Theoretical sociology, economic sociology, political economy, comparative sociology, and the sociology of science-fiction films are my main areas of interest. With “globalization” as a contingent, complex, and contradictory process providing the primary reference frame for my work, the guiding question is how classical, contemporary and critical theorists should have enabled (and compelled) sociologists during the late twentieth century to anticipate globalization as the culmination of the trends and tensions that have been shaping modern societies. The defining challenge of our time, then, in the twenty-first century, is to envision how all contributions to social, sociological, and critical theory tell parts of the story of the modern age, even if most theorists are concerned with this story implicitly rather than explicitly.  In the context of the discipline, this means shifting from a concern with globalization to the project of planetary sociology, and how identity structures are tied up with social structures, in ways that paradoxically are both oriented toward progress and increasingly fraught with regressive reactions to the disconcerting prospect of an uncertain future fraught with conflicts, crises, and diminishing resources.  To address this paradox, I was have started in recent years to interpret science-fiction films as means to identify fault lines in human civilization today, and to delineate different kinds of strategies that have the potential to prepare constructive approaches to moving beyond socially grounded forms of disabling experiences of cognitive dissonance, and the conditions that cause and sustain them.  To focus efforts, time, and energy on the project of conceiving of a reference frame meant to give purpose to social research, as far as the “big picture” is concerned, I have been working to delineate and situate the concept of “artifice” as a lens through with the real-world connections between micro, meso, and macro levels of social life can be identified and reconstructed.

Books and Special Issues (edited, co-edited, single-authored)

• The Future of Agency:  Between Autonomy and Heteronomy  (Current Perspectives in Social Theory, 41) Bingley:  UK: Emerald, forthcoming (editor).
• Simulation and Dissimulation, Futures 155, January 2024, 103283 (special issue; guest editor with Steffen Roth, Jari Kaivo-oja, and Kristof van Assche).
• Planetary Sociology:  Beyond the Entanglement of Identity and Social Structure (Current Perspectives in Social Theory, 40) Bingley:  UK: Emerald, 2023 (editor).
• The Centrality of Sociality:  Responses to The Concept of the Social in Uniting the Social Sciences (Current Perspectives in Social Theory, 39) Bingley:  UK: Emerald, 2022 (co-edited with Jeffrey Halley).
• Society in Flux:  Two Centuries of Social Theory (Current Perspectives in Social Theory, 37) Bingley:  UK: Emerald, 2021 (editor).
• Social Theory and Science Fiction, Soundings:  An Interdisciplinary Journal 103 (2) 2020 (special issue) (guest editor).
• Digital Transformation of Social Theory, Technological Forecasting and Social Change 149, 2019 (special issue) (co-edited with Steffen Roth, Frank Welz, and Sandro Cattacin).
• The Challenge of Progress: Theory between Critique and Ideology (Current Perspectives in Social Theory, 36) Bingley:  UK: Emerald, 2019 (editor).
• Ecologically Unequal Exchange: Environmental Injustice in Comparative and Historical Perspective. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018 (co-edited with R. Scott Frey and Paul K. Gellert).
• Reconstructing Social Theory, History, and Practice (Current Perspectives in Social Theory, 35) Bingley:  UK: Emerald, 2017) (co-edited with Eric R. Lybeck).
• Unequal Ecological Exchange (Special Issue), guest editor, with R.Scott Frey & Paul K. Gellert. Journal of World-Systems Research 23 (2) 2017.
• Globalization, Critique, and Social Theory:  Diagnoses and Challenges, editor (Current Perspectives in Social Theory, 33) Bingley:  UK: Emerald, 2015.
• Mediations of Social Life in the Twenty-First Century (Current Perspectives in Social Theory, 32) Bingley:  UK: Emerald, 2014 (editor).
• Social Justice and the University.  Globalization, Human Rights, and the Future of Democracy, Houndmills Basingstoke:  Palgrave Macmillan, 2014 (co-edited by Jon Shefner, Harry F. Dahms, Robert Emmet Jones, and Asafa Jalata).
• Social Theories of History and Histories of Social Theory (Current Perspectives in Social Theory, 31); Bingley, UK:  Emerald, 2013 (editor).
• Theorizing Modern Society as a Dynamic Process (Current Perspectives in Social Theory, 30); Bingley:  Emerald, UK, 2012 (co-edited with Lawrence Hazelrigg).
• The Diversity of Social Theories (Current Perspectives in Social Theory, 29); Bingley:  Emerald, UK, 2011 (editor).
• The Vitality of Critical Theory (Current Perspectives in Social Theory, 28); Bingley, UK:  Emerald, UK: 2011 (author).
• Theorizing the Dynamics of Social Processes (Current Perspectives in Social Theory, 27); Bingley, UK: Emerald: 2010 (co-edited with Lawrence Hazelrigg) .
• Nature, Knowledge, and Negation (Current Perspectives in Social Theory) 26; Emerald (UK), (2009) (editor) .
• No Social Science Without Critical Theory (Current Perspectives in Social Theory) 25; Emerald (UK), (2008) (editor) .
• Globalization Between the Cold War and Neo-Imperialism (Current Perspectives in Social Theory) 24; Emerald (UK), (2006) (special volume editor).
• Transformations of Capitalism: Economy, Society and the State in Modern Times, ed. (Palgrave and New York University Press, 2000).

Articles and Book Chapters (since 2000, for complete list, see CV)

• “Surviving (in) a World of Contradictions: Conceptualizing Agency between Autonomy and Heteronomy,” in The Future of Agency:  Between Autonomy and Heteronomy  (Current Perspectives in Social Theory, 41) Bingley:  UK: Emerald, forthcoming.
• “The Societal Rationalization of the Economy: The Guaranteed Minimum Income as Constitutional Right” (1992), translated by Anthony J. Knowles, in The Future of Agency:  Between Autonomy and Heteronomy  (Current Perspectives in Social Theory, 41) Bingley:  UK: Emerald, forthcoming.
• “Freedom and Heteronomy in the Anthropocene” (with Alexander M. Stoner), in Paragrana: An International Journal of Historical Anthropology 33 (2023).
• “Planetary Sociology as a New Paradigm:  Disentangling Identity Structure and Social Structure (or, Towards a More Resolute Enlightenment),” in Planetary Sociology:  Beyond the Entanglement of Identity and Social Structure (Current Perspectives in Social Theory, 40) Bingley:  UK: Emerald, 2023 (editor), pp. 9-25.
• “In Defense of ‘the Social’: Convergences and Divergences Between the Humanities and Social Sciences in the United States,”  The Centrality of Sociality: Responses to Michael E. Brown’s the Concept of the Social in Uniting the Social Sciences and the Humanities (Current Perspectives in Social Theory, 39), 2022: 125-148.
• “Social Theory’s Burden: From Heteronomy to Vitacide (or, How Classical Critical Theory Predicted Proliferating Rackets, Authoritarian Personalities, and Administered Worlds in the Twenty-First Century),” in Harry F. Dahms (ed.), Society in Flux:  Two Centuries of Social Theory (Current Perspectives in Social Theory, 37) 2021:  3-55.
• “Adorno’s Critique of the New Right-Wing Extremism: How (Not) to Face the Past, Present, and Future,” disClosure: a journal of social theory, 29(1), 129-179.
• “Critical Theory, Sociology, and Science-Fiction Films: Love, Radical Transformation and the Socio-Logic of Capital,” in Daniel Krier and Mark Worrell (eds.), Capital in the Mirror: Critical Theory and the Aesthetic Dimension (Albany, NY: SUNY Press; 2020): 231-301.
• “Science Fiction Films and ‘Love’:  Toward a Critique of Regressive Social Relations,” Soundings:  An Interdisciplinary Journal 103 (2) 2020: 121-157.
• “Ignoring Goethe’s Faust: A Critical-Theoretical Perspective on American Ideology”, Fast Capitalism 16.2 2019.
• “Critical Theory Derailed: Paradigm Fetishism and Critical Liberalism in Honneth (and Habermas),” in Volker Schmitz (ed.), Axel Honneth and the Future of Critical Theory (Palgrave, 2018), pp. 207-242.
• “The Wider View” (with R. Scott Frey), in Ecologically Unequal Exchange: Environmental Injustice in Comparative and Historical Perspective, co-editor, with R. Scott Frey and Paul K. Gellert (Palgrave, 2018), pp. 307-316.
• “Critical Theory, Radical Reform and Planetary Sociology: Between Impossibility and Inevitability,” in David A. Smith and Lauren Langman (eds.), Twenty-First Century Inequality & Capitalism: Piketty, Marx and Beyond (Leiden: Brill, 2018), pp. 152-168.
• “Critical Theory as Radical Comparative-Historical Research,” in The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Theory, ed. by Michael J. Thompson (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), pp.165-84.
• “Critical Theory, Brexit, and the Vicissitudes of Political Economy in the Twenty-First Century,” in William Outhwaite (ed.), Brexit: Sociological Responses (London: Anthem Press, 2017), pp. 183-192.
• “Critical Theory in the Twenty-First Century:  The Logic of Capital between Classical Social Theory, the Early Frankfurt School Critique of Political Economy, and the Prospect of Artifice,” in Daniel Krier and Mark Worrell (eds.), The Social Ontology of Capitalism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), pp. 47-74.
• “Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Digital Ontotheology:  Towards a Critical Rethinking of Science Fiction as Theory” (with Joel Crombez), Bulletin of Science, Technology, & Society (Special issue on Science & Science Fiction) 35 (3-4) 2016: 104-113.
• “Theorizing Modern Society as an Inverted Reality:  How Critical Theory and Indigenous Critiques of Globalization Must Learn from Each Other” (with Asafa Jalata), in Harry F. Dahms, Globalization, Critique, and Social Theory:  Diagnoses and Challenges (Current Perspectives in Social Theory, 33) 2015:  75-133.
• “Which Capital, Which Marx?  Basic Income between Mainstream Economics, Critical Theory, and the Logic of Capital,” Basic Income Studies 10 (1) 2015:115-140.
• “Toward a Critical Theory of Capital in the 21st Century: Thomas Piketty between Adam Smith and the Prospect of Apocalypse,” Critical Sociology 41 (2) 2015: 359-374.
• “Barriers and Conduits to Social Justice—Universities in the Twenty-First Century”  (with Eric Royal Lybeck), in Social Justice and the University.  Globalization, Human Rights, and the Future of Democracy, edited by Jon Shefner, Harry F. Dahms, Robert Emmet Jones, and Asafa Jalata (Houndmills Basingstoke:  Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. 340-52.
• “Decoding Modern Society as the Realm of Alienation: The Matrix Trilogy and Contemporary Social Theory,” Cinematic Sociology:  Social Life in Film (2nd ed.), ed. by Jean-Anne Sutherland and Kathryn M. Feltey (Pine Forge Press, 2013).
• “Theorizing Europe as the Future of Modern Society: European Integration between Thick Norms and Thin Politics,” Comparative Sociology 11 (5) 2012: 762-781.
• “Civil Society and the State in the Neoliberal Era: Dynamics of Friends and Enemies”  (with  Jon  Shefner), Theorizing Modern Society as a Dynamic Process (Current Perspectives in Social Theory 30); Bingley:  Emerald, UK, 2012, pp. 236-261.
• “Theodor W. Adorno,”  The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Major Social Theorists, ed. By George Ritzer & Jeff Stepnisky, vol. 1:  Chapter 18, pp. 448-468 (forthcoming, 2011).
• “Joseph A. Schumpeter,” The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Major Social Theorists, ed. By George Ritzer & Jeff Stepnisky, vol. 1:  Chapter 14, pp. 559-581 (forthcoming, 2011).
• “Affinities between the Project of Dynamic Theory and the Tradition of Critical Theory:  A Sketch”, Theorizing the Dynamics of Social Processes, (Current Perspectives in Social Theory) 27; Emerald (UK), (2010), pp. 81-97.
• “Democracy”, Globalization and Security.  An Encyclopedia, ed. Honor Fagan and Ronaldo Munck (Westport, Conn.:  Praeger, 2009), Vol. I, pp. 43-60.
• “Modernity”, Globalization and Security.  An Encyclopedia, ed. Honor Fagan and Ronaldo Munck (Westport, Conn.:  Praeger, 2009), Vol. II, pp. 303-20.
• “How Social Science is Impossible Without Critical Theory: The Immersion of Mainstream Approaches in Time and Space,” No Social Science Without Critical Theory, vol. 25 of Current Perspectives in Social Theory (Emerald, 2008):  3-61.
• “Retheorizing Global Space in Sociology: Towards a New Kind of Discipline,” The Spatial Turn. Interdisciplinary Perspectives , ed. Barney Warf and Santa Arias (London: Routledge, 2008):  88-102.
• “Confronting the Dynamic Nature of Modern Social Life,” Soundings.  An Interdisciplinary Journal, vol. 90. 3-4, Fall-Winter 2007:  191-205.
• “Capitalism Unbound? Promise and Peril of Basic Income.” Basic Income Studies 1 (1) 2006.
• “THE MATRIX Trilogy as Critical Theory of Alienation:  Communicating a Message of Radical Transformation,”  Transdisciplinary Journal of Emergence 3 (1) 2005:  108-24.
• “Globalization or Hyper-Alienation?  Critiques of Traditional Marxism as Arguments for Basic Income.”  Social Theory as Politics in Knowledge (Current Perspectives in Social Theory) 23  2005: 205-76.
• “Does Alienation Have a Future? Recapturing the Core of Critical Theory.” in The Evolution of Alienation:  Trauma, Promise, and the Millennium, ed. L. Langman and D.K. Fishman (Rowman and Littlefield, 2005): 23-46.
• “Sociology in the Age of Globalization: Toward a Dynamic Sociological Theory, Bringing Capitalism Back for Critique by Social Theory (Current Perspectives in Social Theory) 21 2002: 287-320.
• “The Early Frankfurt School Critique of Capitalism: Critical Theory Between Pollock’s ‘State Capitalism’ and the Critique of Instrumental Reason.” The Theory of Capitalism in the German Economic Tradition. ed. P. Koslowski (Berlin: Springer, 2000), pp. 309-61 (disc.: pp. 362-67).

Encyclopedia Entries, Interviews, etc.

• “Studying science fiction films can help students understand the power societies have to shape our lives”
  • The Conversation, October 2, 2024
• “Alienation”
• “Commodification”
• “Creative Destruction,”
  • Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Globalization, ed. George Ritzer (ed.), (February 2012).
• “Alienation,” Encyclopedia of Social Problems, ed. by Vince Parrillo (Thousand Oaks:  Sage, 2008), pp. 40-2.
• “Historical Materialism”
• “Ideology”
• “Modernity”
  • International Encyclopedia of Economic Sociology, ed. by Jens Beckert and Milan Zafirovski (Routledge, 2005).
• “Joseph A. Schumpeter”
• “Lester F. Ward”
  • Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers, ed. by John R. Shook (Thoemmes Press, 2005)

Work In Progress

• Modern Society as Artifice:  Critical Theory and the Logic of Capital (Routledge)
• Beyond Regression:  Adorno’s Sociology of Late Capitalism
• Habermas’ Legitimation Crisis:  50 Years Later (a co-edited volume; with Steven P. Dandaneau)
• “Capitalism,” an Oxford Bibliography (with Anthony J. Knowles)
• “Educating for a Future with(out) Apocalypse:  Self-Possession, Dispossession, and Being Possessed in Sociology and Science-Fiction Films”
• “A future in space? Simulating and dissimulating the darker dimensions of modern civilization in the planetary age.”