Habermas and Giddens on Praxis and Modernity: A Constructive Comparison

by Craig Browne

Overview

In Habermas and Giddens on Praxis and Modernity Craig Browne investigates how two of the most important and influential contemporary social theorists have sought to develop the modernist visions of the constitution of society through the autonomous actions of subjects. Comparing Habermas’s and Giddens’s conceptions of the constitution of society, interpretations of the social-structural impediments to subjects’ autonomy and attempts to delineate potentials for progressive social change within contemporary society, Browne draws on his own work, which has extended aspects of the social theorists’ approach to modernity. Despite the criticisms developed over the course of the book, Habermas and Giddens are found to be two of the most important theorists of democratization and social democracy, the dynamics of capitalist modernity and their paradoxes, social practices and reflexivity, and the foundations of social theory in the problem of the relationship of social action and social structure.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781783085002
Publisher:	Anthem Press
Publication date:	01/02/2017
Series:	Key Issues in Modern Sociology
Pages:	314
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Craig Browne is a senior lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Sydney. Working in the area of critical social theory, he is co-editor of Violence in France and Australia: Disorder in the Postcolonial Welfare State (2010).

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements; Introduction; Part I. New Paradigms and social theory Perspectives; Chapter One Habermas’s New Paradigm of Critical Theory; Chapter Two Giddens’s Theory of Structuration – an Ontology of the Social; Part II. Institutionalizing Modernity: Development and Discontinuity; Chapter Three Habermas on the Institutionalizing of Modernity: Communicative Rationality, Lifeworld and System; Chapter Four Giddens on Institutionalizing Modernity: Power and Discontinuity; Chapter Five Intermediate Reflections on Social Theory Alternatives: Contrasts and Divisions; Part III. The Political and Social Constellation of Contemporary Modernity; Chapter Six Globalization, the Welfare State and Social Democracy; Chapter Seven Deliberative Politics, the Democratizing of Democracy and European Cosmopolitanism; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

‘This is a careful and considered engagement with the work of Habermas and Giddens. It identifies their positive contributions to a theory of modernity while developing a critique of lacunae in their thought arising from social developments subsequent to their main body of writing. It is an important work of recuperation and reflection.’
—John Holmwood, Professor of Sociology, University of Nottingham, UK 

‘This is a book that lives up to its main promise, but goes well beyond it. It presents Habermas’s and Giddens’s works innovatively as well as sketches a renewal of critical theory with a timely emphasis on creativity and the development of the global modern civilizational constellation.’
—José Maurício Domingues, Professor, Institute for Social and Political Studies, Rio de Janeiro State University, Brazil 

‘Craig Browne’s new book is an original and thought-provoking exploration of social theory. Clarity always marks his work, a methodology based on the Budapest School’s approach, notably Maria Markus, from which Browne considers praxis and theory for a divided world society. Habermas and Giddens gave very influential directions to analysis in the 1980s that Browne assesses anew to show what social theory can achieve for our times. His book is an extremely welcome and imaginative intervention.’
—Jocelyn Pixley, Honorary Professor in Sociology, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia 

‘Against a rapidly changing backdrop, Habermas and Giddens have towered over the last half-century of social thought. The range and complexity of their writings have been breathtaking, making any attempt at comparison a forbidding one. The significance of Craig Browne’s lucid, philosophically sophisticated and endlessly insightful achievement can only be fully appreciated against the magnitude of this challenge.’
—Rob Stones, Professor of Sociology, Western Sydney University, Australia 

Editorial Reviews

Journal of Global Intellectual History

From the Publisher