Abstract
This chapter highlights how considering the contributions of critical theory would enhance the work of comparative–historical social scientists, by drawing attention to two dimensions that traditionally have been ignored in comparative–historical analysis. First, comparative–historical analysis tends to sideline the question of whether different social, political, cultural, and economic forms may in fact be expressive of an underlying, historical logic that must not be ignored. Second, comparative–historical analysts do not appear to consider that and how their research agenda may be an expression of the specificity of social–historical circumstances they endeavor to illuminate, but which, in a sense, is being objectified via comparative–historical social scientists’ preferred mode of analysis. For the most part, comparative–historical researchers seems to work from the assumption that there is no need for the examination of how their research agendas, questions, and tools are situated in and reflect the societal universe, beyond the scope of particular cases, similarities, and differences.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Regarding Marx and Weber as comparative–historical analysts, see Mahoney and Rueschemeyer (2003: 3); and as “necessary” theorists regarding analyses of capitalism, see Sayer (1991); regarding Marx as a comparative–historical researcher, see Anderson (2010); regarding Weber, see Kalberg (2012); regarding Marx and Weber (as well as Durkheim, who played less of a role in critical theory), see Crow (1997); regarding Durkheim and Weber, see Ragin and Zaret (1983).
- 3.
- 4.
Although I will not be able to develop my understanding of the constitutional logic of modern society and explicate its significance to critical theory as well as the social sciences and humanities here (see Dahms in preparation), I should provide two pointers. First, the purpose of the notion is neither consistent with Shils (1972), nor Giddens (1984). Rather, what I have in mind is the actual constitutional logic, as opposed to its idea as it is consistent with prevailing views in and of modern societies. Shils’s and Giddens’s works on the constitution of (modern) society is limited by the desire to delineate modern society’s constitution as we would prefer to conceive of it, in the process by-passing their “dark side.” The purpose of my use is precisely to face this dark side of modern society, as Jeffrey Alexander recently put it, though not in his terms. Second, the concept of the logic of capital as confronted by Marx (see Dahms, 2015) provides a much better indication of what “constitutional logic” refers to: the fact that modern society runs and maintains itself due to its ability to compel its members on a continuous basis to subscribe to notions that are inversely related to the actuality of modern society. Among prominent established social theorists in Germany who are not explicitly linked to critical theory, the project of Günter Dux ([2005] 2011, 2008) provides a suitable indication of what I have in mind, though in a manner that is intended to be entirely consonant with the first generation of Frankfurt School critical theorists, as opposed to the second and third generation associated with Habermas and Honneth.
- 5.
Benhabib (1986), pp. 149–50. To be sure, Frankfurt School critical theory never was a unified body of thought: there are more or less profound differences between the orientations, interests, and specific contributions of all the members of the Institute of Social Research. However, in their self-understanding, they were engaged in the common project of developing a highly complex theory of advanced capitalism, a theory of the kind that only can be achieved in an explicitly interdisciplinary research environment with continuous exchange and critical debate.
- 6.
Regarding the affinities between traditional theory and mainstream approaches, which both refuse to acknowledge how they are embedded in time and space, that is, in concrete socio-historical contexts, and how the latter imposes on both an agenda that may be inversely related, and even opposed, to the stated research objectives, see Dahms (2008, 2011).
- 7.
There is a profound discrepancy between the way in which the members of the first generation of Frankfurt School critical theory were guided, implicitly, by their determination to contribute to reconciliation “between facts and norms” as a process of radical social transformation, and the conception of the relationship between both that provided the frame for Habermas’s ([1992] 1996) notion of deliberative democracy.
- 8.
In fact, as long as “one’s own” society continuously is being regarded as one’s primary reference frame, there is no need for the kind of “tuning” into another society that is necessary for the requisite level of familiarity to take hold that is conducive to distinguishing between two incarnations of modern society, as a precondition for recognizing the specificity of each incarnation, on its own terms. In Horkheimer’s case, the initial assumption, later replaced by hope, that Hitler and the National Socialists would not stay in power for more than a few months, had given way to the realization that he and his colleagues would stay in the United States for much longer than initially expected or intended. In Adorno’s case, there was a further delay, since he had held out hope even longer, staying in Oxford until 1938, when he joined the Institute in New York.
References
Adorno, Theodor W. [1966] 1973. Negative dialectics. Trans. E. B. Ashton. New York: Continuum.
Allen, Amy. 2016. The end of progress: Decolonizing the normative foundations of critical theory. New York: Columbia University Press.
Anderson, Kevin. 2010. Marx at the margins: On nationalism, ethnicity, and non-western societies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Bailey, Tom (ed). 2013. Deprovincializing Habermas: Global perspectives. London: Routledge.
Benhabib, Seyla. 1986. Critique, norm, utopia: A study of the foundations of critical theory. New York: Columbia University Press.
Borchert, Jens, and Stephan Lessenich (ed). 2012. Der Vergleich in den Sozialwissenschaften: Staat – Kapitalismus – Demokratie. Frankfurt: Campus.
Crow, Graham. 1997. Comparative sociology and social theory: Beyond the three worlds. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Dahms, Harry F. 1997. Theory in Weberian Marxism: Patterns of critical social theory in Lukács and Habermas. Sociological Theory 15(3): 181–214 (see also Chap. 2 in Dahms, 2011).
———. 2007. Confronting the dynamic nature of modern social life. Soundings. An Interdisciplinary Journal 90(3–4) Fall–Winter: 191–205.
———. 2008. How social science is impossible without critical theory: The immersion of mainstream approaches in time and space. In No social science without critical theory, ed. Harry F. Dahms (Current Perspectives in Social Theory 25). Bingley: Emerald (see also Chap. 6 in Dahms, 2011).
———. 2011. The vitality of critical theory. Bingley: Emerald.
———. 2015. Toward a critical theory of capital in the 21st century: Thomas Piketty between Adam Smith and the prospect of apocalypse. Critical Sociology 41(2): 359–374.
———. (In preparation) Modern society as artifice: Critical theory and the logic of capital. London: Routledge.
Dux, Günter. 2011. Historico-genetic theory of culture: On the processual logic of cultural change. Bielefeld: Transcript.
———. 2008. Warum den Gerechtigkeit: Die Logik des Kapitals. Göttingen: Velbrück.
Edkins, Jenny, and Nick Vaughan-Williams (ed). 2009. Critical theorists and international relations. London: Routledge.
El-Ojeili, Chamsy, and Patrick Hayden. 2006. Critical theories of globalization. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Geuss, Raymond. 1981. The idea of a critical theory: Habermas and the Frankfurt School. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
———. 2001. History and illusion in politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Giddens, Anthony. 1984. The constitution of society: Outline of the theory of structuration. Berlkeley: University of California Press.
Gottlieb, Roger S. (ed). 1989. An anthology of Western Marxism: From Lukács and Gramsci to socialist-feminism. New York: Oxford University Press.
Gramsci, Antonio. 1971. Selections from the prison notebooks. New York: International Publishers.
Habermas, Jürgen. [1981] 1984, 1987. The theory of communicative action. Trans. Thomas McCarthy (2 vol.). Boston: Beacon Press.
Habermas, Jürgen. [1992] 1996. Between facts and norms: Contributions to a discourse theory of law and democracy. Trans. William Rehg. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Horkheimer, Max. [1930] 1993. A new concept of ideology? In Between philosophy and social science: Selected early writings. Trans. G. Frederick Hunter, Matthew S. Kramer, and John Torpey. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Horkheimer, Max. [1931] 1993. The present situation of philosophy and the tasks of an Institute of Social Research. In Between philosophy and social science: Selected early writings. Trans. G. Frederick Hunter, Matthew S. Kramer, and John Torpey. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Horkheimer, Max. [1937] 1972. Traditional and critical theory. In Critical theory: Selected writings. New York: The Seabury Press.
Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor W. Adorno. [1944] 2002. Dialectic of enlightenment: Philosophical fragments. Trans. Edmund Jephcott. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Jalata, Asafa, and Harry F. Dahms. 2015. Theorizing modern society as an inverted reality: How critical theory and indigenous critiques of globalization must learn from each other. In Globalization, critique and social theory: Diagnoses and challenges, ed. Harry F. Dahms, Current perspectives in social theory, vol. 33, 75–133. Bingley: Emerald.
Jung, Courtney. 2008. The moral force of indigenous politics: Critical liberalism and the Zapatistas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kalberg, Stephen. 2012. Max Weber’s comparative-historical sociology today: Major themes, mode of causal analysis, and applications. Farnham, UK: Ashgate.
Korsch, Karl. [1923] 1970. Marxism and philosophy. Trans. Fred Halliday. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Luhmann, Niklas. [1998] 2013. Theory of society. Trans. Rhodes Barrett, vol. 2. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Lukács, Georg. [1923] 1971. History and class consciousness: Studies in Marxist dialectics. Trans. Rodney Livingstone. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Mahoney, James, and Dietrich Rueschemeyer (ed). 2003. Comparative historical analysis in the social sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mahoney, James, and Kathleen Thelen (ed). 2015. Advances in comparative-historical analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Marcuse, Herbert. [1937] 2009. Philosophy and critical theory. In Negations: Essays in critical theory. Trans. Jeremy J. Shapiro. London: MayFlyBooks.
Mendieta, Eduardo. 2007. Global fragments: Globalizations, latinamericanisms, and critical theory. Albany: State University New York Press.
Offe, Claus. 1996. Modernity and the state: East, West. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Parrinder, Patrick (ed). 2001. Learning from other worlds: Estrangment, cognition, and the politics of science fiction and utopia. Durham: Duke University Press.
Pensky, Max (ed). 2005. Globalization critical theory. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
Petherbridge, Danielle. 2013. The critical theory of Axel Honneth. Lanham: Lexington Books.
Pickel, Susanne, Gert Pickel, Hans-Joachim Lauth, and Detlef Jahn (ed). 2009. Methoden der vergleichenden Politik- und Sozialwissenschaft: Neue Entwicklungen und Anwendungen. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Soziawissenschaften.
Ragin, Charles, and David Zaret. 1983. Theory and method in comparative research: Two strategies. Social Forces 61: 731–754.
Sayer, Derek. 1991. Capitalism and modernity: An excursus on Marx and Weber. London: Routledge.
Schluchter, Wolfgang. 1996. Paradoxes of modernity: Culture and conduct in the theory of Max Weber. Trans. Neil Solomon. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Shils, Edward. 1972. The constitution of society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Streeck, Wolfgang. [2013] 2014. Buying time: The delayed crisis of democratic capitalism. Trans. Patrick Camiller. London: Verso.
Streeck, Wolfgang. 2015. Epilogue: Comparative-historical analysis: Past, present, future. In Advances in comparative-historical analysis, ed. James Mahoney, and Kathleen Thelen, 264–288. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Thompson, Michael J. (ed). 2003. Islam and the West: Critical perspectives on modernity. Lanhan: Rowman & Littlefield.
Wellmer, Albrecht. [1985] 2012. Adorno, advocate of the nonidentical: An introduction. Trans. Noah Soltau, Verena Erlenbusch, and Harry F. Dahms. In Theorizing modern society as a dynamic process, Current perspectives in social theory, vol. 30, ed. Harry F. Dahms and Lawrence Hazelrigg, 35–60. Bingley: Emerald.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Dahms, H.F. (2017). Critical Theory as Radical Comparative–Historical Research. In: Thompson, M. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Theory. Political Philosophy and Public Purpose. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55801-5_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55801-5_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-55800-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-55801-5
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)