The widely expressed anxiety concerning the direction in which the institution of the university is currently evolving is due to the clash of traditional academic culture (values, ethos, standards, aspirations) with the completely opposite corporate culture typical of firms, enterprises, corporations. The opposition of these two cultures is to be found at ten dimensions. The erosion of the traditional academic culture and its replacement by corporate culture – bureaucratization, fiscalization, quantitative measures of effects, profit criteria, competitive individualism – undermines academic community and results in numerous pathologies. The remedy is the reactivation of the idea of the university and restoring the balance between its principles and the necessities of late modernity and globalized society.
The concept of moral space is presented here, in the arguments of classical authors who treated the decay of moral space as an inevitable cost of modernity. Three areas are identified where the decay of moral space is manifested in our period of ‘late modernity’. They are: violent crime, distrust and cynicism, and the vanishing of social capital. Paradoxically, however, opportunities to overcome the current moral void are discovered in the very traits of modernity: reflexiveness and globalization. They allow the process of moral healing through the reconstitution of primordial communities, ethnic, national, religious, in an open, tolerant and ecumenical manner, as well as the constitution of new communities of universalist and global reach.
Examining the core sociological theories that have emerged in the first two decades of the current century, A Critical Introduction to Contemporary Social Theory outlines their attempts to answer the most fundamental questions of the discipline, from the nature of social order to the mechanisms of social change. Through a careful exploration of the history of modern social theory, Piotr Sztompka lays the critical groundwork for investigating the development of contemporary social theory from its founding fathers in the 19th century, through the rich contributions of the 20th century, known as "the golden age of theory," up to the most recent developments and illuminates how it is both anchored in and a critique of previous attempts to theorize foundational questions to social being and action. Contemporary theory, the book argues, is now moving toward analysis of action, interpersonal relations, social and epistemological realism, and multivalent mechanisms at the root of social phenomenon. Major social theoretical thinkers like Anthony Giddens, Pierre Bourdieu, Jeffrey Alexander, Randall Collins, Jonathan Turner, Hans Joas, Ulrich Beck, Erving Goffman, and others are presented and evaluated as significant contributors to contemporary social theory, while pointing toward future possibilities for social theory in the current century. This will be a key resource for undergraduate and graduate students in sociology, social theory, and contemporary cultural studies.
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