Arpad Szakolczai: 9 books

This book offers a sociological analysis of the Renaissance, focusing on the concept of grace, and the unity that exists between its various meanings: theological, anthropological (gift-giving, Mauss; and sociability, Simmel), and aesthetical (beauty and gracefulness). Since the seminal work...

This book substantiates two claims. First, the modern world was not simply produced by "objective" factors, rooted in geographical discoveries and scientific inventions, to be traced to economic, technological or political factors, but is the outcome of social, cultural and spiritual processes....

This book offers a comprehensive sociological study of the nature and dynamics of the modern world, through the use of a series of anthropological concepts, including the trickster, schismogenesis, imitation and liminality. Developing the view that with the theatre playing a central role, the modern...

Max Weber and Michael Foucault are among the most controversial and fascinating thinkers of our century. This book is the first to jointly analyse them in detail, and to make effective links between their lives and work; it coincides with a substantial resurgence of interest in their writings. The...

The book aims at reframing the discussion on the "public sphere," usually understood as the place where the public opinion is formed, through rational discussion. The aim of this book is to give an account of this rationality, and its serious shortcomings, examining the role of the media...

The Genesis of Modernity reconstructs the ideas of three of the most important social and political theorists of the Twentieth Century, Max Weber, Michel Foucault and Eric Voegelin, on the distant roots and sources of modernity. Drawing upon the conceptual tools of social theory and political philosophy,...

The book starts by discussing the significance of walking for the experience of being human, including a comparative study of the language and cultures of walking. It then reviews in detail, relying on archaeology, two turning points of human history: the emergence of cave art sanctuaries and a new...

Presenting a ground-breaking revitalization of contemporary social theory, this book revisits the rise of the modern world to reopen the dialogue between anthropology and sociology. Using concepts developed by a series of 'maverick' anthropologists who were systematically marginalised as their ideas...

This book reconstructs and brings together the work of a number of social and political theorists in order to gain new insight on the emergence and character of modern Western society. It examines the intersection point of social theory and historical sociology in a new theoretical approach called...