Sociology, Capitalism, Critique

The first step towards changing the system is to analyze and understand it. Intellectuals play a key role in this process - and social scientists in particular. In Sociology, Capitalism, Critique, Klaus Dorre, Stephan Lessenich, and Hartmut Rosa bring the critique of capitalism back to the top of the agenda, placing it at the heart of sociology. By discussing key critical issues such as the questions of accumulation and expropriation, discipline and freedom, and the powerful new sociological concepts of activation and acceleration, they reclaim a socially committed sociology, taking the side of the potential losers of the current crisis and in more general terms placing the future well-being of society at the center of their research.

Hartmut Rosa has been a Full Professor for Sociology and Sociological Theory at the Institute of Sociology at the Friedrich Schiller University, Jena, Germany, since October 2005. His areas of study include theories of modernity, sociology of time, communitarianism, and social theory. He is the author of Social Acceleration: A New Theory of Modernity.