Gerard Delanty
Biographic Data
| ID | 235178 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Gerard Delanty |
| GIVEN NAMES | Gerard |
| FAMILY NAME | Delanty |
| SIGNATURE | DELANTY G |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Sussex |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7260-5904 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 140 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 952 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 131 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 9 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1995 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 15 |
The Climate Crisis and the Problem of Lock-in
The contested legacy of Jürgen Habermas
The essay offers an evaluation of the legacy of the writings of Jürgen Habermas. In part personal, it considers the fate of critical theory, especially in light of Habermas's turn to normative political philosophy. I argue that the core of his work was to find normative foundations of reason in human communication, which is open-ended but fragile. The guiding thread in his writings was that truth claims are implicit in communication and are what …
Towards a Critical Social Theory of the Idea of the Future’
This essay is a short reply to Richard Swedberg’s review of my book, Senses of the Future: Conflicting Ideas of the Future in the World Today (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2024). The main points are addressed. In addition I sum up the rationale and aims of the book
Social dreaming and world building in the Anthropocene
In a climate-changed world, utopian social dreaming promises to educate our desires for alternative ways of being and living. This Forum Exchange examines the possibilities and limitations of the anti-perfectionist utopianism advocated by Mathias Thaler in his book No Other Planet, which he develops by combining theory-building and storytelling. Considering the three functions of utopianism that Thaler identifies (to estrange, galvanize or cautio…
Special Section Institutionalized Anti-Anti-Semitism in Germany
Senses of the Future
The future has become a problem for the present. Almost every critical issue is now understood and experienced through the prism of the future since this is the primary focus for the playing out of crises. Senses of the Future offers a wide-ranging discussion of theories of the future. It covers the main ideas of the future in modern thought and explores how we should view the future today in light of a plurality of very different and conflicting…
Introduction
There is a new sensibility to the concept of the future in recent writings in the human and social sciences. The modern idea of the future is undergoing a tremendous rupture today such that older or taken-for-granted assumptions about it can no longer be left unscrutinized. While much of the new interest in the future is about events yet to come - and the spectre of catastrophe looms large in such thinking - the challenge for social theory is to …
Sociology (translated by N.V. Romanovsky)
Emily Erikson, Trade and Nation
Introduction to the special issue on the Russo-Ukrainian War
The Russo-Ukrainian War marks a significant moment in the post-1945 history of Europe when a new European war has begun that will shape relations with Russia for a long time to come. This war is not a regional war but is a product of the divergent and seemingly irreconcilable paths of the Russian Federation and Ukraine that go back to the collapse of the USSR while the critical juncture was the Iraq war, which set the terms for the current collap…
What is capitalism? Toward a working definition
Since the 2007-2008 financial crisis, capitalism has returned as a major concept within the social sciences. While this has led to important interventions, there is yet to be a widely accepted definition of the concept. Such a definition matters, both for assessing the merits of recent scholarship but also because attempts at thinking 'beyond capitalism' require an understanding of what one is trying to overcome. For it to be of use, we need a de…
Social theory
This is an interview with Gerard Delanty. It discusses his intellectual trajectory and involvement in social theory and in particular explores his approach to critical theory. The interview also focuses on his editorship of the European Journal of Social Theory, now celebrating its 25th anniversary and the 100th issue
Capitalism and its Critics
"Capitalism and its Critics offers an accessible account of major theories of capitalism from the industrial revolution to the present day. The book provides a comprehensive account of the economic and social thought of key theorists from Adam Smith and Karl Marx to David Harvey and Thomas Piketty. Capitalism has long been the subject of passionate debate, and today such contestations are perhaps more timely than ever. For its advocates, capitali…
Capitalism and Its Critics
Pandemics, Politics, and Society
Routledge International Handbook of Contemporary Social and Political Theory
Return of the Nation-State? De-Europeanisation and the Limits of Neo-Nationalism
This commentary analyses the view that the resurgence of nationalism will lead to the return of the nation-state and an accentuated de-Europeanisation. I argue against this position. While neo-nationalism has become a major force in Europe and elsewhere, I claim it does not have a capacity to restore the nation-state. I discuss what I take to be the key features of neo-nationalism, central to which is authoritarianism, and outline four arguments …
La sociologie aujourd'hui et l'héritage classique
L'article pose la question si la sociologie peut survivre sans le concept de société et sans les médiations entre les différentes parties et dimensions de la réalité sociale. Notant que la théorie sociale n'a pas réussi à faire la synthèse, l'auteur soutient que la tâche revient à la théorie sociologique. Contre toutes les substitutions du concept de société par ceux des individus, de la culture ou de la nature et contre la microsociologie et l'h…
Critical theory and the question of technology
Unlike the first generation of critical theorists, contemporary critical theory has largely ignored technology. This is to the detriment of a critical theory of society - technology is now a central feature of our daily lives and integral to the contemporary form of capitalism. Rather than seek to rescue the first generation's substantive theory of technology, which has been partly outmoded by historical developments, the approach adopted in this…
Futures of sustainability
This essay is a comment on the research program launched by Frank Adloff and Sighard Neckel. My comment is specifically focused on their research agenda as outlined in their trend-setting article, 'Futures of sustainability as modernization, transformation, and control: A conceptual framework'. The comment is also addressed more generally to the research program of the Humanities Centre for Advanced Studies 'Futures of Sustainability'. I raise th…
Imagining the future
The question this article seeks to answer is what are the major social transformations going on in contemporary society that will shape the future? The argument is that the analysis of the future requires a clearer perspective on social struggles and major social transformations in societal structures including structures of consciousness. The future is thus both actuality and possibility; it is of the present but also beckons beyond the present.…
Teoría crítica como crítica a la InSustentabilidad
Este artículo sitúa la noción de sustentabilidad en el marco de la teoría crítica, argumentando que posee una importancia normativa para la sociedad contemporánea y un potencial crítico latente, a menudo ignorado en concepciones y prácticas convencionales. Delanty propone la "sustentabilidad crítica" como modelo cultural poscorporativo, alternativo a la visión neoliberal y a las definiciones tecnocráticas. Esta cuestiona el "pensamiento deludido"…
Formations of European Modernity
What does self-determination mean today? The resurgence of nationalism and European integration in question
The paradox of nationalism today in Europe is that while there is ever more demand and opportunities for nationalism it has become more divisive than ever before. Nationalism now divides the nation rather than uniting it. For this reason, its capacity to offer an alternative to the status quo is severely limited. In the past collective self-determination was predicated on the presumption of a defined people who were resisting external domination …
The future of capitalism
The article provides a framework for thinking about how the question of the future of capitalism might be addressed. One of the problems resides in the very definition of capitalism and of what its defining features consist of and whether we should be talking about ‘capitalist society’ or the ‘capitalist economy’ or some kind of post-capitalist condition. Following Polanyi, Castoriadis and Habermas, it is argued that capitalism and democracy toge…
The cosmopolitan imagination
Critical cosmopolitanism is an emerging direction in social theory and reflects both an object of study and a distinctive methodological approach to the social world. It differs from normative political and moral accounts of cosmopolitanism as world polity or universalistic culture in its conception of cosmopolitanism as socially situated and as part of the self-constituting nature of the social world itself. It is an approach that shifts the emp…
Inventing Europe
Governing the Anthropocene
The growing body of literature on the idea of the Anthropocene has opened up serious questions that go to the heart of the social and human sciences. There has been as yet no satisfactory theoretical framework for the analysis of the Anthropocene debate in the social and human sciences. The notion of the Anthropocene is not only a condition in which humans have become geologic agents, thus signalling a temporal shift in Earth history: it can be s…
Citizenship as a learning process
A relatively neglected dimension of citizenship is learning processes. A theory of learning is outlined, distinguishing between individual learning processes and collective ones. Linking learning to citizenship suggests a model of cultural citizenship, which entails mechanisms of translation whereby the different levels of learning are connected. In this article, the idea of cultural citizenship is conceived of in terms of learning processes and …
Models of citizenship
Citizenship implies membership of a political community and is internally defined by rights, duties, participation, and identity. It has traditionally been subordinate to nationality, which defines the territorial limits of citizenship. In order to theorize forms of citizenship that go beyond the spatial domain of nationality, citizenship must be seen as multilayered, operating on the regional, national and supranational levels. European citizens…
Europe and Asia beyond East and West
Europe and Asia Beyond East and WestThis is a timely volume that explores Europe in its relation to Asia in a way that moves beyond simplistic notions of West and East.Rejecting the idea of a clash of civilizations, the contributions highlight the interlinked nature of Europe and Asia and attempt to identify cosmopolitan moments of openness.From both a historical and a contemporary perspective, it is shown that both Europe and Asia are not based …
Cultural diversity, democracy and the prospects of cosmopolitanism
The most appropriate way of theorizing cultural diversity is to situate it in the context of a broader relational theory of culture in which the key dynamic is cultural encounters. The relational conception of culture places the emphasis on the relations between social actors and the processes by which some of these relations generate enduring cultural regularities and forms. This has important implications for political community and in particul…
Handbook of Historical Sociology
What is important in historical sociology? What are the main routes of development in the subject? This Handbook consists of 26 chapters on historical sociology. It is divided into three parts. Part One is devoted to Foundations and covers Marx, Weber, evolutionary and functionalist approaches, the Annales School, Elias, Nelson and Eisenstadt. Part Two moves on to consider major approaches, such as modernization approaches, late Marxist approache…
Borders in a Changing Europe
The Cosmopolitan Imagination
Gerard Delanty provides a comprehensive assessment of the idea of cosmopolitanism in social and political thought which links cosmopolitan theory with critical social theory. He argues that cosmopolitanism has a critical dimension which offers a solution to one of the weaknesses in the critical theory tradition: failure to respond to the challenges of globalization and intercultural communication. Critical cosmopolitanism, he proposes, is an appr…
The Idea of a Cosmopolitan Europe
The idea of a cosmopolitan Europe is defined against a ‘national Europe’, on the one side and on the other, ‘global Europe’ where an internationalist EU-led Europe plays a major role in the world. A cosmopolitan Europe is a more accurate designation of the emerging form of Europeanization as a mediated and emergent reality of the national and the global. It is possible to conceive of European identity as a cosmopolitan identity based on a cultura…
Not All Is Lost in Translation
Of the many challenging issues facing cosmopolitan thought today, a major one is the problem of conceptual and cultural translation, since it is often the case that cosmopolitanism is highly relevant to Indian and Chinese thought, even though the term itself is not used in the sources or in the interpretations. Three problems are addressed, namely universalist versus contextualist positions, Eurocentrism, and the problem of conceptual and cultura…
The Making of a Post-western Europe
The enlargement of the European Union to include eventually Turkey and the former communist countries is a major challenge for our understanding of the meaning of Europe as a geopolitical, social and cultural space. It is also a question of the identity of Europe as one shaped by social or systemic integration. With the diminishing significance of national borders within the EU, the outer territorial frontier is also losing its significance and E…
Rethinking Irish History
This book provides a critical interpretation of the construction of Irish national identity in the longer perspective of history. Drawing on recent sociological theory, the authors demonstrate how nat
Beyond the Nation-State
The crisis of national identity in Western Europe is related to the rise of a new nationalism which operates at many different levels, ranging from extreme xenophobic forms to the more moderate forms of cultural nationalism. Underlying the new nationalism in general is more a hostility against immigrants than against other nations; it is motivated less by notions of cultural superiority than by the implications multiculturalism has for the welfar…
Cosmopolitan Perspectives on European and Asian Transnationalism
The article explores the implications of major social transformation in Asia for Europe. It specifically addresses expressions of cosmopolitan engagement between transnational organizations representing Asia and Europe. Within Asia, there is some evidence to indicate that cosmopolitanism is becoming a significant factor in culture and in politics, as is illustrated by increasing transnational cooperation within Asia and the dilution of national i…
The Resonance of Mitteleuropa
Habermas and Occidental Rationalism
While Habermas's theory of communicative action is deeply critical of all kinds of ethnocentrism, proposing a discursive concept of universal morality which transcends culture, a residual Eurocentrism still pervades it. Habermas's theory rests on a notion of modernity which is tied to Occidental rationalism, and when viewed in the global context or in the context of deeply divided societies it is problematic. The theory fails to grasp that univer…
Northern Ireland in a Europe of Regions
Introduction to the special issue on the Russo-Ukrainian War
The Russo-Ukrainian War marks a significant moment in the post-1945 history of Europe when a new European war has begun that will shape relations with Russia for a long time to come. This war is not a regional war but is a product of the divergent and seemingly irreconcilable paths of the Russian Federation and Ukraine that go back to the collapse of the USSR while the critical juncture was the Iraq war, which set the terms for the current collap…
Fear of Others
In recent years a major challenge for the EU has emerged around social issues and collective identities. With the emergence of a European political community that has diminished national sovereignty at a time when global forces are also undermining nation states, both Europe and migration become linked as sources of instability. Anxieties about Europe and migration are linked with fears of a clash of civilizations and anxieties about social secur…
European Identity and Architecture
Architecture has become an important discourse for new expressions of post-national identity in general and in particular for the emergence of a 'spatial' European identity. No longer tied to the state to the same degree as in the period of nation-building, architecture has become a significant cultural expression of post-national identities within and beyond the nation-state. The article looks at four such discourses, first, taking the Millenniu…
The limits and possibilities of a European identity
During the Cold War period European identity was largely secured by the notion of the West; despite its lofty ideals it was a Cold War construct shaped and defined by the global confrontation of capitalism and communism. Europe was secure in its identity as the eastern frontier of the United States. Today, however, European identity is being redefined, but the terms of its redefinition are uncertain. With the collapse of the old bi-polar construc…
Critical theory and the question of technology
Unlike the first generation of critical theorists, contemporary critical theory has largely ignored technology. This is to the detriment of a critical theory of society - technology is now a central feature of our daily lives and integral to the contemporary form of capitalism. Rather than seek to rescue the first generation's substantive theory of technology, which has been partly outmoded by historical developments, the approach adopted in this…
A Cosmopolitan Approach to the Explanation of Social Change
In recent years social science has been characterized by a cosmopolitan turn. Of the many questions that arise from this the most important are those that concern the implications for explaining social change. While cosmopolitanism is centrally about social change, much cosmopolitan theory due to its normative orientation lacks a capacity for explanation. The problem of explanation is also a problem that besets all 'big question' approaches in so…
Europe in the Mirror of the Orient
The theme of this chapter is the idea of Europe as an expression of western civilisation. One of the central contentions of this book is that the idea of Europe found its most enduring expression in the confrontation with the Orient in the age of imperialism. It was in the encounter with other civilisations that the identity of Europe was shaped. Europe did not derive its identity from itself but from the formation of a set of global contrasts. I…
The Ambivalence of Europe
This book is about how every age reinvented the idea of Europe in the mirror of its own identity. I shall bring ‘Europe’ into focus as a cultural construction and argue that it cannot be regarded as a self-evident entity: it is an idea as much as a reality. Europe, I shall be arguing, is a contested concept and it was in adversity that it became a self-conscious idea. As the central and organising metaphor of a complex civilisation, the European …
Europe after the Cold War
This chapter is principally concerned with the consequences of the ending of the Cold War with regard to the identity of Europe. Five major issues in particular are discussed and which are all linked to the ending of the Cold War: the question of German unification; the rediscovery of Mitteleuropa ; the problem of the double transition from communism to capitalism and liberal democracy in the former communist world; the movement toward unity in W…
The Westernisation of Europe
This chapter is mostly concerned with the consolidation of the idea of Europe as a cultural framework and the formation of aEuropean identity in the Middle Ages. The counter-offensive, in the form of the crusades that the West launched against the Muslim Orient, failed to restore western fortunes, and, as a result, the identity of Europe as the Christian West found its focus of hostility in Islam. But the idea of Europe as a cultural model was mo…
Conclusion
The aim of this book has not been to demonstrate that the idea of Europe is an idea with negative implications. I do not wish to suggest that it should be abandoned as a cultural concept. It is in many senses a collective concept for unclear ideas, not all of which should be rejected. The general thrust of the argument has been that there are many ‘Europes’ and that the one that has become predominant today is very much one of exclusion and not i…
Europe as a Cold War Construction
There is another sense apart from the political in which it is possible to speak of Europe as a construction. Europe is also a cultural construction. In this the United States played a leading role. To Americans Europe was a unitary and homogeneous entity and served as a racial myth of national origins. The chapter begins by looking at the representation of Europe in the American historical imagination. It focuses, more specifically, on the theme…
The Crisis of European Identity
This chapter is principally addressed to the question of Mitteleuropa . This slippery concept has generally been considered to apply not only to a region but also to a cultural-political idea. The term suggests something much more ideological than the idea of Europe. Today there is a strong tendency to revive the idea of Central Europe, which is seen as the true historical heritage of the area which, since the Second World War, has become known a…
The Origins of the Idea of Europe
In this chapter I want to focus on the genesis and development of a conceptual demarcation running through western society from classical antiquity to the Middle Ages whereby a particular discourse of power is privileged over against others. The nexus of this discourse is the West-East dualism and the corresponding counter-factualism of an ‘us’/’them’ polarity. I wish to show that one of the most enduring forms of western identity was the postula…
Europe in the Age of Modernity
This chapter focuses on the idea of Europe in relation to the great universalist revolutions of modernity: the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Enlightenment. I also attempt to assess the impact of nationalism and romanticism on the idea of Europe. The idea of Europe is a creation of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, for it was in these centuries that it entered into its own as a secularised version of Christendom which began to decline …
The Limits of Europe
The theme of this chapter is the question of the historical frontiers of Europe, in particular the eastern frontier. One aspect of the argument is that what is often, and misleadingly, called ‘Eastern Europe’, in fact consists of at least two historical regions which can be contrasted to ‘Western Europe’, on the one hand, and to Russia and Turkey on the other. These regions are firstly, south-east Europe, comprising principally the Balkans, and, …
The limits and possibilities of a European identity
During the Cold War period European identity was largely secured by the notion of the West; despite its lofty ideals it was a Cold War construct shaped and defined by the global confrontation of capitalism and communism. Europe was secure in its identity as the eastern frontier of the United States. Today, however, European identity is being redefined, but the terms of its redefinition are uncertain. With the collapse of the old bi-polar construc…
Inventing Europe
The revolutions in Eastern Europe and the redefinition of Europe
This paper is an exploration of the socio-cultural cohesion of Europe in the context of the end of the cold war. The eastern European revolutions of 1989/90 undermined the cold war consensus of east and west both in the global and in the European contexts. Since the Second World War western Europe had been shaped in the image of the United States just as eastern Europe was shaped in the image of the USSR, The question now is whether there is a ne…
Negotiating the Peace in Northern Ireland
Until the IRA ceasefire in August 1994 Northern Ireland, which had just experienced its most severe year of violence in many years, seemed to have been a society unable to break out of its some 25-year cycle of violence which has claimed over 3,000 lives - a not inconsiderable toll in a population of 1.5 million. This situation appears to have changed now in light of the recent IRA ceasefire and the Joint Declaration of the Irish and British gove…
Beyond the Nation-State
The crisis of national identity in Western Europe is related to the rise of a new nationalism which operates at many different levels, ranging from extreme xenophobic forms to the more moderate forms of cultural nationalism. Underlying the new nationalism in general is more a hostility against immigrants than against other nations; it is motivated less by notions of cultural superiority than by the implications multiculturalism has for the welfar…
The frontier and identities of exclusion in European history
L'A. s'interesse aux perspectives concernant l'unite de l'Europe sur le plan historique. Il montre qu'il n'existe pas une mais plusieurs visions de l'unite europeenne. Il souligne le caractere divers du Vieux continent. Il s'interroge s'il n'existe pas une structure sous-jacente qui forge l'unite de l'Europe et transcende ces differences. Il porte son attention sur les changements de frontieres dans ce cadre geographique. Il affirme que l'histoir…
Geneva, Zurich, Basel
Geneva, Zurich, Basel: History, culture, and national identity." History of European Ideas, 22(2), pp. 180–181
Northern Ireland in a Europe of Regions
Habermas and post‐national identity
Habermas's theory of post‐national identity has mostly been developed in the context of debates on German political culture. The basic ideas underlying it have emerged from his broader theory of society, in particular his notion of discursive democracy. His critique of nationalism and his discursive model of democracy can be used to form a theory of post‐national identity which can be applied to deeply divided political cultures. The case of Nort…
The Resonance of Mitteleuropa
Social exclusion and the new nationalism
The current wave of nationalism in Europe can be described as a fundamentally new kind of nationalism and therefore warrants the term ‘the new nationalism’. The new nationalism is essentially based on strategies of social exclusion in contrast to the old nationalism which was state‐centred, integrative, and rested on totalizing ideologies. The new nationalism has emerged in the context of the end of the Cold War and is a product of the crisis of …
Models of citizenship
Citizenship implies membership of a political community and is internally defined by rights, duties, participation, and identity. It has traditionally been subordinate to nationality, which defines the territorial limits of citizenship. In order to theorize forms of citizenship that go beyond the spatial domain of nationality, citizenship must be seen as multilayered, operating on the regional, national and supranational levels. European citizens…
Habermas and Occidental Rationalism
While Habermas's theory of communicative action is deeply critical of all kinds of ethnocentrism, proposing a discursive concept of universal morality which transcends culture, a residual Eurocentrism still pervades it. Habermas's theory rests on a notion of modernity which is tied to Occidental rationalism, and when viewed in the global context or in the context of deeply divided societies it is problematic. The theory fails to grasp that univer…
Nationalism and the Construction of Identity
The introduction presented a picture of an Irish national identity, still strongly influenced by the values of the national movement, continuing to impede the critical reflective capacity of the society. The major intellectual movement, historical revisionism, to have begun the process of questioning the virtues of nationalism — mostly in a highly oblique fashion — has not extended into a reflective and critical social scientific analysis of the …
Origins and Context of Irish National Identities
This chapter presents the first facet of a three-phase analysis of nineteenth century Irish nationalist mobilisation by focusing on the historical origins of the movement and the contextual conditions that precipitated large-scale mobilisation. In the next two chapters the actual mobilisation itself is examined as a process of constituting a new national collective identity while in chapters six and seven the institutionalisation of this identity…
Sociology (108 works) · Political science (98 works) · Law (85 works) · Politics (75 works) · Philosophy (59 works) · Epistemology (57 works) · Social science (41 works) · Law (34 works) · Aesthetics (30 works) · History (30 works)