Routledge Modern Society as Artifice: Critical theory and the logic of capital (Classical and Contemporary Social Theory)

Reading the classical works of Marx, Durkheim and Weber together, as highlighting different yet complementary dimensions of the dynamic ‘story’ of the modern age, rather than as mutually exclusive interpretations of modern society, this book opens up opportunities to make explicit the ways in which multidimensional, critical, and dynamic theorizing is necessary to take on analytical and practical tasks at the core of sociology in the 21st century. With attention to the fragmentation of theoretical and methodological debates and approaches – itself a manifestation of the specific condition of modernity today – along with the progressive destruction of nature and the concurrent transformation of ‘the social’, and their replacement by artificial patterns and processes modeled on economic and technological imperatives, the author offers a reconceptualization of the classics as anticipating artifice as the vanishing point of modern society. Examining the dynamics of the logic of capital, as it has been shaping – and manifesting itself in – concrete forms of social, political, cultural, and economic life, including critical theory itself, Modern Society as Artifice calls for a renewed understanding of critical theory as a radical approach to ‘basic social research’. As such, it will appeal to sociologists and social theorists with interests in classical sociology and critical theory.