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This essay responds to the characterization Ted Miller offers (in his December 2008 essay in Political Theory) of the kind of nonfoundationalism I have referred to as "weak ontology," and that Gianni Vattimo frequently calls "weak thought." Miller argues that such a position embodies, first, a philosophy of history in which strong ontologies (e.g., religion) are assessed categorically as passé, and, second, are associated essentially with violence. I show that while these characterizations may be appropriate for Vattimo's thought, they are not for weak ontology as I understand it. Finally, I suggest that the former might more usefully be categorized as "antifoundationalism" and the latter as "nonfoundationalism."

This article utilizes Ulrich Beck's concept of 'reflexive modernity' to account for the ambivalent view of humour in the public sphere: its celebration as a form of criticism of irrationality and injustice and its censure as a vehicle for the denigration of subordinate or marginal groups and identities. The article argues that the power and ambivalence of humour in contemporary culture can be understood with reference to the two key features of reflexive modernization: the demand for the discursive justification of all claims to cognitive and normative authority and the obligation to respect the equal rights of all individuals. Drawing on Beck's distinction between a 'first' and 'second' modernity, the article uses the example of the Danish 'Muhammed Cartoons' to show that critical-emancipatory joking cannot simply lay claim to an 'Enlightenment' view of secular-scientistic reason in conflict with an atavistic and backward 'religion' due to the transformation of reason by reflexive scientization and the transformation of religion resulting from the effects of globalization and cultural cosmopolitization. The article draws on accounts of the comic practice of Muslim comedians and a consideration of the British TV sit-com Rev to demonstrate the possibility of a 'religious' joking that is thereby eminently 'modern' whilst respecting the values of human universality and individual dignity. The article concludes by reiterating the centrality of Beck's theory for the understanding of the enduring power of comic representation to constitute a cultural reflexivization endemic in contemporary society and argues for the relevance of 'reflexive modernity' to cultural sociology.

This article is the second part of the introduction to issue 8/19 of Studia Litteraria et Historica. The issue focuses on an anthropological and sociological analysis of the years 1945–1956 in Poland and, to some degree, on a deconstruction of contemporary Polish narratives on Stalinism.

Critiques of modernity often align with critiques of the existing institutions of liberal democracy. We argue that the degrowth movement can learn from the experience of past critiques of modernity by avoiding their major mistake - that is, (inadvertently) conflating a critique of modernity with a rejection of liberal democratic institutions. Hence, we suggest to frame degrowth as the promotion of new vocabularies within a deliberative account of democracy. Specifically, we proceed in three steps: first, we briefly review some essential critiques of modernity and their stance towards liberal democracy. Second, we illustrate how some of the argumentative patterns within the degrowth literature may inadvertently endanger core values of the open society. Third, we introduce our perspective on a liberal degrowth that aims to fulfil the "unfinished project of modernity".

This article examines a survey of rural Czech women conducted in 1944–1945. It argues that the survey tells two very different stories. First, the survey provides an unvarnished look into the everyday material circumstances of a few rural Czech women. But for all they tell us about the material conditions of these rural women's lives, the surveys tell us very little about their ideals, hopes, and dreams. The surveys do, however, reveal quite a bit about the inner motivations of the very different group of women who commissioned this research, a group known as the Women's Center. Reading in between the lines of these texts shows how the activists of the Women's Center imagined modernity in the countryside. Theirs was a vision of rational households, technological advances, and good taste, even in rural villages.

Critiques of modernity often align with critiques of the existing institutions of lib-eral democracy. We argue that the degrowth movement can learn from the experience of past critiques of modernity by avoiding their major mistake - that is, (inadvertently) conflating a critique of modernity with a rejection of liberal democratic institutions. Hence, we suggest to frame degrowth as the promotion of new vocabularies within a deliberative account of democ-racy. Specifically, we proceed in three steps: first, we briefly review some essential critiques of modernity and their stance towards liberal democracy. Second, we illustrate how some of the argumentative patterns within the degrowth literature may inadvertently endanger core values of the open society. Third, we introduce our perspective on a liberal degrowth that aims to fulfil the "unfinished project of modernity".

Abstract: Critiques of modernity often align with critiques of the existing institutions of liberal democracy. We argue that the degrowth movement can learn from the experience of past critiques of modernity by avoiding their major mistake - that is, (inadvertently) conflating a critique of modernity with a rejection of liberal democratic institutions. Hence, we suggest to frame degrowth as the promotion of new vocabularies within a deliberative account of democracy. Specifically, we proceed in three steps: first, we briefly review some essential critiques of modernity and their stance towards liberal democracy. Second, we illustrate how some of the argumentative patterns within the degrowth literature may inadvertently endanger core values of the open society. Third, we introduce our perspective on a liberal degrowth that aims to fulfil the "unfinished project of modernity"

Critiques of modernity often align with critiques of the existing institutions of lib-eral democracy. We argue that the degrowth movement can learn from the experience of past critiques of modernity by avoiding their major mistake - that is, (inadvertently) conflating a critique of modernity with a rejection of liberal democratic institutions. Hence, we suggest to frame degrowth as the promotion of new vocabularies within a deliberative account of democ-racy. Specifically, we proceed in three steps: first, we briefly review some essential critiques of modernity and their stance towards liberal democracy. Second, we illustrate how some of the argumentative patterns within the degrowth literature may inadvertently endanger core values of the open society. Third, we introduce our perspective on a liberal degrowth that aims to fulfil the "unfinished project of modernity".

Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Modernity as Crisis: Noise and "Nerves" -- 2. Re-Enchanting Modernity: Techniques of Magical Sound -- 3. Creating the Sonically Rational: Modern Interventions in Everyday Aurality -- 4. National Acoustics: Total Listening in the Second World War -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Index

Jan De Vos's second book on psychologization argues that psychology IS psychologization, a phenomenon traced back from Late-Modernity to the Enlightenment. Engaging with seminal thinkers such La Mettrie, Husserl, Lasch and Agamben, the book teases out the limits of psychoanalysis as a critical tool

Der deutsche Sozialstaat ist in den letzten Jahren in Kritik geraten - und sieht sich trotz seiner Bewährung in den jüngsten Finanzkrisen zum verlängerten Arm des neoliberalen Kapitalismus herabgestuft. Lothar Böhnisch und Wolfgang Schröer zeigen: Wenn es um die Diskussion der Zukunft des Sozialen geht, führt eine nur auf den Sozialstaat fixierte Kritik der Sozialpolitik in die Sackgasse. Vielmehr ist es das #on("i")#Sozialpolitische Prinzip#off("i")#, von dem die eigentliche Wirkung und Kraft des Sozialen auch in der Gesellschaft der Zweiten Moderne ausgeht. Dieses Prinzip freizulegen, angesichts der gegenwärtigen Entwicklung zu erweitern und damit den einseitigen Sozialstaatsdiskurs wieder in ein dialektisches Fahrwasser zu bringen, ist das Anliegen dieses Buches.

This study focuses on the nature of the Lebanese encounter with modernity in Lebanese fiction over the past forty years or so, a time of great ideological, political, and cultural upheavals. The first part traces the effect of modernity on works by Lebanese writers since the 1950s, a period of "revolutionary political and social change," and of learning and cultural and social ferment. The second part of the study focuses on Rashid al-Daif's novel עAzizi al-Sayyed Kawabata. My choice of this particular novel is related to the fact that it is a representative work that underlines the impact of modernity on Lebanese individuals and society during and in the wake of the civil war. The novel raises questions about rationality, ideology, the individual self, and the relevance of these Western constructs to the local situation in Lebanon. The structure of the novel itself and the use of the epistolary and autobiographical modes of writing underscore the novel's obsession with modernity. Within this context, one could say that al-Daif's novel can be viewed as a complex work of fiction that encompasses different forms of modernity, the tensions between these modernities, and between modernity and authenticity.

The difference between the political philosophy of the second school and that of the modern classics is above all metaphysical. The historically fundamental argumentative similarities are theoretically irrelevant to this difference, whose primary principle is the centrality of a (really) common good, manifested in a teleological ethic centred on virtue. The article reviews how, for this reason, a series of topics that early modernity articulates as aspects of a single political problem still constitute for these authors independent questions, only linked in the idea of political common good. ; La diferencia de la filosofía política de la segunda escolástica con la de los clásicos modernos es sobre todo metafísica. Las semejanzas argumentales, históricamente fundamentales, resultan teóricamente irrelevantes respecto de esta diferencia, cuyo principio primario es la centralidad de un bien (realmente) común, manifestado en una ética teleológica centrada en la virtud. El artículo revisa cómo, por esta razón, una serie de tópicos que la primera modernidad articula como aspectos de un único problema político, todavía constituyen para estos autores cuestiones independientes, solo vinculadas en la idea de bien común político.

AbstractIn this article the Soviet-African Modern is presented through an intellectual history of exchanges in a triangular geography, outspreading from Moscow to Paris to Port of Spain and Accra. In this geography, postcolonial conditions in Eastern Europe and Africa became interconnected. This shared postcolonial space extended from the Soviet South to Africa. The glue for the transregional imagination was an engagement with the topos of backwardness. For many of the participants in the debate, the Soviet past was the African present. Focusing on the 1960s and 1970s, three connected perspectives on the relationship between Soviet and African paths to modernity are presented: First, Soviet and Russian scholars interpreting the domestic (post)colonial condition; second, African academics revisiting the Soviet Union as a model for development; and finally, transatlantic intellectuals connecting postcolonial narratives with socialist ones. Drawing on Russian archives, the article furthermore demonstrates that Soviet repositories hold complementary records for African histories.

How can the relative inability of social theory to shed light on the horrors of the late twentieth century be reconciled with the fact that both history and social science earlier devoted themselves to arriving at an understanding of war and violence in the modern world? An answer is provided in five steps. First, the disciplinary evolution of the social science disciplines tends to make them oblivious of important parts of their own heritage and opens up a chasm between the social and the historical sciences. Second, the contribution of military experiences to the formation of the policy orientation of modern social sciences renders them less rather than more capable of reflecting upon war as a societal and historical phenomenon. Third, rational choice theory and historical sociology are relatively unable to arrive at an understanding of the cultural constitution of modernity and share a naturalistic conception of war and violence. Fourth, at least five features of war in the late twentieth century transcend the experiences of modernity. Fifth, in order to grasp these features conceptually, social theory has to acknowledge different varieties of modernity seriously, to elaborate a historical phenomenology of the experiences of war and violence, and to arrive at an actionbased explanation of wars in their societal and historical context.