Harry Dahms
Encyclopedia
University of Tennessee
The University of Tennessee is a public land-grant university headquartered at Knoxville, Tennessee, United States...
since fall 2004, and Director of Graduate Studies and Associate Head in the Department of Sociology (since 2006). His primary research and teaching areas are theory, economic sociology
Economic sociology
Economic sociology studies both the social effects and the social causes of various economic phenomena. The field can be broadly divided into a classical period and a contemporary one. The classical period was concerned particularly with modernity and its constituent aspects...
, globalization
Globalization
Globalization refers to the increasingly global relationships of culture, people and economic activity. Most often, it refers to economics: the global distribution of the production of goods and services, through reduction of barriers to international trade such as tariffs, export fees, and import...
, social inequality
Social inequality
Social inequality refers to a situation in which individual groups in a society do not have equal social status. Areas of potential social inequality include voting rights, freedom of speech and assembly, the extent of property rights and access to education, health care, quality housing and other...
, and social justice
Social justice
Social justice generally refers to the idea of creating a society or institution that is based on the principles of equality and solidarity, that understands and values human rights, and that recognizes the dignity of every human being. The term and modern concept of "social justice" was coined by...
. Since 2008, he is also Editor of Current Perspectives in Social Theory.
Education and career
Previously, he taught at Florida State UniversityFlorida State University
The Florida State University is a space-grant and sea-grant public university located in Tallahassee, Florida, United States. It is a comprehensive doctoral research university with medical programs and significant research activity as determined by the Carnegie Foundation...
in Tallahassee (starting in 1993), and as a visiting professor at University of Göttingen , 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
Gallatin School of Individualized Study
The Gallatin School of Individualized Study is a small interdisciplinary college within New York University. Gallatin aims to provide a "small college" feel, while being located within one of the largest private universities in the United States. Students design their own interdisciplinary program...
. While at the New School, he benefited from the teaching and guidance of Arthur J. Vidich, Andrew Arato, Jose Casanova, Ágnes Heller
Ágnes Heller
Ágnes Heller is a Hungarian philosopher. A prominent Marxist thinker at first, she moved onto a liberal, social-democratic position later in her career...
, Robert Heilbroner
Robert Heilbroner
Robert L. Heilbroner was an American economist and historian of economic thought. The author of some twenty books, Heilbroner was best known for The Worldly Philosophers , a survey of the lives and contributions of famous economists, notably Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and John Maynard...
, Guy Oakes, Claus Offe
Claus Offe
Professor Claus Offe is a political sociologist of Marxist orientation. Once a student of Jürgen Habermas, the left-leaning German academic is counted among the second generation Frankfurt School...
, Eric Hobsbawm
Eric Hobsbawm
Eric John Ernest Hobsbawm , CH, FBA, is a British Marxist historian, public intellectual, and author...
, and others.
His master’s degree is from University of Konstanz
University of Konstanz
The University of Konstanz is a university in the city of Konstanz in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It was founded in 1966, and the main campus on the Gießberg was opened in 1972. As one of nine German Excellence Universities today University of Konstanz is counted among Germany's most prestigious...
, Germany (1986), where Ralf Dahrendorf
Ralf Dahrendorf
Ralf Gustav Dahrendorf, Baron Dahrendorf, KBE, FBA was a German-British sociologist, philosopher, political scientist and liberal politician....
and Albrecht Wellmer were the most important influences.
Work
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 WeberMax Weber
Karl Emil Maximilian "Max" Weber was a German sociologist and political economist who profoundly influenced social theory, social research, and the discipline of sociology itself...
, 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
Globalization
Globalization refers to the increasingly global relationships of culture, people and economic activity. Most often, it refers to economics: the global distribution of the production of goods and services, through reduction of barriers to international trade such as tariffs, export fees, and import...
” (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
Frankfurt School
The Frankfurt School refers to a school of neo-Marxist interdisciplinary social theory, particularly associated with the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt am Main...
at one end, to Joseph Schumpeter
Joseph Schumpeter
Joseph Alois Schumpeter was an Austrian-Hungarian-American economist and political scientist. He popularized the term "creative destruction" in economics.-Life:...
's social theory of capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
, 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
Wiktionary
Wiktionary is a multilingual, web-based project to create a free content dictionary, available in 158 languages...
. A related line of inquiry pertains to the possibilities to tackle alienation that might result from implementations of basic income, or guaranteed minimum income
Guaranteed minimum income
Guaranteed minimum income is a system of social welfare provision that guarantees that all citizens or families have an income sufficient to live on, provided they meet certain conditions. Eligibility is typically determined by citizenship, a means test and either availability for the labour...
. In addition to being Editor of Current Perspectives in Social Theory, he is also Associate Editor of Basic Income Studies, Soundings. An Interdisciplinary Journal, Advisory Editor of The Sociological Quarterly, and a Member of the Editorial Board of The Newfound Press, and imprint of the University of Tennessee Libraries.
Selected bibliography
- Nature, Knowledge, and Negation (Editor). Volume 26 of Current Perspectives in Social Theory (Emerald, 2009) -- http://books.emeraldinsight.com/display.asp?m=6&dc=15&mw=1&st_01=crisis&sf_01=kword_index.
- No Social Science Without Critical Theory (Editor). Volume 25 of Current Perspectives in Social Theory (Emerald, 2008) -- http://books.emeraldinsight.com/display.asp?K=9780762314836.
- Globalization Between the Cold War and Neo-Imperialism (Special Volume Editor). Volume 24 of Current Perspectives in Social Theory (Elsevier/JAI, 2006) -- http://books.emeraldinsight.com/display.asp?K=9780762313143.
- "Capitalism Unbound? Peril and Promise of Basic Income." Basic Income Studies 1(1) 2006--http://www.bepress.com/bis/.
- "Globalization as Hyper-Alienation: Critiques of Traditional Marxism as Arguments for Basic Income." Current Perspectives in Social Theory. 23 2005: 205-77.
- "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 MATRIX Trilogy as Critical Theory of Alienation: Communicating a Message of Radical Transformation." Transdisciplinary Journal of Emergence. 3 (1) 2005: 108-24.
- "Sociology in the Age of Globalization: Toward a Dynamic Sociological Theory." Current Perspectives in Social Theory. 21 2002: 287-320.
- Transformations of Capitalism: Economy, Society and the State in Modern Times (London: Palgrave, and New York: NYU Press, 2000).
- "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.
- "Beyond the Carousel of Reification: Critical Social Theory After Lukács, Adorno and Habermas." Current Perspectives in Social Theory. 18 1998: 3-62.
- "Theory in Weberian Marxism: Patterns of Critical Social Theory in Lukács and Habermas." Sociological Theory. 15 (3) 1997:181-214.
- "From Creative Action to the Social Rationalization of the Economy: Joseph A. Schumpeter's Social Theory." Sociological Theory. 13 (1) 1995: 1-13.
See also
- ReificationReificationReification generally refers to bringing into being or turning concrete.Specifically, reification may refer to:*Reification , making a data model for a previously abstract concept...
- Marx's theory of alienationMarx's theory of alienationMarx's theory of alienation , as expressed in the writings of the young Karl Marx , refers to the separation of things that naturally belong together, or to put antagonism between things that are properly in harmony...
- Theodor W. AdornoTheodor W. AdornoTheodor W. Adorno was a German sociologist, philosopher, and musicologist known for his critical theory of society....
- Jürgen HabermasJürgen HabermasJürgen Habermas is a German sociologist and philosopher in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. He is perhaps best known for his theory on the concepts of 'communicative rationality' and the 'public sphere'...
- Max WeberMax WeberKarl Emil Maximilian "Max" Weber was a German sociologist and political economist who profoundly influenced social theory, social research, and the discipline of sociology itself...
- The MatrixThe MatrixThe Matrix is a 1999 science fiction-action film written and directed by Larry and Andy Wachowski, starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano, and Hugo Weaving...
- Philippe Van ParijsPhilippe Van ParijsPhilippe Van Parijs is a Belgian philosopher and political economist, mainly known as a proponent and main defender of the basic income concept.-Education:...
- Frankfurt SchoolFrankfurt SchoolThe Frankfurt School refers to a school of neo-Marxist interdisciplinary social theory, particularly associated with the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt am Main...
- Joseph SchumpeterJoseph SchumpeterJoseph Alois Schumpeter was an Austrian-Hungarian-American economist and political scientist. He popularized the term "creative destruction" in economics.-Life:...
- GlobalizationGlobalizationGlobalization refers to the increasingly global relationships of culture, people and economic activity. Most often, it refers to economics: the global distribution of the production of goods and services, through reduction of barriers to international trade such as tariffs, export fees, and import...
- Economic SociologyEconomic sociologyEconomic sociology studies both the social effects and the social causes of various economic phenomena. The field can be broadly divided into a classical period and a contemporary one. The classical period was concerned particularly with modernity and its constituent aspects...
- American Sociological AssociationAmerican Sociological AssociationThe American Sociological Association , founded in 1905 as the American Sociological Society , is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the discipline and profession of sociology by serving sociologists in their work and promoting their contributions to serve society.The ASA holds its...
- Basic IncomeBasic incomeA basic income guarantee is a proposed system of social security, that regularly provides each citizen with a sum of money. In contrast to income redistribution between nations themselves, the phrase basic income defines payments to individuals rather than households, groups, or nations, in order...
- Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN)
External links
- Harry F. Dahms' Web Page
- The Alienation Group
- Department of Sociology @ University of Tennessee
- Museum of Knowledge
- New York Journal of Sociology
- Möglichkeiten und Gefahren des garantierten Grundeinkommens aus gesellschaftstheoretischer Sicht -- Lecture at Otto von Guericke University, Magdeburg, Germany, on possibilities and dangers of basic income
- Basic Income Studies web-site
- United States Basic Income Network
- Basic Income Earth Network