The Civilizational Dimension in Sociological Analysis

Dados Bibliográficos

ID4480947
AutoresN Eisenstadt, Shmuel N Eisenstadt (autor correspondente)
Ano2000
Volume62
Fascículo1
Páginas1-21
Data de publicação2000-08-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoThesis Eleven (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0725-5136 • E-ISSN: 1461-7455
EditoraSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0725513600062000002
OpenAlexW1986359702
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas42
Referências citadas11

The civilizational turn in sociological theory is best understood as an attempt to do full justice to the autonomy of culture (against all versions of structural-functional theory) without conceding the issue to cultural determinism. Civilizational formations are based on combinations of cultural visions of the world with regulative frameworks of social life, but the relationship between the two levels is open to conflicting interpretations and strategic uses of them. Axial age civilizations open up new structural and historical dimensions of interaction between cultural and social patterns, and are therefore central to the agenda of civilizational analysis. Among the later breakthroughs which draw on Axial sources, the emergence of modernity stands out as particularly important; the cultural and political program of modernity may be seen as a new and distinctive civilization, but it remains open to more or less formative influences from older civilizational legacies

Autonomy · Civilization · Determinism · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Modernity · Modernization theory · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Vision · Anthropology · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · Law · Philosophy · Religion and Society Interactions · Weber, Simmel, Sociological Theory