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Assessing critical theory today, José Maurício Domingues' Emancipation and History focuses on the connection between history and emancipation, centering on the trends that structure modernity and may lead us beyond it. Classical and contemporary sociology and social theory are mobilized to recover a robust theory capable of going beyond recurrent empirical, and therefore weaker, perspectives in emancipatory thought. Collective subjectivity and social creativity, history and sociology, analytical concepts and trend-concepts, social existential questions, the role of equal freedom and of immanent critique, secularization, capitalism, the modern state, 'populism', the family and the meaning of citizenship, Marx, Weber, Bhaskar, Habermas, Laclau, Sousa Santos and Negri are topics and authors that stand out in the book.

Assessing critical theory today, José Maurício Domingues' Emancipation and History focuses on the connection between history and emancipation, centering on the trends that structure modernity and may lead us beyond it. Classical and contemporary sociology and social theory are mobilized to recover a robust theory capable of going beyond recurrent empirical, and therefore weaker, perspectives in emancipatory thought. Collective subjectivity and social creativity, history and sociology, analytical concepts and trend-concepts, social existential questions, the role of equal freedom and of immanent critique, secularization, capitalism, the modern state, 'populism', the family and the meaning of citizenship, Marx, Weber, Bhaskar, Habermas, Laclau, Sousa Santos and Negri are topics and authors that stand out in the book.

Cover -- Global Modernity, Development,and Contemporary Civilization: Towards a Renewal of Critical Theory -- Copyright -- Contents -- Figures -- General Introduction -- Part I: Critical Theory andModern Civilization -- 1. Apogee, Limits and Renewal of Critical Theory -- 2. Civilization and Modernity -- Part II: Polarized Flexible Accumulation inan Unequal World -- Part II: Introduction -- 3. China Takes Off: The East Asian Experience -- 4. Latin America: Slipping Back to the Past? -- 5. India In and Out of South Asia: Dreams and Illusions -- Part II Conclusion -- Part III: Complexity and Re-Embeddings,Solidarity and Abstractions -- Part III: Introduction -- 6. India, Indic Civilization and Social Complexity: The Radical Case -- 7. China: Homogeneity and Post-Communist Pluralization -- 8. Latin America, the West and Complexity -- Part III: Conclusion -- Part IV: Democratization and the Persistence of Domination -- Part IV: Introduction -- 9. The Latin American Molecular Democratic Revolution -- 10. India as a Mass Democracy -- 11. China and the Multilayered Dictatorship -- Part IV: Conclusion -- Final Words -- Notes -- References -- Index.

Abstract
The environment and climate change have achieved global, imaginary and institutional, centrality. Yet, despite efforts by social movements and intellectuals to change the status of 'nature' in social life, its unsurpassable exteriority in relation to 'society' remains a defining feature of modernity. While the imaginary is to a large extent fluid, these are core elements that hardly change, and by the same token are hard to change, one of the reasons being that they are crystalized in institutions, which contributes to their recursiveness and reiteration. This article explores the reasons for this, reconstructing the modern perspective, the role of subjectivity in it and some alternative views while focusing on the political dimension of modernity. It then goes on to tackle contemporary issues. If we aim to bring about a different world, and this does not exclude recourse to different civilizational alternatives, I argue that it is mostly from within the modern imaginary and institutional framework that we must face up to present challenges. I also suggest that the concepts of collective subjectivity and materiality may contribute to a renewed understanding of these questions within a critical theory perspective.