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The relationship between cosmopolitanism and social theory cannot be recon-structed directly. What we commonly refer to as the leading ? gures in the history of social theory – Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Simmel, Parsons – did not write much, if at all, on cosmopolitanism. True, in the Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels (1976) used the term loosely as an adjective to describe the new kind of cultural artifacts with world-wide orientation that were being created in capitalism. Thus, although they spoke of "cosmopolitan" literature and science – the German term they used there was Weltbürgertum – this hardly amounts to a systematic treatment or valuation of it as an idea. More poignantly, in his lectures on political sociology Émile Durkheim (1992) used the notion of cosmopolitanisme to recover Kant's idea of perpetual peace as he tried to reconcile the old natural law cosmopolitan credo with the nascent force of nationalism just before World War I. But again in this case the highly politicized meaning Durkheim gave to the concept does not warrant, at least without further ado, depicting his sociological viewpoint as cosmopolitan. This chapter therefore begins with a note of caution. The assessment of the connections between cosmopolitan thinking and social theory cannot replicate the paths fol-lowed by those who have reconstructed how social theory relates to a number of alternative social and intellectual trends: the rise of capitalism (Giddens 1971) and the critiques of the Enlightenment (Hawthorn 1987), liberalism (Seidman 1983), Romanticism (Nisbet 1967), and nationalism (Chernilo 2007a). Rather, we need ? rst to identify the de? ning elements of cosmopolitanism as an intellectual tradition and only then can we attempt to move on and assess the extent to which they are compatible with the modern social theory's main features.

Fear has long served elites. They rely on fear to keep and expand their privileges and control the masses. In the current crisis of the capitalist world system, elites in the United States, along with other central countries, promote fear of crime and terrorism. They shaped these fears so that people looked to authorities for security, which permitted extension of apparatuses of coercion like police and military forces. In the face of growing oppression, rebellion against elite hegemony remains possible. This book offers an analysis of the crisis and strategies for rebellion.

The philosopher Michel Foucault's theoretical work provides fertile ground for an analysis of areas of significant concern in researching of social work through his development of the ideas of discourse, power/knowledge, surveillance and governmentality. His development of these concepts allows an insight into the function of policy not always apparent in mainstream and contemporary social policy analysis which has been based on the sociological triumvirate of social class, gender and 'race'. In this article, we can explore how and why these conceptual gifts from Foucault are pertinent to understanding how service users are constructed as objects of social work, particularly with respect to contemporary discourses of social welfare and social exclusion. The paper argues that the use of these ideas challenges some of the less obvious assumptions permeating current developments in social policy and social work provision, whilst also enabling an ability to respond more contextually to shifting frameworks of power and knowledge. There is an acknowledgement of power and its potential positive impact on subjective sense of self and social work has a part to play in this. At the same time, the paper concludes with a warning of 'risk' and professional surveillance and its restriction in facilitating empowerment of vulnerable groups.

This text brings together 14 interventions by social scientists from different countries in Latin America. It is an exercise of collective reflection in which each author exposes in a condensed way the centrality of his vision on social theory and on the challenges that this entails for the development of social sciences in the contemporary Latin American context. The purpuse of the exercise is to show a general view of the development of social theory in the region, as well as to try to recover dynamics of collective recognition and production as forms of proactive resistance to the dominant fragmentation processes in the current academy. An impression shared by the authors is that the result of this dialogue experience makes evident the vitality and variety of sociological production in the region, as well as the need to advance in the construction of a common research agenda. ; Utopía y Praxis Latinoamericana publica bajo licencia Creative Commons Atribución-No Comercial-Compartir Igual 4.0 Internacional (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). Más información en https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

Does human population growth threaten the environment, or does it guarantee we will safeguard it? Is economic growth the key ecological problem, or is it in fact the solution? What will be the leading force to save the planet: civil society, government, or private enterprise? This book shows that these polemical debates are governed not so much by access to "facts" as they are by the political ideology of the expert advancing a particular argument. Moreover, the thoughts of these experts tend to be based largely in just one of three competing streams of political thought: the left, the center, or the right. Drawing on social theory, the author explains the philosophical origins of this tendency to rely on just one of three traditions, and why this poses a serious obstacle to conceptualizing the cause, nature, and resolution of environmental problems. Sunderlin argues that laying the foundation for a livable world involves giving conscious and dedicated attention to the core tenets of all three political traditions: action against class inequality and advocacy of social justice within and among countries; reformation of laws and policies emanating from the halls of power and technological innovation in centers of research; and wholesale cultural change and promotion of individual initiative, responsibility, and creativity.

Critical Social Theory (CST) in its broadest sense is a transdisciplinary approach to the social sciences that applies critique to the status quo in order to emancipate humans and the planet from the negative consequences of modernity. A broad understanding of CST includes historical materialism, Frankfurt School theory, cultural theory, poststructural theory, feminist theory, and postcolonial theory. For example, Craig Calhoun's seminal 1995 study of CST included engagements with Horkheimer, Adorno, and Habermas' Frankfurt School; Derrida and Foucault's postmodernism; Bourdieu's habitus, field, and capital; Haraway and Fraser's feminist theory; and hooks and Spivak's politics of identity and recognition. The transdisciplinary approach of CST demands the reorganisation of disciplinary practices in order to transgress and transcend pre-existing frames of knowledge organisation found in the social sciences and humanities, in particular history, sociology, economics, ecology, and politics. In this context CST is an 'interpenetrating body of work which demands and produces critique … [that] depends on some manner of historical understanding and analysis'. This historically-grounded critique is essential because 'theory is always for someone and for some purpose' since 'theory constitutes as well as explains the questions it asks (and those it does not ask)'. Scholarship and activism within CST is concerned with understanding how 'tradition', the 'status quo', and the 'mainstream' are self-perpetuating practices of modernity that have significantly negative consequences for humans, society, and the planet as a whole. As Max Horkheimer put it in 1937, these conditions necessitate a 'critical theory of society as it is, a theory dominated at every turn by a concern for reasonable conditions of life'. As discussed, CST is different to the other critical theoretical approaches in setting out a holistic, ecological, and progressive approach to the planetary politics that characterise the 21st century.

From text: The new series of Acta Academica, launched earlier this year, is positioned to generate critical views on society, culture and politics. Acta seeks to attract a more globally representative public and authors and become a site of debate and contestation for humanities research by crossing disciplinary boundaries.1 Critical social theories, as intermediaries for traversing these boundaries, frontiers and limits, organise a variety of interpretive schemes, which conjoins with social reality and the demands of disclosing critiques. Thus, the fresh brief of Acta, as it continuously crafts a new intellectual identity, alludes to an assortment of social and other challenges that are structurally anchored within the polity. Poverty, unemployment, globalised racism, social exclusionand unequal power relations in all spheres and levels of society, are at the core of what the humanities and social sciences should regard as the mainstay of their intellectual and practical endeavours.

This speculative article endeavours to highlight the polemics and disputations of knowledge transformation, while simultaneously demonstrating the productive possibilities of such disputations via three examples of refractions. The latter are generated within the crises and critiques of the discourses within which Social Theory, Human Rights and Philosophy are located. They are further cultivated and sharpened by the interplays between these discourses, suggesting the possibility of self-transforming knowledge constellations. The article concludes that the political import of refractions allows the prospects of just social practices to come sharper into view.

The sustainability of societies is an issue of utmost importance for humankind. This is reflected in the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, which highlight the main challenges that citizens face, including underserved groups, and set the path for finding solutions to overcome them. The achievement of the SDGs for 2030 is setting not only the political agenda, but also the scientific one. From the field of social sciences, an issue that remains underexplored is the contributions (or lack thereof, in some occasions) from social theory to the consolidation of more sustainable societies, including the underserved groups. In this vein, the aim of this article is to provide robust evidence on how social theory has contributed to such improvement and is still doing it. To this end, it provides an analysis of how the advancements made from social theory with social impact have contributed to the achievement of the SDGs. Alongside, this article also presents how some theories that never had social impact at their core have hindered the improvement of societies. This dual approach provides a clear picture of the role that social theory can play in the achievement of the SDGs, as well as evidence towards the overcoming of exclusionary theories with no scientific basis.

Roberto Mangabeira Unger is a citizen of Brazil. While working on Politics, his large-scale treatise on social theory, he has been active in his country's politics. Among the fruits of these activities is a series of political and programmatic commentaries on Brazil published in the Brazilian press. The commentaries apply the style of political analysis and the general political program elaborated in Politics to the recent circumstances of Brazil. Thus, they give an extended illustration of Unger's general social theory. At the same time, they exemplify a form of political writing that attempts to combine ambitious critical social theory with popular journalistic policy discussion. Unger's major journalistic efforts, on which I will focus here, are two series of articles published in the largest Brazilian newspaper, A Folha de Sao Paulo. The first is The Country in a Daze, a seven-part essay published as part of a special supplement entitled Brazil After Geisel in January 1979. The second is The Transformative Alternative, consisting of fourteen linked pieces published separately on the paper's "oped" page between December 1984 and April 1985. Unger's journalistic style in Portuguese differs little from the style of his theoretical writings in English. It eschews jargon, portrays abstract ideas with high drama, resorts constantly to dialectical (thesis-antithesissynthesis) exposition, sweepingly and often ironically characterizes people and events, and is occasionally unabashedly hortatory. If one compares this work to the journalistic efforts of some of the classic social theorists, it resembles those of Marx and Keynes in its flair for dramatizing current events by infusing them with broad historical significance and in its ability to criticize contemporary figures through pithy characterization. But Unger's journalism seems more integrated with his social theory than that of Marx or Keynes. Unger makes more of an effort to portray his general theoretical scheme in his journalism; much of the two Folha series summarizes major sections of the argument of Politics. In some respects, Unger's Brazilian writings seem more in the style of The Federalist Papers and the eighteenth century pamphlet literature from which it arose. Like The Federalist Papers, Unger's articles quite explicitly and systematically expound a general social theory in the course of addressing current political issues and events. I propose to describe the analysis in Unger's Brazilian journalism, especially the two Folha series, that addresses most directly the circumstances of Brazil. What follows is partly interpretive summary, partly close paraphrase. I have supplied a few basic background facts about Brazil, but otherwise the account is drawn entirely from Unger's work.

One of the leading debates in social sciences concerns research design. However, in comparative politics, the predominant way conducting research misses out crucial aspects that are central to social theory. This article shows how method and empirical research are highly dependent on the definition of theory. Arguing that theory should not only give an explanation of the social phenomena in question but should also show how this relationship is constructed, this article outlines the consequence of such a perspective, namely that the collection of data should reflect both macro and micro perspectives and the analyses of data should be carried out using mixed methods. In conclusion, such an integrated framework is the most appropriate way to give valuable theoretical feedback, either by examination and revision of already established theories or by a contribution to the construction of new theory in the social sciences. It is important, though, that such a framework is applied in a systematized way.

Many of Canada's native Indian and Inuit commumties are located in northern areas experiencing increasing pressures for resource extraction. Various analyses of the probable conse­ quences of major northern projects have disclosed fundamental conflicts between the hinterland native population and Canada's majority society, as represented by metropolitan business and government interests. These conflicts derive in part from disagreements over resource ownership and the proper beneficiaries of economic rents, as well as from widely disparate social values placed on the resource base. In this article we review the historical evolution of social impact assessment (SIA) as it has developed in response to such resource related conflicts. Then we go on to propose a general conceptual model of social and economic relations which could help provide a more adequate theoretical basis for SIA practice. While the approach suggested here focuses on the needs of native Canadian communities, it may also be relevant for other fourth world peoples and regional minorities.

Social Theory after the Internet' puts forward a theory of how the internet has transformed politics and culture. It examines four countries – the United States, Sweden, India and China – providing a comparative-historical analysis of the uses of information and communication technologies. Written in an accessible, jargon-free language, the book offers a theoretical account from a multidisciplinary perspective on digital media and supports its arguments using the most topical and up-to-date examples.

This paper critically interrogates the usefulness of the concept of violence regimes for social politics, social analysis, and social theory. In the frst case, violence regimes address and inform politics and policy, that is, social politics, both around various forms of violence, such as gender-based violence, violence against women, anti-lesbian, gay and transgender violence, intimate partner violence, and more widely in terms of social and related policies and practices on violence and anti-violence. In the second case, violence regimes assist social analysis of the interconnections of diferent forms and aspects of violence, and relative autonomy from welfare regimes and gender regimes. Third, the violence regime concept engages a wider range of issues in social theory, including the exclusion of the knowledges of the violated, most obviously, but not only, when the voices and experiences of those killed are unheard. The concept directs attention to assumptions made in social theory as incorporating or neglecting violence. More specifcally, it highlights the signifcance of: social efects beyond agency; autotelic ontology, that is, violence as a means and end in itself, and an inequality in itself; the relations of violence, sociality and social relations; violence and power, and the contested boundary between them; and materiality-discursivity in violence and what is to count as violence. These are key issues for both violence studies and social theory more generally.

In this piece I explore how Bhambra and Holmwood's Colonialism and Modern Social Theory implies three different questions that can be asked concerning the connections between colonialism and social theory. With reference to their discussion of Durkheim, I suggest the answers they offer to these possible questions return us to what Kurasawa termed the 'constitutive paradox' of Durkheim's relation to colonialism, namely a mix of political acceptance while also questioning its ideological legitimacy. While exploring Durkheim's comments on colonialism, race, the state and his own Jewishness, I emphasise the need for a careful historical sociology which reckons with the different possible connections between social theory and colonialism.