Harry F. Dahms is Professor of Sociology at the University of Tennessee - Knoxville, USA 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.

• PART I. A PROGRAMMATIC INTRODUCTION REVISITED (AND UPDATED)Social theory’s burden: from heteronomy to Vitacide (or, how classical critical theory predicted proliferating rackets, authoritarian personalities, and administered worlds in the 21st century); Harry F. DahmsPART II. CRITICAL THEORYChapter 1. Critical theory, the imagination, and the critique of judgment: Horkheimer’s vision reconsidered; John Levi MartinChapter 2. Marx, critical theory, and the treadmill of production of value: why environmental sociology needs a critique of capital; Alexander M. StonerPART III. CLASSICAL THEORYChapter 3. Emil Lederer’s theory of the new middle class: historical and current relevance of a key sociological concept; Sandro SegreChapter 4. Figuring the beginning: Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer as founding figures of sociology; Tobias SchlechtriemenPART IV. SYSTEMS THEORYChapter 5. Sociology as social system: Luhmann, enlightenment, and the gap between “facts” and “norms”; Anthony J. KnowlesChapter 6. Give me an operation and I will give you a system: the psychic in Luhmann’s theory; Santiago Gabriel Calise

Harry F. Dahms is Professor of Sociology at the University of Tennessee - Knoxville, USA 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.

• PART I. A PROGRAMMATIC INTRODUCTION REVISITED (AND UPDATED)Social theory’s burden: from heteronomy to Vitacide (or, how classical critical theory predicted proliferating rackets, authoritarian personalities, and administered worlds in the 21st century); Harry F. DahmsPART II. CRITICAL THEORYChapter 1. Critical theory, the imagination, and the critique of judgment: Horkheimer’s vision reconsidered; John Levi MartinChapter 2. Marx, critical theory, and the treadmill of production of value: why environmental sociology needs a critique of capital; Alexander M. StonerPART III. CLASSICAL THEORYChapter 3. Emil Lederer’s theory of the new middle class: historical and current relevance of a key sociological concept; Sandro SegreChapter 4. Figuring the beginning: Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer as founding figures of sociology; Tobias SchlechtriemenPART IV. SYSTEMS THEORYChapter 5. Sociology as social system: Luhmann, enlightenment, and the gap between “facts” and “norms”; Anthony J. KnowlesChapter 6. Give me an operation and I will give you a system: the psychic in Luhmann’s theory; Santiago Gabriel Calise

Harry F. Dahms is Professor of Sociology at the University of Tennessee - Knoxville, USA 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.

• PART I. A PROGRAMMATIC INTRODUCTION REVISITED (AND UPDATED)Social theory’s burden: from heteronomy to Vitacide (or, how classical critical theory predicted proliferating rackets, authoritarian personalities, and administered worlds in the 21st century); Harry F. DahmsPART II. CRITICAL THEORYChapter 1. Critical theory, the imagination, and the critique of judgment: Horkheimer’s vision reconsidered; John Levi MartinChapter 2. Marx, critical theory, and the treadmill of production of value: why environmental sociology needs a critique of capital; Alexander M. StonerPART III. CLASSICAL THEORYChapter 3. Emil Lederer’s theory of the new middle class: historical and current relevance of a key sociological concept; Sandro SegreChapter 4. Figuring the beginning: Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer as founding figures of sociology; Tobias SchlechtriemenPART IV. SYSTEMS THEORYChapter 5. Sociology as social system: Luhmann, enlightenment, and the gap between “facts” and “norms”; Anthony J. KnowlesChapter 6. Give me an operation and I will give you a system: the psychic in Luhmann’s theory; Santiago Gabriel Calise