R J Antonio
Biographic Data
| ID | 20994 |
|---|---|
| NAME | R J Antonio |
| GIVEN NAMES | R J |
| FAMILY NAME | Antonio |
| SIGNATURE | ANTONIO R J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Kansas |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9617-5881 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 72 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 243 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 72 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1972 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
The Passing of Jean Baudrillard
Remembering Derrida
Absolutizing the Particular
From the late-1960s to the mid-1980s, Telos brought the Frankfurt School, Western Marxism, and other critical Continental thought to North America and the English speaking world; it was the critical theory organ of that era and best ever English language journal on the topic. Its left lean did not compromise its critical view of communist regimes and left-wing parties and thinkers. Its contribution with regard to critical theories, with Hegelian-…
After Neoliberalism
Capitalism in the Interregnum
This entry elaborates the changes in the structure and ideology of capitalism from postwar Keynesian capitalism, through the neoliberal era, to the current legitimacy crisis of the latter or the interregnum after the Great Recession, the ascendance of ethnoracial nationalism, the failed Trump coup, and the COVID‐19 crisis. The focus is primarily on the USA, the now threatened hegemon of the Keynesian and neoliberal regimes, with due attention to …
What Capitalism Needs
Democracy and Capitalism in the Interregnum
This paper addresses Trump's failed self-coup, its authoritarian backwash, and threats to democracy. It analyzes his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, which contributed to his 2020 election loss and deepened the political polarization that led to the January 6 Capitol insurrection. The essay also discusses how the forty-year acceleration of economic inequality and sociopolitical de-democratization generated a legitimacy crisis of the hegemoni…
Is There a Future for Bourgeois Liberalism?
Distinguished by extreme, systematized rationalism, Weber argued, bourgeois culture makes the social world in some ways more predictable and more comfortable but precludes a widely shared good life and social justice. He stressed emphatically that free-market capitalism, by maximizing formal rationality oriented to capital accounting and profitability, produces substantively “irrational” consequences that undermine the sociocultural and material …
Habermas and Giddens on Praxis and Modernity
Reactionary Tribalism Redux
This article addresses the question of whether the social impacts, especially increased socioeconomic inequality, and formalization of democracy generated by the neoliberal economization of politics is an important albeit not singular driver of resurgent ethnocracial populism and illiberal democracy
Marx, Karl (1818–1883)
Karl Marx's critique of capitalism and economic inequality and his appeal for social justice have inspired leftwing political parties, labor movements, and insurgencies worldwide. His ideas have often been fused with local political cultures and interpreted and employed in diverse ways. His call for global revolution and totemic status among communists has made him a very controversial thinker. In wealthy capitalist countries, he has been mostly …
Marx and the Earth
Is Prosumer Capitalism on the Rise
George Ritzer's current TSQ piece adds to his distinguished record of innovative work on consumption and rationalization, providing new twists to his analyses of prosumption, especially its signifi
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1844–1900)
At only 24 years old, Nietzsche was appointed to a position in classical philology at the University of Basel and granted a doctoral degree from the University of Leipzig without completing a dissertation. Arthur Schopenhauer's philosophy and Richard Wagner's music inspired young Nietzsche's thinking. Dispensing with the formalities of academic writing and systematic philosophizing, his books were brilliant, unorthodox, and controversial. Brief v…
Remembering Ben Agger (1952-2015)
Piketty's Nightmare Capitalism
Nietzsche Agonistes
Plundering the Commons
Unplanned, exponential economic growth has been the liberal standard for evaluating economies, societies and effectiveness of political leaders and for addressing problems of all sorts. In the later twentieth century, the American conservative movement revived market liberalism to restore growth after the long post-World War II boom ended. The neoliberal policy regime stressed the growth imperative to the exclusion of other social ends, which wer…
After Neoliberalism
This chapter contains sections titled: Clashing Models of Capitalism: Hayek VS. Polanyi Market Liberalism's Return: From the “Not Quite Golden Age” to the “Great U - Turn” Hegemonic Neoliberalism: From Crest to Crisis to Emphatic Reassertion(?) Capitalism at the Point of Inflection: Neoliberalism's Wake Conclusion References
Karl Marx
This chapter contains sections titled: Marx’s Life and Contexts Marx’s Social Theory Marx’s Place in Social Theory Bibliography
Hazards of neoliberalism
This case study explores how neoliberal policies shape the impacts of a natural disaster. We investigate the reactions to major damages to the electric power system and the restoration of power in the wake of Hurricane Ike, which devastated the Houston, Texas, metropolitan area in September 2008. We argue that the neoliberal policy agenda insured a minimalist approach to the crisis and generated dissatisfaction among many residents. The short-ter…
The Unbearable Lightness of Politics
“It's anti-American and anti-freedom.” (Rand Paul)Newly elected Republican Senator Paul states succinctly the conservative view of U.S. cooperation with international efforts to stem global warming
Eclipse of the Professoriate
Frank Donoghue focuses on fate of the professor/' excluding academics depending primarily on funded research and consul tancy. Employing an array of critical works, reports, and studies (some by sociologists such as Steven Brint and Stanley Aronowitz), he analyzes trends in American higher edu cation and speculates about its future. In his view, polarized educational world of which Dewey warned has arrived with a vengeance and is destined to beco…
Max Weber's 'Objectivity' Reconsidered
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1844–1900)
When Nietzsche was only 25 years old he was granted a doctoral degree from the University of Leipzig without completing a dissertation, and was appointed to a position in classical philology at the University of Basel. From the start, his philosophical writing was brilliant, unorthodox, and controversial. He dispensed with the formalities of academic writing and systemic philosophizing. Arthur Schopenhauer's philosophy and Richard Wagner's music …
Immanent Critique as the Core of Critical Theory
My goal is to explain the intellectual and historical basis of critical theory-a term with vague and imprecise meaning for sociologists. Confusion about the approach is more fundamental than that usually attributed to its difficult, philosophical terminology. The central issue is that critical theory is not a general theory, but is instead a method of analysis deriving from a nonpositivist epistemology. The focus will be upon the method of immane…
The Unbearable Lightness of Politics
“It's anti-American and anti-freedom.” (Rand Paul)Newly elected Republican Senator Paul states succinctly the conservative view of U.S. cooperation with international efforts to stem global warming
The Contradiction of Domination and Production in Bureaucracy
One of the contributions of Max Weber is his distinction between formal and substantive rationality. When viewed in relation to his theory of bureaucracy this distinction provides a context for clarifying the domination aspects from the productive activities of organization. The case study of Roman bureaucracy is used to illustrate how the contradictions between two coexisting forms of rationality-one reflecting the control of persons and resourc…
Nietzsche's Antisociology
Although a very important figure in interdisciplinary social theory, Nietzsche is absent from sociological theory, especially in the United States. Equating rationalization with cultural homogenization and liquidation of particularity, Nietzsche saw "decadence" where modern social theorists saw progress. He held that sociology drapes cultural domination, regimentation, and exhaustion with the appearance of legitimacy. This essay explores his view…
After Postmodernism
Revived Weimar‐era “radical conservatism” and fresh “New Right” and “paleoconservative” theories offer a radical cultural critique of global capitalism and liberal democracy. Expressing a broader retribalization and perceived failure of modernization, their defense of communal particularity attacks the multicultural nation‐state, liberal rights, and universal citizenship. This essay links reactionary tribalism to a recurrent 20th‐century theoreti…
Postmodern Storytelling versus Pragmatic Truth-Seeking
The task of speaking the truth is an infinite labor: to respect it in its complexity is an obligation that no power can afford to shortchange, unless it would impose the silence of slavery (Foucault 1989, p. 308). . . . the attainment of truth is the outcome of the development of complex and elaborate methods of searching, methods that . . in many respects go against the human grain, so they are adopted only after long discipline in a school of h…
The Processual Dimension of Degradation Ceremonies
Max Weber and Postmodern Theory
The Normative Foundations of Emancipatory Theory
From the start, emancipatory theory has been plagued by contradictory and incompletely elaborated normative underpinnings that weaken its sociological and ethical credibility. Jurgen Habermas, the leading contemporary critical theorist, has attempted to address this problem in an extensive reconstruction of the theories of Marx and Weber that appropriates elements of American pragmatist thought. Yet he resorts to an evolutionary normative argumen…
Marx and the Earth
Communication, Modernity, and Democracy in Habermas and Dewey
The political culture of the Federal Republic [of Germany] would be worse today if it had not adopted impulses from American political culture during the first postwar decades. The Federal Republic opened itself for the first time to the West without reservations: we adopted the political theory of the Enlightenment, we grasped the pluralism which, first carried by religious sects, molded the political mentality, and we became acquainted with the…
The Origin, Development, and Contemporary Status of Critical Theory
This paper describes the nature of critical theory, its historical development, its connections to sociology and Marxism, and the central debates over its core ideas
Reactionary Tribalism Redux
This article addresses the question of whether the social impacts, especially increased socioeconomic inequality, and formalization of democracy generated by the neoliberal economization of politics is an important albeit not singular driver of resurgent ethnocracial populism and illiberal democracy
Sociological Dilemmas
Hazards of neoliberalism
This case study explores how neoliberal policies shape the impacts of a natural disaster. We investigate the reactions to major damages to the electric power system and the restoration of power in the wake of Hurricane Ike, which devastated the Houston, Texas, metropolitan area in September 2008. We argue that the neoliberal policy agenda insured a minimalist approach to the crisis and generated dissatisfaction among many residents. The short-ter…
Locating The Civil Sphere
Jeff Alexander (2006) has too many productive years ahead for The Civil Sphere to be called a culminating text, but it is a tome (793 pages) that refines basic threads of roughly three decades of p
Reason and history in Hayek
Democracy and Capitalism in the Interregnum
This paper addresses Trump's failed self-coup, its authoritarian backwash, and threats to democracy. It analyzes his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, which contributed to his 2020 election loss and deepened the political polarization that led to the January 6 Capitol insurrection. The essay also discusses how the forty-year acceleration of economic inequality and sociopolitical de-democratization generated a legitimacy crisis of the hegemoni…
Plundering the Commons
Unplanned, exponential economic growth has been the liberal standard for evaluating economies, societies and effectiveness of political leaders and for addressing problems of all sorts. In the later twentieth century, the American conservative movement revived market liberalism to restore growth after the long post-World War II boom ended. The neoliberal policy regime stressed the growth imperative to the exclusion of other social ends, which wer…
Democracy and Abundance
Democracy and abundance have almost always been at the heart of American ideals about the "good life." The framers of the constitution envisioned possible states of affairs in which the organization of resources and distribution of rights, responsibilities, and goods would realize these core values and generate legitimacy and consensus. Their concept of democracy defined what American society was and what it should become. Various advocates propo…
After Neoliberalism
Piketty's Nightmare Capitalism
Eclipse of the Professoriate
Frank Donoghue focuses on fate of the professor/' excluding academics depending primarily on funded research and consul tancy. Employing an array of critical works, reports, and studies (some by sociologists such as Steven Brint and Stanley Aronowitz), he analyzes trends in American higher edu cation and speculates about its future. In his view, polarized educational world of which Dewey warned has arrived with a vengeance and is destined to beco…
Max Weber's 'Objectivity' Reconsidered
The Active Society Revisited
The Processual Dimension of Degradation Ceremonies
On ignoring the subtle dimensions of labeling
This article focuses upon Walter However, its implications go beyond this to suggest the weaknesses inherent in the narrow conception of labeling processes. This narrow conception is characterized by an exclusive concern for the direct, public forms of labeling and stigmatization. The argument presented here is that these factors are only part of a much broader process of societal reaction. This more inclusive conception of societal reaction sugg…
Social Problems
An Economic Theory of the Feudal System
Witold Kula. An Economic Theory of the Feudal System: Towards a Model of the Polish Economy 1500-1800. Trans. Lawrence Garner. London: NLB, and New York: Schocken, 1976. $12.50 cloth
The Work Ethic in Industrial America, 1850-192
The Visible Hand
Alfred D. Chandler Jr. The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap, 1977. $18.50
The Contradiction of Domination and Production in Bureaucracy
One of the contributions of Max Weber is his distinction between formal and substantive rationality. When viewed in relation to his theory of bureaucracy this distinction provides a context for clarifying the domination aspects from the productive activities of organization. The case study of Roman bureaucracy is used to illustrate how the contradictions between two coexisting forms of rationality-one reflecting the control of persons and resourc…
Late Capitalism
Nightfrost in Prague
Zdenek Mlynar. Nightfrost in Prague: The End of Humane Socialism. Translated by Paul Wilson. New York: Karz Publishers, 1980
Max Weber's Vision of History
Praxis and Method
Praxis and Method: A Sociological Dialogue with Luckacs, Gramsci and the Early Frankfurt School.By Richard Kilminster and Antonio Gramsci: Conservative Schooling for Radical Politics. By Harold Entwistle Get access Robert J. Antonio Robert J. Antonio University of Kansas Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Social Forces, Volume 59, Issue 4, June 1981, Pages 1316–1317, https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/59.4.1316 Publi…
The Science of Society
G.L. Ulmen. The Science of Society: Toward an Understanding of the Life and Work of Karl August Wittfogel. Mouton Publishers, 1978. xxviii plus 747pages. $103 hardbound
Immanent Critique as the Core of Critical Theory
My goal is to explain the intellectual and historical basis of critical theory-a term with vague and imprecise meaning for sociologists. Confusion about the approach is more fundamental than that usually attributed to its difficult, philosophical terminology. The central issue is that critical theory is not a general theory, but is instead a method of analysis deriving from a nonpositivist epistemology. The focus will be upon the method of immane…
Praxis and Method
Sociological Dilemmas
The Imaginary Witness
Bureaucratic Approaches to the Bureaucracy
The “First International Conference on Comparative Historical and Critical Analysis of Bureaucracy” was held October 4-8,1982 near Zurich, Switzerland at the “Gottlieb Duttweiler Institut fur wirtschaftliche und soziale Studien” which is supported by the “Migros Community” — a large Swiss firm that is organized along cooperative lines and, according to its literature, committed to “social responsibility” and “democratic participation” as well as …
For Weber
The Origin, Development, and Contemporary Status of Critical Theory
This paper describes the nature of critical theory, its historical development, its connections to sociology and Marxism, and the central debates over its core ideas
Is Emancipatory Theory Possible
One-Dimensional Protestantism
American Sociology: World Rejection of Religions and Their Directions, by Arthur Vidich and Stanford Lyman
Political Leadership and Nihilism
Reason and history in Hayek
Max Weber and German Politics 1890-1920
A Weber-Marx Dialogue
Sociology (58 works) · Political science (40 works) · Philosophy (38 works) · Epistemology (32 works) · Law (32 works) · Politics (29 works) · Economics (19 works) · Law (17 works) · Weber, Simmel, Sociological Theory (17 works) · Philosophy (16 works)