An Age of Limits [electronic resource] : Social Theory for the 21st Century /
Schroeder, R.author.
An Age of Limits outlines a new social theory for understanding contemporary society. Providing an analysis of why political, economic and cultural powers face constraints across the global North and beyond, this bold book argues that forces which address current challenges must confront the limits of the interplay between dominant institutions.
Description based upon print version of record.
""Cover""; ""Contents""; ""Tables and Figures""; ""Acknowledgments""; ""1 From the Birth of the Modern World to the Age of Limits""; ""Ages and labels""; ""Disciplinary approaches to politics, economics and culture""; ""The emergence of free markets, rapid-discovery science, and democratic states""; ""Free markets""; ""Three cultures, one structural""; ""Politics: democratic states and citizens""; ""Differentiation and macro-social orders""; ""Stratification: elites and people""; ""Global powers?""; ""From the Age of Extremes to the Age of Limits""; ""2 Convergence and Divergence""
""Sweden versus America""""Americanization or Globalization?""; ""Individualism in Sweden and America""; ""3 Paths towards Pluralist Democracy: Liberal versus Radical Interpretations""; ""Liberal and radical endpoints""; ""The state and economic development""; ""The state's fiscal growth and economic transfers""; ""A radical account of the varieties of capitalism""; ""Three types""; ""Liberalism and the varieties of capitalism""; ""Comparing the radical and liberal accounts""; ""4 Free and Unfree Markets""; ""The emergence of disembedding""; ""Markets and their mechanism""
""Financial markets""""The economic order: embeddedness versus disembeddedness""; ""Beyond disciplinary turf wars""; ""5 The Paradoxes of Science, Technology and Social Change""; ""The production of scientific knowledge and technological innovation""; ""Technology in everyday life: the example of information and communication technologies""; ""Globalization, science and technology, and social theory""; ""6 The Limits to Transforming the Environment""; ""Disciplinary fragmentation and lack of realism""; ""Accelerated transformations and an uncontrolled experiment""
""Technology, social change, and the environment""""Energy infrastructures and developmental paths""; ""Counteracting limits""; ""7 Three Cultures""; ""Religion""; ""Consumption""; ""Science and technology""; ""Patterns of culture""; ""The limits of culture in everyday life""; ""8 Modernization and the Politics of Development""; ""The puzzle of China""; ""Openness to external influence""; ""The pattern of the Chinese economy""; ""Take-off and leap ahead""; ""How capitalist?""; ""Political domination and legitimacy""; ""Nascent democracy?""; ""Spectacle and predicament""
""India's fragmented populist democracy""""Colonialism to independence""; ""From successful to populist democracy""; ""Economic development and social divides""; ""Cultural conflict and diversity""; ""A fragmented state?""; ""India, China, and modernization""; ""9 Social Theory in the Face of the Future""; ""The limits of markets""; ""The limits of culture, and of science and technology""; ""The limits of the state and politics""; ""From comparative-historical sociology to political philosophy""; ""Notes""; ""References""; ""Index""
Includes bibliographical references and index.
An Age of Limits outlines a new social theory for understanding contemporary society. Providing an analysis of why political, economic and cultural powers face constraints across the global North and beyond, this bold book argues that forces which address current challenges must confront the limits of the interplay between dominant institutions.
Political sociology.
Social sciences-Philosophy.
Political science
Political theory.
Sociology, general.
Political Sociology.
Social Theory.
Political Philosophy.
Social Philosophy.
Political Theory.