Summary
Overview
Key Readings
The United States has some claim to have risen to a position of intellectual dominance in the social sciences in the post-war years. American social scientists are key players in international conferences and their premier publications have some claim to set international trends. Yet the relationship between American thought and global traditions has been peculiarly under-theorized.
This unparalleled four-volume collection is divided into eight parts that focus on American post-war critical theory with special reference to social theory, sociology and politics. It provides a comprehensive survey of the outstanding contributions in the field.
Peter Beilharz, through a considered selection of articles, argues that American critical theory can be read not only as European, but also as profoundly American and North American. That is, it is hybrid, at ...
Editor's Introduction
What is American Critical Thought? The focus of this collection is on postwar American Critical Theory, with especial reference to social theory, sociology and politics. Postwar, more closely, refers to the period especially from the sixties in which Critical Theory was revived at the hands of New Left intellectuals who had personal contact with the leading figures of the first and second generations of the Frankfurt School, from Adorno and Horkheimer through Marcuse and Lowenthal to Habermas. The idea of American Critical Theory is used therefore both as a direct historical reference to this connection, and as a paradox, for surely there was something like a local critical theory, with reference to pragmatism or the long-established traditions of American self criticism in journalism ...
Table of Contents
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Volume 1
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Sources – the Frankfurt School
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1. Urban Flights: The Institute of Social Research between Frankfurt and New York
Martin Jay
1993
Force Fields – Between Intellectual History and Cultural Critique
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Martin Jay
1985
Permanent Exiles – Essays on the Intellectual Migration from Germany to America
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3. The Frankfurt School in Exile
Martin Jay
1985
Permanent Exiles – Essays on the Intellectual Migration from Germany to America
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4. Critical Theory and Political Economy
Moishe Postone | Barbara Brick
1993
On Max Horkheimer – New Perspective
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Richard Wolin
1995
Labyrinths: Explorations in the Critical History of Ideas
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6. Introduction: Herbert Marcuse and the Crisis of Contemporary Civilization
Douglas Kellner
1984
Herbert Marcuse and the Crisis of Marxism
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7. Introduction to Habermas on Society and Politics
Steven Seidman
1989
Jürgen Habermas on Society and Politics: A Reader
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8. Habermas and Critical Theory: Beyond the Marxian Dilemma?
Jeffrey Alexander
1991
Communicative Action: Essays on Jürgen Habermas's The Theory of Communicative Action
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9. Complexity and Democracy, or the Seducements of Systems Theory
Thomas McCarthy
1985
New German Critique
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Sources – from the Frankfurt School to Foucault
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10. From the Problem of Judgment to the Public Sphere: Rethinking Hannah Arendt's Political Theory
Seyla Benhabib
1996
The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt
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11. Ontology and the Political Project: Cornelius Castoriadis
Dick Howard
1977
The Marxian Legacy
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Hans Joas
1993
Pragmatism and Social Theory
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13. Habitus, Field, and Capital: The Question of Historical Specificity
Craig Calhoun
1993
Bourdieu: Critical Perspectives
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14. The Reality of Reduction – the Failed Synthesis of Pierre Bourdieu
Jeffrey Alexander
1995
Fin de Siècle Social Theory
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Jeffrey Alexander
1999
Thesis Eleven
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16. Translator's Introduction The Mirror of Production
Mark Poster
1975
The Mirror of Production
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17. Women in Dark Times: Agnes Heller and Hannah Arendt
Martin Jay
1993
Force Fields – Between Intellectual History and Cultural Critique
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18. Foucault, Poststructuralism, and the Mode of Information
Mark Poster
1989
Critical Theory and Poststructuralism: In Search of a Context
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19. Conflicting Conceptions of Critique: Foucault versus Habermas
David Hoy
1994
Critical Theory
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Volume 2
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American Inflexions and Responses
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20. The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism
Daniel Bell
1976
The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism
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21. The Actor Deprived of His Art
Richard Sennett
1978
The Fall of Public Man
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22. The Narcissistic Personality of Our Time
Christopher Lasch
1979
The Culture of Narcissism – American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations
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23. Nostalgia: The Abdication of Memory
Christopher Lasch
1991
The True and Only Heaven – Progress and its Critics
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24. Afterword: Pragmatism, Pluralism and Postmodernism
Richard Rorty
1999
Philosophy and Social Hope
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25. An Underestimated Alternative: America and the Limits of “Critical Theory”
Hans Joas
1993
Pragmatism and Social Theory
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26. Between Science and Politics: The Critical Theory of C. W. Mills and Jürgen Habermas
Steven Seidman
1994
Contested Knowledge: Social Theory in the Postmodern Era
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27. For Gouldner: Reflections on an Outlaw Marxist
Martin Jay
1988
Fin de Siècle Socialism and other essays
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Iris Young
1990
Justice and the Politics of Difference
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29. Culture, Political Economy, and Difference – on Iris Young's Justice and the Politics of Difference
Nancy Fraser
1997
Justice Interruptus – Critical Reflections on the ‘Postsocialist’ Condition
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Peter Beilharz
1998
Thesis Eleven
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31. Bourdieu in America: Notes on the Transatlantic Importation of Social Theory
Loïc Wacquant
1993
Bourdieu: Critical Perspectives
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32. Prophetic Pragmatism: Cultural Criticism and Political Engagement
Cornel West
1989
The American Evasion of Philosophy – A Genealogy of Pragmatism
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33. The McDonaldization of Sociological Research
George Ritzer
2001
Explorations in Social Theory, From Metatheorizing to Rationalization
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Volume 3
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Sociology – Critique and Innovation
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Jeffrey Alexander
1995
Fin De Siècle Social Theory – Relativism, Reduction, and the Problem of Reason
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35. Rethinking Critical Theory
Craig Calhoun
1995
Critical Social Theory-Culture, History and the Challenge of Difference
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36. Civic Bodies – Multi-Cultural New York
Richard Sennett
1996
Flesh and Stone – The Body and the City in Western Civilization
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37. The Search for Tradition: Avant-Garde and Postmodernism in the 1970s
Andreas Huyssen
1981
New German Critique
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38. The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
Fredric Jameson
1990
Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
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39. The End of the Utopias of Labor: Metaphors of the Machine in the Post-Fordist Era
Anson Rabinbach
1998
Thesis Eleven
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40. Critical Theories of Technology
Andrew Feenberg
1999
Questioning Technology
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41. Critical Theory, the Informational Revolution, and an Ecological Path to Modernity
Timothy Luke | Stephen White
1985
Critical Theory and Public Life
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Agnes Heller
1995
Thesis Eleven
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43. On Irony: An Invitation To Neoclassical Sociology
Gil Eyal | Iván Szélényi | Eleanor Townsley
2003
Thesis Eleven
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Volume 4
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Politics
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44. Introduction: Habermas and the Public Sphere
Craig Calhoun
1992
Habermas and the Public Sphere
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45. Why More Political Theory?
Jean Cohen
1979
Telos
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46. Civil Society and Social Theory
Andrew Arato | Jean Cohen
1988
Thesis Eleven
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47. Social Justice in the Age of Identity Politics: Redistribution, Recognition, and Participation
Nancy Fraser
2003
Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical Exchange
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48. Recognition and Social Justice
Axel Honneth
2003
Redistribution or Recognition? A Political-Philosophical Exchange
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49. Honneth's New Critical Theory of Recognition
Jeffrey Alexander | Maria Lara
1996
New Left Review
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50. The Politics of Recognition
Charles Taylor
1995
Philosophical Arguments
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51. A Cultural Left
Richard Rorty
1998
Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America
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Engaging America
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52. The Resistance that Modernity Constantly Provokes: Europe, America and Social Theory
Peter Wagner
1999
Thesis Eleven
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53. The Evergreen Tocqueville (On the Occasion of the Hungarian Publication of Democracy in America)
Ferenc Feher
1995
Thesis Eleven
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54. Why Return to the American Revolution?
Dick Howard
1987
Thesis Eleven
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55. False Premises
Jean Cohen
1975
Telos
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Robert Hughes
1991
Nothing If Not Critical – Selected Essays on Art and Artists
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Marshall Berman
1999
Adventures in Marxism
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58. It All Comes Together in Los Angeles
Edward Soja
1989
Postmodern Geographics: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory
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Mike Davis
2001
New Left Review
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60. From Slavery to Mass Incarceration: Rethinking the ‘Race Question’ in the US
Loïc Wacquant
2002
New Left Review
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Endgames/Exits
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61. The Significance of the Frankfurt School Today: Five Theses (1986)
Albrecht Wellmer
1998
Endgames – The Irreconcilable Nature of Modernity: Essays and Lectures
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62. Exit
Néstor Canclini
1995
Hybrid Cultures: Strategies for Entering and Leaving Modernity
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