Pub Date : 2024-02-13DOI: 10.1177/13684310241227866
Jenny Andersson
The future has been a central object of inquiry in the twentieth-century social theory. In this essay, a first generation of intellectual concern with the future is represented in the post-war turn towards a hermeneutics of time and reflections on modernity in the writings of conceptual historian Reinhart Koselleck and philosopher Paul Ricoeur. In their writings, the future was both essential reflection on the limits of human existence and a fundamental liberation of political potential. As such they situated the future in what was defined as historical time. A second wave of scholarly thinking came in the explosion of a post-war field of futures studies. The future, to post-war futurists, was a loss of telos and an indication of the fundamental immaturity and hubris of the human subject. History was a cumbersome remnant of past destruction, and the imperative was to move beyond. In a third generation, currently taking form, the future is considered as part of a postmodern, indeed posthuman existence. ‘There is no such thing as humanity’ makes human history impossible and opens the question of whether it is even possible to engage with the future without a clear anchoring in the history of what it is to be human.
{"title":"Between responsibility and escape: The future as an object of knowledge in the humanities and social sciences","authors":"Jenny Andersson","doi":"10.1177/13684310241227866","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13684310241227866","url":null,"abstract":"The future has been a central object of inquiry in the twentieth-century social theory. In this essay, a first generation of intellectual concern with the future is represented in the post-war turn towards a hermeneutics of time and reflections on modernity in the writings of conceptual historian Reinhart Koselleck and philosopher Paul Ricoeur. In their writings, the future was both essential reflection on the limits of human existence and a fundamental liberation of political potential. As such they situated the future in what was defined as historical time. A second wave of scholarly thinking came in the explosion of a post-war field of futures studies. The future, to post-war futurists, was a loss of telos and an indication of the fundamental immaturity and hubris of the human subject. History was a cumbersome remnant of past destruction, and the imperative was to move beyond. In a third generation, currently taking form, the future is considered as part of a postmodern, indeed posthuman existence. ‘There is no such thing as humanity’ makes human history impossible and opens the question of whether it is even possible to engage with the future without a clear anchoring in the history of what it is to be human.","PeriodicalId":47808,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Social Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-02-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139841784","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-02-13DOI: 10.1177/13684310241228531
Dimitris Soudias
Radical critique and praxis today face an unprecedented challenge because neoliberal rationalities partly succeeded in encroaching upon emancipatory ambitions. On the one hand, as critical sociology informs us, this is because many of the utilitarian tenets of neoliberal rationalities have become naturalized in everyday conduct. On the other hand, as pragmatic sociology shows, because neoliberalism has succeeded in incorporating critical activity into its mode of functioning, challenging neoliberalism comes at the cost of its partial reproduction. Against this backdrop, the goal of this article is to reconsider both the role of critique in neoliberalism and the mode of inquiry of critique, in order to map out an ‘alter-neoliberal analysis’: a normative mode of critical inquiry that seeks to discover what would need to be the case for a future beyond neoliberalism to be conceivable. Building on the inferential logic of abduction, alter-neoliberal analysis (1) defamiliarizes the opaque ways in which neoliberal rationalities encroach upon practices, so as to (2) critique them in ways that curtail their reproduction and (3) radically imagine politico-epistemological positions that are unintelligible to neoliberal rationalities.
{"title":"Alter-neoliberal analysis: Abduction, critique, radical imagination","authors":"Dimitris Soudias","doi":"10.1177/13684310241228531","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13684310241228531","url":null,"abstract":"Radical critique and praxis today face an unprecedented challenge because neoliberal rationalities partly succeeded in encroaching upon emancipatory ambitions. On the one hand, as critical sociology informs us, this is because many of the utilitarian tenets of neoliberal rationalities have become naturalized in everyday conduct. On the other hand, as pragmatic sociology shows, because neoliberalism has succeeded in incorporating critical activity into its mode of functioning, challenging neoliberalism comes at the cost of its partial reproduction. Against this backdrop, the goal of this article is to reconsider both the role of critique in neoliberalism and the mode of inquiry of critique, in order to map out an ‘alter-neoliberal analysis’: a normative mode of critical inquiry that seeks to discover what would need to be the case for a future beyond neoliberalism to be conceivable. Building on the inferential logic of abduction, alter-neoliberal analysis (1) defamiliarizes the opaque ways in which neoliberal rationalities encroach upon practices, so as to (2) critique them in ways that curtail their reproduction and (3) radically imagine politico-epistemological positions that are unintelligible to neoliberal rationalities.","PeriodicalId":47808,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Social Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-02-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139781238","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-02-05DOI: 10.1177/13684310241229653
Loren Goldman
Against pessimistic trends in social and political theory, this article argues for the indispensability of hope in conceptualizing the future. Such hope, however, does not need to be beholden to a unitary vision of the future, as with traditional metaphysical or Enlightenment notions of progress, but should instead accommodate a multiplicity of possible better worlds. Pluralizing the future links it to diverse nonsynchronous temporalities of past and present and emphasizes the roles of contingency, action and experimentation in concrete aspiration. Immanuel Kant and Ernst Bloch here offer philosophical foundations for this perspective.
{"title":"Experimentation and the future(s) of political hope","authors":"Loren Goldman","doi":"10.1177/13684310241229653","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13684310241229653","url":null,"abstract":"Against pessimistic trends in social and political theory, this article argues for the indispensability of hope in conceptualizing the future. Such hope, however, does not need to be beholden to a unitary vision of the future, as with traditional metaphysical or Enlightenment notions of progress, but should instead accommodate a multiplicity of possible better worlds. Pluralizing the future links it to diverse nonsynchronous temporalities of past and present and emphasizes the roles of contingency, action and experimentation in concrete aspiration. Immanuel Kant and Ernst Bloch here offer philosophical foundations for this perspective.","PeriodicalId":47808,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Social Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-02-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139804549","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-02-05DOI: 10.1177/13684310241229653
Loren Goldman
Against pessimistic trends in social and political theory, this article argues for the indispensability of hope in conceptualizing the future. Such hope, however, does not need to be beholden to a unitary vision of the future, as with traditional metaphysical or Enlightenment notions of progress, but should instead accommodate a multiplicity of possible better worlds. Pluralizing the future links it to diverse nonsynchronous temporalities of past and present and emphasizes the roles of contingency, action and experimentation in concrete aspiration. Immanuel Kant and Ernst Bloch here offer philosophical foundations for this perspective.
{"title":"Experimentation and the future(s) of political hope","authors":"Loren Goldman","doi":"10.1177/13684310241229653","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13684310241229653","url":null,"abstract":"Against pessimistic trends in social and political theory, this article argues for the indispensability of hope in conceptualizing the future. Such hope, however, does not need to be beholden to a unitary vision of the future, as with traditional metaphysical or Enlightenment notions of progress, but should instead accommodate a multiplicity of possible better worlds. Pluralizing the future links it to diverse nonsynchronous temporalities of past and present and emphasizes the roles of contingency, action and experimentation in concrete aspiration. Immanuel Kant and Ernst Bloch here offer philosophical foundations for this perspective.","PeriodicalId":47808,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Social Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-02-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139864473","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-02-02DOI: 10.1177/13684310241226615
P. Strydom
The aim of this article is a sociology of the future. Since the standard sociological practice of extrapolating from everyday semantics of the future and the time-consciousness of modernity is inadequate, an integrated cognitive sociological perspective allied to critical theory is introduced. It makes visible an essential dimension of social life that is either largely taken for granted, misunderstood or ignored by identifying different levels of cognitive structures organising minds, institutions and culture and following their role in societal dynamics. This perspective mediates the sociocultural and naturalistic approaches and introduces the concept of space-time. Centrally, a modal analysis of the key present-past-future sequence is presented, with the focus on the distinct status of the future. It is modally conceptualised, not simply in terms of possibility as is usual, but rather in terms of its modality as a necessary formal generic cultural model that makes the future in the first place conceivable and enables an orientation towards it to be established and maintained. The resulting cognitive sociological account offers a novel theoretical understanding of the future which could facilitate thorough sociological and critical theoretical analyses in the societal space-time field.
{"title":"Towards a sociology of the future: An exploration in cognitive social theory","authors":"P. Strydom","doi":"10.1177/13684310241226615","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13684310241226615","url":null,"abstract":"The aim of this article is a sociology of the future. Since the standard sociological practice of extrapolating from everyday semantics of the future and the time-consciousness of modernity is inadequate, an integrated cognitive sociological perspective allied to critical theory is introduced. It makes visible an essential dimension of social life that is either largely taken for granted, misunderstood or ignored by identifying different levels of cognitive structures organising minds, institutions and culture and following their role in societal dynamics. This perspective mediates the sociocultural and naturalistic approaches and introduces the concept of space-time. Centrally, a modal analysis of the key present-past-future sequence is presented, with the focus on the distinct status of the future. It is modally conceptualised, not simply in terms of possibility as is usual, but rather in terms of its modality as a necessary formal generic cultural model that makes the future in the first place conceivable and enables an orientation towards it to be established and maintained. The resulting cognitive sociological account offers a novel theoretical understanding of the future which could facilitate thorough sociological and critical theoretical analyses in the societal space-time field.","PeriodicalId":47808,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Social Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-02-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139810205","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-02-02DOI: 10.1177/13684310241226615
P. Strydom
The aim of this article is a sociology of the future. Since the standard sociological practice of extrapolating from everyday semantics of the future and the time-consciousness of modernity is inadequate, an integrated cognitive sociological perspective allied to critical theory is introduced. It makes visible an essential dimension of social life that is either largely taken for granted, misunderstood or ignored by identifying different levels of cognitive structures organising minds, institutions and culture and following their role in societal dynamics. This perspective mediates the sociocultural and naturalistic approaches and introduces the concept of space-time. Centrally, a modal analysis of the key present-past-future sequence is presented, with the focus on the distinct status of the future. It is modally conceptualised, not simply in terms of possibility as is usual, but rather in terms of its modality as a necessary formal generic cultural model that makes the future in the first place conceivable and enables an orientation towards it to be established and maintained. The resulting cognitive sociological account offers a novel theoretical understanding of the future which could facilitate thorough sociological and critical theoretical analyses in the societal space-time field.
{"title":"Towards a sociology of the future: An exploration in cognitive social theory","authors":"P. Strydom","doi":"10.1177/13684310241226615","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13684310241226615","url":null,"abstract":"The aim of this article is a sociology of the future. Since the standard sociological practice of extrapolating from everyday semantics of the future and the time-consciousness of modernity is inadequate, an integrated cognitive sociological perspective allied to critical theory is introduced. It makes visible an essential dimension of social life that is either largely taken for granted, misunderstood or ignored by identifying different levels of cognitive structures organising minds, institutions and culture and following their role in societal dynamics. This perspective mediates the sociocultural and naturalistic approaches and introduces the concept of space-time. Centrally, a modal analysis of the key present-past-future sequence is presented, with the focus on the distinct status of the future. It is modally conceptualised, not simply in terms of possibility as is usual, but rather in terms of its modality as a necessary formal generic cultural model that makes the future in the first place conceivable and enables an orientation towards it to be established and maintained. The resulting cognitive sociological account offers a novel theoretical understanding of the future which could facilitate thorough sociological and critical theoretical analyses in the societal space-time field.","PeriodicalId":47808,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Social Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-02-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139869996","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-02-01Epub Date: 2023-03-02DOI: 10.1177/13684310231158726
Dean Curran
Polanyi's (1957 [1944]) The Great Transformation stands as a towering analysis of the industrial revolution and a powerful social warning against social and natural damage driven by the pursuit of maximal economic value. Polanyi envisioned that the 'discovery of society', due to its radical neglect during the industrial revolution, led to this new social knowledge resulting in the end of laissez-faire and the self-regulating market. Yet, the most recent phase of the industrial revolution, the digital phase, suggests that many of the same failures to manage industrial revolutions are occurring again. In particular, looking at the emerging digital economy through the prism of Polanyi's social theory, this article argues that the changes driven by the digital economy, specifically in terms of the reshaping of attention and sociality and the increasing potential for 'normal catastrophes', suggests that Polanyi's lesson of the destructive power of the self-regulating market is again being neglected.
{"title":"Polanyi's discovery of society and the digital phase of the industrial revolution.","authors":"Dean Curran","doi":"10.1177/13684310231158726","DOIUrl":"10.1177/13684310231158726","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Polanyi's (1957 [1944]) <i>The Great Transformation</i> stands as a towering analysis of the industrial revolution and a powerful social warning against social and natural damage driven by the pursuit of maximal economic value. Polanyi envisioned that the 'discovery of society', due to its radical neglect during the industrial revolution, led to this new social knowledge resulting in the end of <i>laissez-faire</i> and the self-regulating market. Yet, the most recent phase of the industrial revolution, the digital phase, suggests that many of the same failures to manage industrial revolutions are occurring again. In particular, looking at the emerging digital economy through the prism of Polanyi's social theory, this article argues that the changes driven by the digital economy, specifically in terms of the reshaping of attention and sociality and the increasing potential for 'normal catastrophes', suggests that Polanyi's lesson of the destructive power of the self-regulating market is again being neglected.</p>","PeriodicalId":47808,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Social Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10849890/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44400889","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-01-31DOI: 10.1177/13684310241226613
Jonathan White
That democratic authorities are systematically focused on short-term considerations is a charge often made. This ‘democratic myopia’ thesis typically becomes the basis for advocating the empowerment of technocratic institutions, for example in economic policy. Much less examined is what one may call the technocratic myopia thesis – the possibility that technocratic institutions have their own distinctive drivers of short-termism. This article presents the case, with reference to the legitimacy forms, epistemologies and organisational structures in which technocratic authority is grounded. The suggestion is that not only may technocrats fall short of the claims to long-sightedness made of them, but that this is directly bound up in some of the core features of the technocratic method. The article goes on to discuss the implications for how contemporary societies govern the future in key domains of public policy.
{"title":"Technocratic myopia: On the pitfalls of depoliticising the future","authors":"Jonathan White","doi":"10.1177/13684310241226613","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13684310241226613","url":null,"abstract":"That democratic authorities are systematically focused on short-term considerations is a charge often made. This ‘democratic myopia’ thesis typically becomes the basis for advocating the empowerment of technocratic institutions, for example in economic policy. Much less examined is what one may call the technocratic myopia thesis – the possibility that technocratic institutions have their own distinctive drivers of short-termism. This article presents the case, with reference to the legitimacy forms, epistemologies and organisational structures in which technocratic authority is grounded. The suggestion is that not only may technocrats fall short of the claims to long-sightedness made of them, but that this is directly bound up in some of the core features of the technocratic method. The article goes on to discuss the implications for how contemporary societies govern the future in key domains of public policy.","PeriodicalId":47808,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Social Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140472055","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-01-18DOI: 10.1177/13684310231224546
Elena Esposito
Is the future simply open or can it be made more or less open? The awareness of the uncontrollable impact of present action on the future has recently raised a debate about the risks of innovation and rational planning. Relying on Luhmann’s concept of defuturization, the article confronts the two approaches of future-making and preparedness and proposes to combine them with reference to the management of innovation. This adds a purposeful dimension to the discourse about preparedness, aimed so far only at confronting damaging events: one can also be prepared to seize and exploit novel opportunities.
{"title":"Can we use the open future? Preparedness and innovation in times of self-generated uncertainty","authors":"Elena Esposito","doi":"10.1177/13684310231224546","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13684310231224546","url":null,"abstract":"Is the future simply open or can it be made more or less open? The awareness of the uncontrollable impact of present action on the future has recently raised a debate about the risks of innovation and rational planning. Relying on Luhmann’s concept of defuturization, the article confronts the two approaches of future-making and preparedness and proposes to combine them with reference to the management of innovation. This adds a purposeful dimension to the discourse about preparedness, aimed so far only at confronting damaging events: one can also be prepared to seize and exploit novel opportunities.","PeriodicalId":47808,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Social Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-01-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139615829","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2024-01-12DOI: 10.1177/13684310231225104
A. Meghji
{"title":"Book review: The Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought: French Sociology and the Overseas Empire","authors":"A. Meghji","doi":"10.1177/13684310231225104","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/13684310231225104","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":47808,"journal":{"name":"European Journal of Social Theory","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-01-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139623986","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}