Societal Theory and Contemporary Analysis

It might be helpful to distinguish, within General Sociology, between social theory and societal theory: the theory of the social is devoted to the question of how sociality generally functions and the theory of society asks about the nature of the society in which we live.

The subject of this project is the appropriate theory for the entirety of contemporary society. The concept of ‘society’ for the contemporary sociological diagnostics of modernity seems at present to be disintegrated into descriptions of various forms of societies: postmodern-, multicultural-, media-, risk-, knowledge-, event-, responsibility-, world-, etc.- society. In contrast to that it shall be asked if and for what reasons “bourgeois society” is still a coherent concept for a sociology of modernity. As a concept of societal theory “bourgeois society” is not congruent with the political concept of “civil society” or the economically-centered theory of capitalism (e.g. the critique of “neo-liberal society”).

The theory of “bourgeois society” refers in both action theory and structural theory to the social invention of ‘private property’ (bourgeoisie, commercial society), ‘autonomy’ / self-administration (with the emergence of the occidental city; autocephaly, civil society, rule of law) and to the middle-class intellectuals (Bildungsbürgertum, creative class), who permanently trigger crisis and creativity through critique. Therefore, a historical sociology allows for the diagnoses of contemporary society as a thoroughly “bourgeois-civil-creative society”. Compared with the bourgeois society of the nineteenth century, however, it is a new figure: it is bourgeois society after its experience of contingency and destruction in the twentieth century: a bourgeois society within mass society (“becoming bourgeois of mass society”), which implements its structures in world-society (“becoming bourgeois of world society”) as a transnational network (European Union, NATO).

The thesis shall be tested by the reconstruction of the classical concepts that analyze bourgeois society, bourgeoisie, bourgeois life style (Smith, Hegel, Marx, Weber, Sombart, et al.), by the incorporation of historical research on the bourgeoisie, and by the findings of the research on families, social structure, wealth, education, politics, media, city, and civil religion. The various concepts of society above might then be understood as the facets of diagnoses of bourgeois society, which function as regulations of attention and resources, and Luhmann’s systems theory or Bourdieu’s habitus theory might be reconstructed as advanced variants of their scholarly self-description. Sociology itself acts as a perpetuated observing science of this “bourgeois society” of modernity.

 
Publications and Papers

“Bürgerliche Gesellschaft. Zur historischen Soziologie der Gegenwartsgesellschaft”, (Bourgeois Society. On Historical Sociology of Contemporary Society), in: Clemens Albrecht (ed.), Die Bürgerliche Kultur und ihre Avantgarden, Würzburg 2004, 97-118.

“Warenwerbung und Warentest oder Poetismus und Rationalismus. Komplementäre Sozialmechanismen in der bürgerlichen Massenkultur” (Advertisement and Tests of Products or Poetism and Rationalism. Complementary Social Mechanisms in Bourgeois Mass Culture), in: K.-U. Hellmann / D. Schrage (ed.), Konsum der Werbung. Zur Produktion und Rezeption von Sinn in der kommerziellen Kultur, Wiesbaden 2004, 49-62.

“Exzentrische Positionalität. Der Potsdamer Platz aus der Perspektive der Philosophischen Anthropologie” (Excentric Positionality. Potsdamer Platz from the Perspective of Philosophical Anthropology), in: Joachim Fischer / Michael Makropoulos (ed.), Potsdamer Platz. Soziologische Theorien zu einem Ort der Moderne, München 2004, 11-32.

“Bourdieu und Luhmann als Theoretiker der ‘bürgerlichen Gesellschaft’” (Bourdieu and Luhmann as Theoreticians of ‘Bourgeois Society’), in: Vorgänge, Nr. 170/44-2 (June 2005), 53-60.

“‘Weltgesellschaft’ im Medium der ‘bürgerlichen Gesellschaft’” (‘World Society’ in the Medium of ‘Bourgeois Society’), in: Sociologia Internationalis, 43-1/2 (2005), 59-98.

“Bourdieu und Luhmann. Soziologische Doppelbeobachtung der 'bürgerlichen Gesellschaft' nach ihrer Kontingenzerfahrung” (Bourdieu and Luhmann. Sociological Double Observation of ‘Bourgeois Society’ after its Experience of Contingency), in: Karl Siegbert Rehberg (ed.): Soziale Ungleichheit - Kulturelle Unterschiede. Verhandlungen des 32. Kongresses der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Soziologie in München 2004, Frankfurt / New York 2006, CD, 2850-2858.

“Bürgerlichkeit ohne Bürgertum?” (Bourgeois Life Style without Bourgeoisie?), conference at Stiftung Schloß Neuhardenberg, June 13, 2007.

“Wie bürgerlich ist die Moderne? Bürgerliche Gesellschaft, Bürgertum, Bürgerlichkeit” (How Bourgeois is Modernity? Bourgeois Society, Bourgeoisie, Bourgeois Life Style), Joint conference of the Sections on Sociological Theory and Cultural Sociology of the GSA, together with Andreas Reckwitz, July13-14, 2007 at Universität Konstanz, (conference proceeding by Daniel Grummt / Peter Hausdorf).

“Die bürgerliche Alternative. Besprechung von Jörg Magenau, Die taz. Eine Zeitung als Lebensform” (Review Article on Jörg Magenau), in: Die taz, October 13, 2007.

“In welcher Gesellschaft leben wir eigentlich? In der bürgerlichen!” (In Which Society are We Living? In Bourgeois Society!), in: Aus Politik und Zeitschichte (Thema: Bürger - Bürgertum - Bürgerlichkeit), 9-10/2008, 9-16.

“Bürgerliche Gesellschaft - Schlüsselbegriff einer soziologischen Theorie nach 1989” (Bourgeois Society – Key Concept of a Sociological Theory After 1989), in: WestEnd. Neue Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, 1 (2009), 141-155.

“Bürger, Weltbürger” (Bourgeois, Bourgeois / Citizen of the World), in: Stephan Moebius und Markus Schroer (ed.), Diven, Hacker, Spekulanten. Sozialtypen der Gegenwart, Frankfurt a. M. (under contract to Suhrkamp).

Heinz Bude / Joachim Fischer: Streitgespräch zur Bürgerlichen Gesellschaft (A Debate on Bourgeois Society), Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung, January18, 2010.

“Workshop 'Bürgerliche Gesellschaft'”, Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung, January 19, 2010.

Heinz Bude / Joachim Fischer / Bernd Kauffmann (ed.), Bürgerlichkeit ohne Bürgertum? (Bourgeois Life Style without Bourgeoisie?), München 2010 (in preparation).