New publication: "Spätmoderne in der Krise – Was leistet die Gesellschaftstheorie?"

In times of profound social upheavals and manifest crises, the time has come for fundamental analyses that take a look at contemporary society as a whole, examine its structural features and dynamics and perhaps even point out ways out of the crisis-like development. Recently, Andreas Reckwitz and Hartmut Rosa have presented large-scale but very differently accentuated theories of society, which decisively determine the current debates on late modernity. In this joint book, they now enter into a critical dialogue.

Based on the shared concern that the analysis of modernity as a social formation belongs at the centre of a sociology that takes seriously its task of enlightening society about itself, they first unfold their own socio-theoretical perspectives in extensive essays: while Reckwitz chooses "social practices", "contingency" and "singularisation" as guiding concepts, Rosa opts for "acceleration", "increase" and "resonance". In the second part of the book, they again sharpen their positions, work out commonalities, but also mark fundamental differences - in a direct conversation moderated by Martin Bauer.

The authors
Hartmut Rosa is Professor of General and Theoretical Sociology at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena and Director of the Max-Weber-Kolleg at the University of Erfurt.

Andreas Reckwitz is Professor of General Sociology and Sociology of Culture at Humboldt University Berlin and currently a Fellow at the Thomas Mann House in Los Angeles. In 2019, he received the Leibniz Prize of the German Research Foundation. The Society of Singularities was awarded the Bavarian Book Prize 2017 and was shortlisted for the Leipzig Book Fair Prize in the non-fiction/essay category in 2018.