Challenge of Progress

Harry F. Dahms is Professor of Sociology at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, where he is also co-director of the Center for the Study of Social Justice and co-chair of the Committee on Social Theory. In addition to being editor of Current Perspectives in Social Theory, he also is director of the International Social Theory Consortium. He is the author of The Vitality of Critical Theory (2011), has edited and co-edited numerous other books, and has published in Sociological Theory, Current Perspectives in Social Theory, Comparative Sociology, Critical Sociology and other journals.

• Introduction;Part I: Identifying the Challenge: A Critical Discussion of the End of Progress: Decolonizing the Normative Foundations of Critical Theory (2016), by Amy Allen;1. History, Critique and Progress: Amy Allen's 'End of Progress' and the Normative Grounding of Critical Theory; Reha Kadakal;2. Inheriting Critical Theory. A Review of Amy Allen’s the End of Progress: Decolonizing the Normative Foundations of Critical Theory; George Steinmetz;3. Back to Adorno: Critical Theory’s Problem of Normative Grounding; Karen Ng;4. Decolonizing Critical Theory; Kevin Olson;5. Progress, Normativity, and the "Decolonization" of Critical Theory: Reply to Critics; Amy Allen;Part II: Assessing the Challenge: Progress, Politics, and Ideology;6. Nietzsche After Charlottesville; Robert J. Antonio;7. "How Can [We] Not Know?" Blade Runner as Cinematic Landmark in Critical Thought; Lawrence Hazelrigg;8. Sociology at the End of History: Profession, Vocation and Critical Practice; Daniel M. Harrison;Part III: Confronting the Challenge: The Dynamics of Progress in the Modern Age;9. Las Vegas as the Anthropocene: The Neoliberal City as Desertification All the Way Down; Timothy W. Luke;10. Exchanging Social Change for Social Class: Traditional Marriage Proposals as Status and Scrip; Patricia Arend and Katherine Comeau;11. Sociology’s Emancipation from Philosophy: The Influence of Francis Bacon on Emile Durkheim; Shawn van Valkenburgh