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.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|43 pages
Questions of Theory and Methodology
chapter 3|21 pages
The Being of the Political and Instituting Doing in Question
chapter 4|8 pages
Long-term Developmental Processes as an Unintended Consequence of Human Action
chapter 5|12 pages
World Regions and the Unpacking of Multiple Modernities
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
chapter 7|19 pages
Politics and the Social Imaginary
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
chapter 10|29 pages
Traditions of transcendence
chapter 11|17 pages
A secularity sui generis?
part IV|49 pages
Making Theory Contextual Through Civilizational Analysis: Place, Politics, Situatedness
chapter 12|16 pages
Overwriting the Orient and the Islamosphere
chapter 13|17 pages
Religious-Political Problematic in Civilizational Analysis
chapter 14|14 pages
Regionality and civilizations in the Americas
part V|29 pages
Jóhann P. Árnason's Replies