Labyrinth of Modernity

Johann P. Arnason is professor emeritus of sociology at La Trobe University, and an editor-at-large of the journal Social Imaginaries. His many publications include Civilizations in Dispute: Historical Questions and Theoretical Traditions (2003), Axial Civilizations and World History (ed. with S.N. Eisenstadt and B. Wittrock, 2005), The Roman Empire in Context: Historical and Comparative Perspectives (ed. with K. Raaflaub, 2011), The Greek Polis and the Invention of Democracy: A Politico-Cultural Transformation and its Interpretations (ed. with K. Raaflaub and P. Wagner, 2013), Social Transformations and Revolutions (ed. with M. Hrubec, 2016); and Anthropology and Civilizational Analysis (ed. with Chris Hann, 2018).

• 1. Introduction / 2. Modernity as a new civilization: Imaginary meanings and institutional contexts / 3. Origins and transformations: The question of successive modernities / 4. The Communist alternative and its exit paths / 5. East Asian variations / 6. Global constellations: The one and the multiple / Bibliography / Index

Johann Arnason is among the leading social theorists of our era. But in The Labyrinth of Modernity he argues that our era is not a single object to be theorized. Rather, it is a ‘problematic’, a cluster of connected but not unitary forms and themes, subject to change as tensions and possibilities are worked out. As always his thinking is stimulating and significant.