Harry Dahms

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Harry F. Dahms is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Tennessee since fall 2004. His primary research and teaching areas are theory, economic sociology, globalization, social inequality, and social justice.

1 Education and career
2 Work
3 Bibliography
4 Links

[edit] Education and career

Previously, he taught at Florida State University in Tallahassee (starting in 1993), and as a visiting professor at University of Goettingen , Germany (1999/2000). Before completing his PhD degree at the New School for Social Research in New York in 1993, he also taught at New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. While at the New School, he benefited from the teaching and guidance of Arthur J. Vidich, Andrew Arato, Jose Casanova, Agnes Heller, Robert Heilbroner, Guy Oakes, Claus Offe and Eric Hobsbawm, and others.

His master’s degree is from University of Konstanz, Germany (1986), where Ralf Dahrendorf and Albrecht Wellmer were the most important influences.

[edit] Work

The primary reference frame of his research and teaching pertains to the tensions in the modern age between economic change, on the one hand, and politics, culture and society, on the other. Interpreting the contributions of Marx and Weber, in particular, as foundations for a dynamic theory of modern society, he starts out from the proposition that it is only from the perspective of “globalization” (including the debates about restructuring, transnational corporations, and neo-imperialism) that the contradictions and paradoxes of modern society can be disentangled. The spectrum of his theoretical reference points reaches from the critical theory of the Frankfurt School at one end, to Joseph Schumpeter's social theory of capitalism, at the other. In modern society, a particular kind of social order fused with a specific type of social processes, into an inherently irreconcilable force-field that maintains stability by devising mechanisms designed to contain the destructive power of the contradictions, in the process continually deepening those contradictions. The consequence is a widening gap between the categories social scientists employ to “meaningfully” interpret present conditions, and the categories that would have to be developed and deployed to maintain the possibility of meaning—socially, culturally, and politically. In the interest of setting the stage for developing categories that are tailored explicitly to capture the contradictory nature of modern society, he has begun to frame the latter as compounded layers of alienation.

[edit] Bibliography

"Beyond the Carousel of Reification: Critical Social Theory After Lukács, Adorno and Habermas." Current Perspectives in Social Theory. 18 1998: 3-62.
"Democracy and the Post-Enlightenment: Lyotard and Habermas Reappraised." International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society. 5 (3) Spring 1992: 473-509.
"Does Alienation have a Future? Recapturing the Core of Critical Theory." In Trauma, Promise, and the Millennium: The Evolution of Alienation. ed. L. Langman and D.K. Fishman. Rowman and Littlefield, 2005.
"The Early Frankfurt School Critique of Capitalism: Critical Theory Between Pollock's `State Capitalism' and the Critique of Instrumental Reason." In The Theory of Capitalism in the German Economic Tradition. ed. P. Koslowski Berlin: Springer, 2000.
"From Creative Action to the Social Rationalization of the Economy: Joseph A. Schumpeter's Social Theory." Sociological Theory. 13 (1) 1995: 1-13.
"Die gesellschaftliche Rationalisierung der Ökonomie. Vom garantierten Mindesteinkommen als konstitutionellem Anrecht." Soziale Welt. 43 (2) 1992: 141-167.
"Globalization as Hyper-Alienation: Critiques of Traditional Marxism as Arguments for Basic Income." Current Perspectives in Social Theory. 23 2005: 205-77.
"THE MATRIX Trilogy as Critical Theory of Alienation: Communicating a Message of Radical Transformation." Transdisciplinary Journal of Emergence. 3 (1) 2005: 108-24.
"Postliberal Capitalism and The Early Frankfurt School: Towards a Critical Theory of the Inner Logic of Social Values." Current Perspectives in Social Theory. 19 1999: 55-88.
"Sociology in the Age of Globalization: Toward a Dynamic Sociological Theory." Current Perspectives in Social Theory. 21 2002: 287-320.
"Theory in Weberian Marxism: Patterns of Critical Social Theory in Lukács and Habermas." Sociological Theory. 15 (3) 1997:181-214.