In his most seminal book, Herbert Marcuse sharply objects to what he saw as pervasive one-dimensional thinking-the uncritical and conformist acceptance of existing structures, norms and behaviours. Originally published in 1964, One Dimensional Man quickly became one of the most important texts in the politically radical sixties. Marcuse's searing indictment of Western society remains as chillingly relevant today as it was at its first writing.

First published in 2000, Dipesh Chakrabarty's influential Provincializing Europe addresses the mythical figure of Europe that is often taken to be the original site of modernity in many histories of capitalist transition in non-Western countries. This imaginary Europe, Dipesh Chakrabarty argues, is built into the social sciences. The very idea of historicizing carries with it some peculiarly European assumptions about disenchanted space, secular time, and sovereignty. Measured against such mythical standards, capitalist transition in the third world has often seemed either (...) incomplete or lacking. Provincializing Europe proposes that every case of transition to capitalism is a case of translation as well--a translation of existing worlds and their thought--categories into the categories and self-understandings of capitalist modernity. Now featuring a new preface in which Chakrabarty responds to his critics, this book globalizes European thought by exploring how it may be renewed both for and from the margins. (shrink)

Environmental ideology is usually assumed to be either an ideology of the left, or one which somehow "transcends" the traditional left-right spectrum. In contrast, this dissertation examining the "green politics" of the so-called "New Right" in Germany challenges the claim that Environmentalism can be unequivocally placed on the left side of the political spectrum. At the same time however, it rejects the view that Environmentalism is "beyond" left and right. ;This study argues that it is more correct to speak of (...) Environmentalisms in the plural, just as there are several forms of Nationalism. As with Nationalism, Environmentalism's political diversity stems from its ability to tap into our need to identify with a concrete place or set of places. Nevertheless, the dividing line between a "right-wing" and a "left-wing" ecology, it is argued here, lies in whether our attachment to place ultimately locates itself within what can be called Enlightenment "universalism." Thus in the form of a "left-wing" ecology, human beings find their truest expression in a shared sense of humanity, a notion based on the belief that human beings can separate themselves from their national, cultural, or ecological "origins." In the form of a "right-wing" ecology however, our attachment to place is transformed into an ecological-biological determinant whereby cultural identities are transformed into "natural" differences, "peoples" are defined by the "eco-niches" in which they are said to be "rooted," and Environmentalism is made synonymous with the protection of "homeland." ;The dissertation thus demonstrates the inherent dangers of an Environmentalism loosed from the moorings of Enlightenment universalism. While feeling a sense of belonging to nature is deeply human, such feelings, when naturalized into a notion of "rootedness," quickly descend into an ecological politics of exclusion. (shrink)

Does a global economy render the traditional nation-state obsolete? Does globalization threaten democratic life, or offer it new forms of expression? The German philosopher and social theorist Jurgen Habermas addresses these and other questions in this work.

In Critique and Disclosure, Nikolas Kompridis argues provocatively for a richer and more time-responsive critical theory. He calls for a shift in the normative and critical emphasis of critical theory from the narrow concern with rules and procedures of Jürgen Habermas's model to a change-enabling disclosure of possibility and the enlargement of meaning. Kompridis contrasts two visions of critical theory's role and purpose in the world: one that restricts itself to the normative clarification of the procedures by which moral and (...) political questions should be settled and an alternative rendering that conceives of itself as a possibility-disclosing practice. At the center of this resituation of critical theory is a normatively reformulated interpretation of Martin Heidegger's idea of "disclosure" or "world disclosure." In this regard Kompridis reconnects critical theory to its normative and conceptual sources in the German philosophical tradition and sets it within a romantic tradition of philosophical critique.Drawing not only on his sustained critical engagement with the thought of Habermas and Heidegger but also on the work of other philosophers including Wittgenstein, Cavell, Gadamer, and Benjamin, Kompridis argues that critical theory must, in light of modernity's time-consciousness, understand itself as fully situated in its time--in an ever-shifting and open-ended horizon of possibilities, to which it must respond by disclosing alternative ways of thinking and acting. His innovative and original argument will serve to move the debate over the future of critical studies forward--beyond simple antinomies to a consideration of, as he puts it, "what critical theory should be if it is to have a future worthy of its past.". (shrink)

This classic analysis of Western liberal capitalist society contends that capitalism harbors the seeds of its downfall, particularly by effecting a certain cultural tendency among its most successful subjects that is bound to corrode its very foundations. As such, it is a conservative critique employing cultural concerns precisely where Marx prioritized economic ones.

This book tells the story of critical theory's introduction into the study of international relations.