Harry C. Boyte. Craig Calhoun. Geoff Eley. Nancy Fraser. Nicholas Garnham. JürgenHabermas. Peter Hohendahl. Lloyd Kramer. Benjamin Lee. Thomas McCarthy. Moishe Postone. Mary P.Ryan. Michael Schudson. Michael Warner. David Zaret.

“What does it mean to say that we live in a secular age?” This apparently simple question opens into the massive, provocative, and complex A Secular Age, where Charles Taylor positions secularism as a defining feature of the modern world, not the mere absence of religion, and casts light on the experience of transcendence that scientistic explanations of the world tend to neglect. -/- In Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age, a prominent and varied group of scholars chart the (...) conversations in which A Secular Age intervenes and address wider questions of secularism and secularity. The distinguished contributors include Robert Bellah, José Casanova, Nilüfer Göle, William E. Connolly, Wendy Brown, Simon During, Colin Jager, Jon Butler, Jonathan Sheehan, Akeel Bilgrami, John Milbank, and Saba Mahmood. -/- Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age is edited by Michael Warner, Jonathan VanAntwerpen, and Craig Calhoun. (shrink)

To the surprise of many readers, Jürgen Habermas has recently made religion a major theme of his work. Emphasizing both religion's prominence in the contemporary public sphere and its potential contributions to critical thought, Habermas's engagement with religion has been controversial and exciting, putting much of his own work in fresh perspective and engaging key themes in philosophy, politics and social theory. Habermas argues that the once widely accepted hypothesis of progressive secularization fails to account for the multiple trajectories of (...) modernization in the contemporary world. He calls attention to the contemporary significance of "postmetaphysical" thought and "postsecular" consciousness - even in Western societies that have embraced a rationalistic understanding of public reason. Edited by Craig Calhoun, Eduardo Mendieta, and Jonathan VanAntwerpen, _Habermas and Religion_ presents a series of original and sustained engagements with Habermas's writing on religion in the public sphere, featuring new work and critical reflections from leading philosophers, social and political theorists, and anthropologists. Contributors to the volume respond both to Habermas's ambitious and well-developed philosophical project and to his most recent work on religion. The book closes with an extended response from Habermas - itself a major statement from one of today's most important thinkers. (shrink)

This comprehensive collection of classical sociological theory is a definitive guide to the roots of sociology from its undisciplined beginnings to its current guideposts and reference points in contemporary sociological debate. A definitive guide to the roots of sociology through a collection of key writings from the founders of the discipline Explores influential works of Marx, Durkheim, Weber, Mead, Simmel, Freud, Du Bois, Adorno, Marcuse, Parsons, and Merton Editorial introductions lend historical and intellectual perspective to the substantial readings Includes a (...) new section with new readings on the immediate "pre-history" of sociological theory, including the Enlightenment and de Tocqueville Individual reading selections are updated throughout. (shrink)

Universities have flourished in the modern era as central public institutions and bases for critical thought. They are currently challenged by a variety of social forces and undergoing a deep transformation in both their internal structure and their relationship to the rest of society. Critical theorists need to assess this both in order to grasp adequately the social conditions of their own work and because the transformation of universities is central to a more general intensification of social inequality, privatization of (...) public institutions, and reorganization of the relation of access to knowledge. This is also a pivotal instance for asking basic questions about the senses in which the university is or may be ‘public’: where does its money come from? who governs? who benefits? and how is knowledge produced and circulated? (shrink)

This volume brings leading figures in philosophy, political theory, intellectual history, and literary theory into a dialogue about Arendt's work and its significance for today's fractious identity politics, public ethics, and civic life.

The conversation seeks to extend and complicate Charles Taylor’s account of three constitutive formations of modern social imaginaries: market, the public sphere, and the nation-state based on popular sovereignty in two critical respects. First, it seeks to show how these key imaginaries, especially the market imaginary, are not contained and sealed within autonomous spheres. They are portable and they often leak into domains beyond the ones in which they originate. Second, it seeks to identify and explore the new incipient and/or (...) emergent imaginaries vying for recognition and demanding consideration in the constitution of contemporary social life, such as the risk-reward entrepreneurial culture. (shrink)

This meticulous collection of contemporary sociological theory is the definitive guide to current perspectives and approaches in the field, examining current key topics in the field such as such as symbolic interactionism, phenomenology, structuralism, network theory, critical theory, feminist theory, and the debates over modernity and postmodernity. Includes the work of major figures including Foucault, Giddens, Bourdieu, Bauman, and Habermas Organized thematically, with editorial introductions to put the readings into theoretical perspective New selected readings bring the book up to date.

Faced with a minimally participatory democracy, a variety of populists have sought to revitalize popular political participation by strengthening local community mobilizations. Others have called for reliance on frequent referenda. Assessing the limits of these proposals requires theoretical attention to two key issues. The first is the growing importance of very large scale patterns of societal integration which depend on indirect social relationships achieved through communications media, markets and bureaucracies. This split of system world from lifeworld, in Habermas's terms, poses (...) a challenge to democratic theories which assume that the lessons of local social life and political participation are directly translatable into the necessary knowledge for state level (let alone international) activity. Secondly, changes in patterns of community formation and communications media have transformed the basis for democracy. In particular, socio-spatial segmentation by life-style choice, market position and other factors limits direct relationships increasingly to similar individuals. Mass media become increasingly predominant sources of information about people different from oneself, and indirect social relationships form the structural basis for the social integration of most politics. The present paper revised and adapts Habermas's conceptualization of system world and lifeworld in order to address the transformation of patterns of societal integration. This forms the basis for a critical analysis of the implications of changing community form and especially communications media for populist political proposals. (shrink)

Discussion of political and legal citizenship requires attention to social solidarity. Current approaches to citizenship, however, tend to proceed on abstract bases, neglecting this sociological dimension. This is partly because a tacit understanding of what constitutes a `society' has been developed through implicit reliance on the idea of `nation'. Issues of social belonging are addressed more directly in communitarian and multiculturalist discourses. Too often, however, different modes of solidarity and participation are confused. Scale is often neglected. The model of `nation' (...) again prefigures the ways in which membership and difference are constructed. The present paper suggests the value of maintaining a distinction among relational networks, cultural or legal categories, and discursive publics. The first constitute community in a sense quite different from either of the second and third. Categories, however, are increasingly prominent in largescale social life. But the idea of the public is crucial to conceptualizing democratic participation. (shrink)

Suppose we thought of free inquiry as a social matter, a public good. We might ask not only whether individual scholars are free from illegitimate, especially external, censorship or attempts to control their work. We might ask also how much the university as an institution contributes to overall freedom of inquiry. To answer the second question would require assessing how well universities educate students to be participants in free inquiry, how well researchers communicate their work to raise the quality of (...) public discourse, and whether the results of scientific inquiry are made freely available to advance further inquiry or controlled as private property. It would require asking whether the specific structures and practices through which we organize academic work - from disciplinary departments to evaluation procedures to publication systems - do more to facilitate or obstruct free inquiry. This article will fall short of answering all these questions, but I hope it will put them on the agenda. I present them in the context of two successive transformations - the late 19th century reorganization of universities by disciplines devoted to the production of new knowledge and the dramatic 20th increase in scale and cost which challenged the internal integration of universities. These shifted the constraints and conditions under which students and faculty could take up the project of free inquiry. Appreciating the impact of these transformations is also basic to projects of renewing the university and free inquiry today. (shrink)

Suppose we thought of free inquiry as a social matter, a public good. We might ask not only whether individual scholars are free from illegitimate, especially external, censorship or attempts to control their work. We might ask also how much the university as an institution contributes to overall freedom of inquiry. To answer the second question would require assessing how well universities educate students to be participants in free inquiry, how well researchers communicate their work to raise the quality of (...) public discourse, and whether the results of scientific inquiry are made freely available to advance further inquiry or controlled as private property. It would require asking whether the specific structures and practices through which we organize academic work - from disciplinary departments to evaluation procedures to publication systems - do more to facilitate or obstruct free inquiry. This article will fall short of answering all these questions, but I hope it will put them on the agenda. I present them in the context of two successive transformations - the late 19th century reorganization of universities by disciplines devoted to the production of new knowledge and the dramatic 20th increase in scale and cost which challenged the internal integration of universities. These shifted the constraints and conditions under which students and faculty could take up the project of free inquiry. Appreciating the impact of these transformations is also basic to projects of renewing the university and free inquiry today. (shrink)

Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.

Introduction -- The class consciousness of frequent travelers : towards a critique of actually existing cosmopolitanism -- Constitutional patriotism and the public sphere : interests, identity, and solidarity in the integration of Europe -- The democratic integration of Europe : interests, identity, and the public sphere -- The virtues of inconsistency : identity and plurality in the conceptualization of Europe -- "Belonging" in the cosmopolitan imaginary -- The variability of belonging -- Imperialism, cosmopolitanism, and belonging -- A world of emergencies.

Students in 1989 were at pains to distinguish their actions from those taken by students in the Cultural Revolution. Yet there were important similarities. In the present paper, we identify influence on the Democracy Movement from the Cultural Revolution through (1) the expansion and/or widespread familiarization of repertories of collective action available to Chinese activists; (2) precedents for collective action that may have lowered the barriers to action for some while raising them for others; (3) the participation of people at (...) different stages of their lives in both movements; (4) the transformation of the significance of the ideas of democracy and political authority wrought by the Cultural Revolution for many Chinese; (5) the impact of the Cultural Revolution on Chinese intellectuals; (6) the material consequences of the Cultural Revolution which contributed to China's position in the post-Mao era and the specific issues reform and protest sought to confront; (7) the discourse of corruption which provided the 1989 movement with its strongest links between students and ordinary citizens, and which was accentuated in the Cultural Revolution; (8) the affirmation of the value of ordinary life by which students in the 1980s, encouraged by the `literature of the wounded', rebelled against the Puritanism and denigration of `unauthorized' personal relationships that had been characteristic of the Cultural Revolution; (9) the role of the Cultural Revolution as a cautionary tale, shaping the movement itself, inhibiting some older intellectuals from participating, and determining much of how the government viewed and responded to the Democracy Movement; and (10) the embeddedness in different ways of both Cultural Revolution and 1989 protests in an international context. (shrink)

Commentators on Craig Calhoun's Tanner Lecture. The Tanner Lectures are a collection of educational and scientific discussions relating to human values. Conducted by leaders in their fields, the lectures are presented at prestigious educational facilities around the world.

Three of the classic "founding fathers" of sociology (Comte, Marx and Tocqueville) were contemporary observers of the French Revolution of 1848. In addition, another important theoretical tradition was represented in contemporary observations of 1848 by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. The present paper summarizes aspects of the views of these theoretically minded observers, notes some points at which more recent historical research suggests revisions to these classical views, and poses three arguments: (1) The revolution of 1848 exerted a direct shaping influence on classical (...) social theory through lessons (some now subject to revision) learned from observation of the revolutionary struggles. (2) The 1848 revolution influenced classical social theory indirectly by contributing to the submergence of the radical French revolutionary tradition (along with utopian socialism) after the defeat of the June insurrectionaires and Bonaparte's coup. (3) Both writers in the classical tradition and current researchers have failed to thematize adequately a basic transformation in effectiveness of national integration, communication and administration which made 1848 in crucial ways much more akin to 1789 than it was direct evidence for the growth of class struggle and the likelihood of further revolution in advanced capitalist countries. (shrink)

The Tanner Lectures are a collection of educational and scientific discussions relating to human values. Conducted by leaders in their fields, the lectures are presented at prestigious educational facilities around the world.