modernity/ies through the Lens of Civilizational Analysis

chapter 6|14 pages

Ways Out of the Modern Labyrinth

Normative Expectations and Subsequent Social Change

chapter 7|19 pages

Politics and the Social Imaginary

The Problem of the State – and the Problem of Modernity

part III|64 pages

Modernity in the Plural: Civilizational Analysis and the Axial Age Debate

chapter 9|16 pages

The Axial Age and Multiple Modernities

Philosophical Reflections on the Universal Claims of European Civilization

chapter 10|29 pages

Traditions of transcendence

A hermeneutic appropriation of the Axial Age discourse

chapter 11|17 pages

A secularity sui generis?

On the historical development of conceptual distinctions and institutional differentiations in Japan

part IV|49 pages

Making Theory Contextual Through Civilizational Analysis: Place, Politics, Situatedness

chapter 12|16 pages

Overwriting the Orient and the Islamosphere

Religio-Civilizational Imaginaries Via East–West Entanglements

chapter 13|17 pages

Religious-Political Problematic in Civilizational Analysis

Reflections on Russia's Trajectory

chapter 14|14 pages

Regionality and civilizations in the Americas

Considerations on civilizational analysis in the context of American modernities

part V|29 pages

Jóhann P. Árnason's Replies