The pace of modern life is undoubtedly speeding up, yet this acceleration does not seem to have made us any happier or more content. If acceleration is the problem, then the solution, argues Hartmut Rosa in this major new work, lies in “resonance.” The quality of a human life cannot be measured simply in terms of resources, options, and moments of happiness; instead, we must consider our relationship to, or resonance with, the world. Applying his theory of resonance to many domains of human activity, Rosa describes the full spectrum of ways in which we establish our relationship to the world, from the act of breathing to the adoption of culturally distinct worldviews. He then turns to the realms of concrete experience and action – family and politics, work and sports, religion and art – in which we as late modern subjects seek out resonance. This task is proving ever more difficult as modernity’s logic of escalation is both cause and consequence of a distorted relationship to the world, at individual and collective levels. As Rosa shows, all the great crises of modern society – the environmental crisis, the crisis of democracy, the psychological crisis – can also be understood and analyzed in terms of resonance and our broken relationship to the world around us. Building on his now classic work on acceleration, Rosa’s new book is a major new contribution to the theory of modernity, showing how our problematic relation to the world is at the crux of some of the most pressing issues we face today. This bold renewal of critical theory for our times will be of great interest to students and scholars across the social sciences and humanities.
Hartmut Rosa advances an account of the temporal structure of society from the perspective of critical theory. He identifies three categories of change in the tempo of modern social life: technological acceleration, evident in transportation, communication, and production; the acceleration of social change, reflected in cultural knowledge, social institutions, and personal relationships; and acceleration in the pace of life, which happens despite the expectation that technological change should increase an individual's free time. According to Rosa, both the structural and cultural aspects of our institutions and practices are marked by the "shrinking of the present," a decreasing time period during which expectations based on past experience reliably match the future. When this phenomenon combines with technological acceleration and the increasing pace of life, time seems to flow ever faster, making our relationships to each other and the world fluid and problematic. It is as if we are standing on "slipping slopes," a steep social terrain that is itself in motion and in turn demands faster lives and technology. As Rosa deftly shows, this self-reinforcing feedback loop fundamentally determines the character of modern life.
What role does religion play in modern societies? Is it merely an anachronism that hinders our economic growth? Is it a kind of superstition that people should be left to enjoy in private but should refrain from discussing in public? It is no secret that the Christian churches in Western societies have massive problems – quite apart from the recent scandals. Shrinking congregations are just one sign of their diminishing relevance. But what would happen to democracy if the resonance of religion were to fade entirely? Leading sociologist Hartmut Rosa addresses this fundamental question in a way that makes us think afresh about religion and the role it plays in our contemporary democratic societies. He argues that religion fosters a culture of dialogue, listening and reflection that allows us to form connections with others and experience the world as meaningful. This, in turn, helps citizens cultivate a democratic sensibility that can serve as an anchor in unstable times. With his characteristic clarity and insight, Rosa analyses our contemporary societies and dares to ponder what would happen if the centuries-old reservoir of wisdom embedded in religion were to be lost in an ultra-modern age.
For years, the critique of capitalism was lost from public discourse; the very word "capitalism" sounded like a throwback to another era. Nothing could be further from the truth today. In this new intellectual atmosphere, Sociology, Capitalism, Critique is a contribution to the renewal of critical sociology, founded on an empirically grounded diagnosis of society's ills. The authors, Germany's leading critical sociologists-Klaus Drre, Stephan Lessenich, and Hartmut Rosa-share a conviction that ours is a pivotal period of renewal, in which the collective endeavour of academics can amount to an act of intellectual resistance, working to prevent any regressive development that might return us to neoliberal domination. The authors discuss key issues, such as questions of accumulation and expropriation; discipline and freedom; and the powerful new concepts of activation and acceleration. Their politically committed sociology, which takes the side of the losers in the current crisis, places society's future well-being at the centre of their research. Their collective approach to this project is a conscious effort to avoid co-optation in the institutional practices of the academy. These three differing but complementary perspectives serve as an insightful introduction to the contemporary themes of radical sociology in capitalism's post-crisis phase.
The driving cultural force of that form of life we call ‘modern’ is the desire to make the world controllable. Yet it is only in encountering the uncontrollable that we really experience the world – only then do we feel touched, moved and alive. A world that is fully known, in which everything has been planned and mastered, would be a dead world. Our lives are played out on the border between what we can control and that which lies outside our control. But because we late-modern human beings seek to make the world controllable, we tend to encounter the world as a series of objects that we have to conquer, master or exploit. And precisely because of this, ‘life,’ the experience of feeling alive and truly encountering the world, always seems to elude us. This in turn leads to frustration, anger and even despair, which then manifest themselves in, among other things, acts of impotent political aggression. For Rosa, to encounter the world and achieve resonance with it requires us to be open to that which extends beyond our control. The outcome of this process cannot be predicted, and this is why moments of resonance are always concomitant with moments of uncontrollability. This short book – the sequel to Rosa’s path-breaking work on social acceleration and resonance – will be of great interest students and scholars in sociology and the social sciences and to anyone concerned with the nature of modern social life.
The driving cultural force of that form of life we call ‘modern’ is the desire to make the world controllable. Yet it is only in encountering the uncontrollable that we really experience the world – only then do we feel touched, moved and alive. A world that is fully known, in which everything has been planned and mastered, would be a dead world. Our lives are played out on the border between what we can control and that which lies outside our control. But because we late-modern human beings seek to make the world controllable, we tend to encounter the world as a series of objects that we have to conquer, master or exploit. And precisely because of this, ‘life,’ the experience of feeling alive and truly encountering the world, always seems to elude us. This in turn leads to frustration, anger and even despair, which then manifest themselves in, among other things, acts of impotent political aggression. For Rosa, to encounter the world and achieve resonance with it requires us to be open to that which extends beyond our control. The outcome of this process cannot be predicted, and this is why moments of resonance are always concomitant with moments of uncontrollability. This short book – the sequel to Rosa’s path-breaking work on social acceleration and resonance – will be of great interest students and scholars in sociology and the social sciences and to anyone concerned with the nature of modern social life.
Three radical perspectives on the critique of capitalism For years, the critique of capitalism was lost from public discourse; the very word “capitalism” sounded like a throwback to another era. Nothing could be further from the truth today. In this new intellectual atmosphere, Sociology, Capitalism, Critique is a contribution to the renewal of critical sociology, founded on an empirically grounded diagnosis of society’s ills. The authors, Germany’s leading critical sociologists—Klaus Dörre, Stephan Lessenich, and Hartmut Rosa—share a conviction that ours is a pivotal period of renewal, in which the collective endeavour of academics can amount to an act of intellectual resistance, working to prevent any regressive development that might return us to neoliberal domination. The authors discuss key issues, such as questions of accumulation and expropriation; discipline and freedom; and the powerful new concepts of activation and acceleration. Their politically committed sociology, which takes the side of the losers in the current crisis, places society’s future well-being at the centre of their research. Their collective approach to this project is a conscious effort to avoid co-optation in the institutional practices of the academy. These three differing but complementary perspectives serve as an insightful introduction to the contemporary themes of radical sociology in capitalism’s post-crisis phase.
Hartmut Rosa advances an account of the temporal structure of society from the perspective of critical theory. He identifies three categories of change in the tempo of modern social life: technological acceleration, evident in transportation, communication, and production; the acceleration of social change, reflected in cultural knowledge, social institutions, and personal relationships; and acceleration in the pace of life, which happens despite the expectation that technological change should increase an individual's free time. According to Rosa, both the structural and cultural aspects of our institutions and practices are marked by the "shrinking of the present," a decreasing time period during which expectations based on past experience reliably match the future. When this phenomenon combines with technological acceleration and the increasing pace of life, time seems to flow ever faster, making our relationships to each other and the world fluid and problematic. It is as if we are standing on "slipping slopes," a steep social terrain that is itself in motion and in turn demands faster lives and technology. As Rosa deftly shows, this self-reinforcing feedback loop fundamentally determines the character of modern life.
This book assembles main contributions to an alternative explanation of globalisation and the political economic structures of the international system. As the result of capitalism, globalisation does not transfer basic capitalist structures from the Centre to the Periphery. Capitalism is based on rising mass incomes that create investment opportunities and, thus, the possibility of profit. A structurally homogeneous and ultraimperialist Centre dominates a deeply fissured Periphery of structurally heterogeneous societies and economies. Capitalism penetrates underdeveloped regions and deforms them through rent, which obstructs expanding internal mass markets while labour goes unempowered. Rent constitutes the basis for state operations and the role of emerging state classes. While globalisation disempowers labour in both the West and in the South, it has given new comparative advantage to the South. The shift from rent appropriation in the South via raw material exports to export-led manufacturing is based on devaluation below purchasing power parity and, hence, on a rent from agriculture that is based on the Green Revolution. Its impact is, however, not always sufficient to compensate for the loss of influence experienced by social reformist forces. A novel multipolar system based on the balance power has emerged. Mutliethnic empires are held together with large varieties of however always identitarian ideologies. This global system is composed of powers that are internally and externally opposed to peaceful change. Across the globe, there is an impending danger of globalisation of rent. Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bhutan)
The dominant neoliberal approach presents politics and political economy as nuisances which disturb the smooth operation of self-regulating markets. But political economy is not merely an academic issue – it is a class issue, and this book forcefully argues that political economy should return to a central position in the study of the social sciences. Offering nothing less than a reconciliation of Marxian, Keynesian and neoclassical economics, the work opens with a discussion of the key, interconnected economic concepts which help us to understand capitalism: price, income, profit, value, growth and crisis. Prices reflect income distribution and therefore class relations, and the chapters show that the very emergence of capitalism resulted from mass empowerment of the so-called "lower orders". Profit is always available if entrepreneurs spend on net investment and create incomes for additional labour; this, in turn, requires expanding demand, and so therefore profit depends on rising mass incomes. Conversely, underdevelopment is the result of the destitution and disempowerment of the masses. In the Global South today, it is clear that enormous riches go hand in hand with widespread misery and poverty because the market does not transform wealth into the kind of investment that might benefit all. This book argues that the new wealth triggered by productivity increases has enabled the rich to liberate themselves from the capitalist constraints of competition and waste their new wealth in the form of rents. The main threat today is, in fact, the globalisation of rent. The text makes a point for a progressive counter strategy: capitalist structures that empower labour need to be transferred to the Global South. This requires political and economic efforts towards empowering labour in the Global South. This book demonstrates the analytical power of political economy for all social scientists and will be invaluable reading for economists, political scientists and sociologists in particular.
This very valuable book collects together excellent empirical essays on what amounts to a silent majority in advanced industrial societies: low and medium tech manufacturing industries. Such industries employ more people and make a larger contribution to aggregate value creation than their more lauded high-tech counterparts and moreover, they constitute extremely important customer industries for such higher tech producers. They may be neglected, but they are not going away indeed, this volume shows that they are growing and adapting to the new competitive challenges of globalization. Attending to the dynamics of innovation and change in this large sector is crucial for understanding processes of social and economic restructuring in Europe today. The essays in this volume are the first place to look for insight into this extremely important area of political economic life in Europe. Gary Herrigel, University of Chicago, US Innovation in Low-Tech Firms and Industries challenges the currently fashionable notion that the advent of a knowledge-based economy demands that all social resources should be diverted to high-technology industries. Hirsch-Kreinsen and Jacobson point out these constitute a small part of even the most advanced economies. Attention has been diverted from the important innovation processes which occur in low and medium technology (LMT) sectors. This volume calls on us to achieve a much better and wiser balance in our industrial policy. Terrence McDonough, National University of Ireland, Galway The authors of this book make an urgently needed provocative point: ordinary engineering and technology ( low-tech ) continue to be of greater importance, in our knowledge society , than high-tech activities, and they may be similarly demanding by the competence they require and produce. This counteracts the exaggerated hype about high-tech firms or activities. The high-tech classification itself is highly arbitrary and often superficial. The authors show in what way low-tech activities and firms are important, and how they can be cultivated to buttress the economic strength of industrial and post-industrial nations. Researchers and policymakers, please take note! Arndt Sorge, Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin, Germany and University of Groningen, The Netherlands It is a general understanding that the advanced economies are currently undergoing a fundamental transformation into knowledge-based societies. There is a firm belief that this is based on the development of high-tech industries. Correspondingly, in this scenario low-tech sectors appear to be less important. A critique of this widely held belief is the starting point of this book. It is often overlooked that many of the current innovation activities are linked to developments inside the realm of low-tech. Thus the general objective of the book is to contribute to a discussion concerning the relevance of low-tech industries for industrial innovativeness in the emerging knowledge economy. Providing examples of both theoretical and empirical research in this area, Innovation in Low-tech Firms and Industries will be of great interest to postgraduate students and academic researchers in innovation studies. It will also appeal to policy makers in the field of innovation policy as well as industrial economists and sociologists interested in traditional industries in advanced economies.
The pace of modern life is undoubtedly speeding up, yet this acceleration does not seem to have made us any happier or more content. If acceleration is the problem, then the solution, argues Hartmut Rosa in this major new work, lies in “resonance.” The quality of a human life cannot be measured simply in terms of resources, options, and moments of happiness; instead, we must consider our relationship to, or resonance with, the world. Applying his theory of resonance to many domains of human activity, Rosa describes the full spectrum of ways in which we establish our relationship to the world, from the act of breathing to the adoption of culturally distinct worldviews. He then turns to the realms of concrete experience and action – family and politics, work and sports, religion and art – in which we as late modern subjects seek out resonance. This task is proving ever more difficult as modernity’s logic of escalation is both cause and consequence of a distorted relationship to the world, at individual and collective levels. As Rosa shows, all the great crises of modern society – the environmental crisis, the crisis of democracy, the psychological crisis – can also be understood and analyzed in terms of resonance and our broken relationship to the world around us. Building on his now classic work on acceleration, Rosa’s new book is a major new contribution to the theory of modernity, showing how our problematic relation to the world is at the crux of some of the most pressing issues we face today. This bold renewal of critical theory for our times will be of great interest to students and scholars across the social sciences and humanities.
Arteriovenous malformations (AVM) and arteriovenous fistulas (AVF) differ from all other pathology affecting the central nervous system by their high-flow arteriovenous shunts. Permanent occlusion of these shunts is the essence and the challenge of therapy. Endovascular therapy and radiosurgery became accepted alternatives or adjuncts to surgery. In many instances the choice of the primary therapeutic modality is not clear and arguments can be found for several options. However, microsurgery, endovascular therapy and radiosurgery differ very much with regard to invasiveness, length of stay at the hospital but also residual risk after therapy. The emerging treatment concepts are the object of this book. The result is a unique structured presentation of AVM and AVF therapy.
Author Hartmut Wegner was born in 1933 near Berlin, Germany, the same year Adolf Hitler took control and built the country into a strong economic and military stronghold. In Growing Up German, Wegner shares his story from the viewpoint of a young boy growing up under the Nazi regime. This memoir follows the boy from the beginning of World War II in 1939, when the Nazis and Adolf Hitler started their march to conquer the world; through to the wars end in 1945 and the recovery afterward; to the development in his teens in Berlin; and then to his immigration with his family to United States in 1954 at age twenty. He narrates the numerous shocking experiences that had an emotional impact on his young life. In addition to sharing his recollections, Wegner offers his opinions on World War II from his perspective later in life. Offering a straightforward firsthand account of the events in Germany during World War II, Growing Up German gives keen insight into what life was like for one boy and his family during a tumultuous and tragic time in world history.
The fourteenth, seventeenth and twentieth centuries in European history were marked by exceptionally intense experiences of power, violence and mass death. Power, Violence and Mass Death in Pre-Modern and Modern Times undertakes the ambitious and entirely new task of analyzing, through comparison, the importance of power, violence and mass death in these centuries. Death and the excesses of power were characteristics of the twentieth century, but this volume teaches about the causes and possible consequences of this oppressive individual and collective experience. We now have a more established historical perspective for understanding the importance of power and the causes and results of the rapid increase in mortality in the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries. In this way, this volume makes progress towards reaching new perceptions of all three 'crisis' epochs. Appealing to a wide readership, Power, Violence and Mass Death in Pre-Modern and Modern Times will be of interest to scholars not only of the three centuries highlighted, but also to anyone with an historical and sociological interest in the larger questions raised about the nature of power, violence and mass death on European society.
What was distinctive--and distinctively "modern"--about German society and politics in the age of Kaiser Wilhelm II? In addressing this question, these essays assemble cutting-edge research by fourteen international scholars. Based on evidence of an explicit and self-confidently "bourgeois" formation in German public culture, the contributors suggest new ways of interpreting its reformist potential and advance alternative readings of German political history before 1914. While proposing a more measured understanding of Wilhelmine Germany's extraordinarily dynamic society, they also grapple with the ambivalent, cross-cutting nature of German "modernities" and reassess their impact on long-term developments running through the Wilhelmine age.
Anthony de Jasay's work has been enormously influential, describing both a theoretical philosophical model for a stateless, liberal, free market order and offering analysis of and solutions to many of the technical economic problems associated with such a vision of society - most notably his work on the free rider and his return. In this book ten significant scholars in philosophy and political economy, including Nobel laureate in economics James Buchanan, pay tribute to the man and his work in a series of essays at once both respectful and critical. Ordered Anarchy focuses on three fundamental questions of libertarian thinking. Which are the basic libertarian principles and how do rights and liberties relate to each other? Is order possible and durable in an anarchic or quasi-anarchic society, and if so, under which preconditions? How and to what extent are the pillars of politics, such as the constitution, institutions and government, detrimental or beneficial to an enduring free society? While Narveson, Palmer and Bouillon focus on the first of these questions, the late Radnitzky and van Dun address the second. Benson, Holcombe and Kliemt provide answers to question number three, while Buchanan and Little highlight the role of Anthony de Jasay in this debate and the inspiration that his thinking has given to the authors of this volume.
In times of entrenched social upheaval and multiple crises, we need the kind of social theory that is prepared to look at the big picture, analyze the broad developmental features of modern societies, their structural conditions and dynamics, and point to possible ways out of the crises we face. Over the last couple of decades, two German sociologists, Andreas Reckwitz and Hartmut Rosa, have sought to provide wide-ranging social theories of this kind. While their theories are very different, they share in common the view that the analysis of modernity as a social formation must be kept at the heart of sociology, and that the theory of society should ultimately serve to diagnose the crises of the present. In this book, Andreas Reckwitz and Hartmut Rosa join forces to examine the value and the limits of a theory of society today. They provide clear and concise accounts of their own theories of society, explicate their key concepts – including “singularization” in the case of Reckwitz, “acceleration” and “resonance” in the case of Rosa – and draw out the implications of their theories for understanding the multiple crises we face today. The result is a book that provides both an excellent introduction to the work of two of the most important sociologists writing today and a vivid demonstration of the value of the kind of bold social theory of modern societies that they espouse.
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