Harry Dahms

Harry F. Dahms is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Tennessee since fall 2004, and Director of Graduate Studies and Associate Head in the Department of Sociology (since 2006). His primary research and teaching areas are theory, economic sociology, globalization, social inequality, and social justice. Since 2008, he is also Editor of "Current Perspectives in Social Theory".

Education and career

Previously, he taught at Florida State University in Tallahassee (starting in 1993), and as a visiting professor at University of Goettingen , Germany (1999/2000). Before completing his PhD degree at the New School for Social Research in New York in 1993, he also taught at New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study. While at the New School, he benefited from the teaching and guidance of Arthur J. Vidich, Andrew Arato, Jose Casanova, Ágnes Heller, Robert Heilbroner, Guy Oakes, Claus Offe, Eric Hobsbawm, and others. His master’s degree is from University of Konstanz, Germany (1986), where Ralf Dahrendorf and Albrecht Wellmer were the most important influences.

Work

The primary reference frame of his research and teaching pertains to the tensions in the modern age between economic change, on the one hand, and politics, culture and society, on the other. Interpreting the contributions of Marx and Weber, in particular, as foundations for a dynamic theory of modern society, he starts out from the proposition that it is only from the perspective of “globalization” (including the debates about restructuring, transnational corporations, and neo-imperialism) that the contradictions and paradoxes of modern society can be disentangled. The spectrum of his theoretical reference points reaches from the critical theory of the Frankfurt School at one end, to Joseph Schumpeter's social theory of capitalism, at the other. In modern society, a particular kind of social order fused with a specific type of social processes, into an inherently irreconcilable force-field that maintains stability by devising mechanisms designed to contain the destructive power of the contradictions, in the process continually deepening those contradictions. The consequence is a widening gap between the categories social scientists employ to “meaningfully” interpret present conditions, and the categories that would have to be developed and deployed to maintain the possibility of meaning—socially, culturally, and politically. In the interest of setting the stage for developing categories that are tailored explicitly to capture the contradictory nature of modern society, he has begun to frame the latter as compounded layers of alienation. A related line of inquiry pertains to the possibilities to tackle alienation that might result from implementations of basic income, or guaranteed minimum income. In addition to being Editor of "Current Perspectives in Social Theory", he is also Associate Editor of "Basic Income Studies", "Soundings. An Interdisciplinary Journal", Advisory Editor of "The Sociological Quarterly", and a Member of the Editorial Board of "The Newfound Press", and imprint of the University of Tennessee Libraries.

elected Bibliography

*No Social Science Without Critical Theory (Editor). Volume 25 of "Current Perspectives in Social Theory" (Emerald/JAI, 2008) -- http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/bookseries/02781204.
*Globalization Between the Cold War and Neo-Imperialism (Special Volume Editor). Volume 24 of "Current Perspectives in Social Theory" (Elsevier/JAI, 2006) -- http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/bookseries/02781204.
*"Capitalism Unbound? Peril and Promise of Basic Income." "Basic Income Studies" 1(1) 2006--http://www.bepress.com/bis/.
*"Globalization as Hyper-Alienation: Critiques of Traditional Marxism as Arguments for Basic Income." "Current Perspectives in Social Theory." 23 2005: 205-77.
*"Does Alienation have a Future? Recapturing the Core of Critical Theory." In "Trauma, Promise, and the Millennium: The Evolution of Alienation." ed. L. Langman and D.K. Fishman. Rowman and Littlefield, 2005.
*"THE MATRIX Trilogy as Critical Theory of Alienation: Communicating a Message of Radical Transformation." "Transdisciplinary Journal of Emergence." 3 (1) 2005: 108-24.
*"Sociology in the Age of Globalization: Toward a Dynamic Sociological Theory." "Current Perspectives in Social Theory." 21 2002: 287-320.
*Transformations of Capitalism: Economy, Society and the State in Modern Times (London: Palgrave, and New York: NYU Press, 2000).
*"The Early Frankfurt School Critique of Capitalism: Critical Theory Between Pollock's `State Capitalism' and the Critique of Instrumental Reason." In "The Theory of Capitalism in the German Economic Tradition." ed. P. Koslowski Berlin: Springer, 2000.
*"Beyond the Carousel of Reification: Critical Social Theory After Lukács, Adorno and Habermas." "Current Perspectives in Social Theory." 18 1998: 3-62.
*"Theory in Weberian Marxism: Patterns of Critical Social Theory in Lukács and Habermas." "Sociological Theory." 15 (3) 1997:181-214.
*"From Creative Action to the Social Rationalization of the Economy: Joseph A. Schumpeter's Social Theory." "Sociological Theory." 13 (1) 1995: 1-13.

Links

*Reification
*Marx's theory of alienation
* [http://web.utk.edu/~hdahms/ Harry F. Dahms' Web Page]
* [http://web.utk.edu/~hdahms/alienation.html The Alienation Group]
* [http://web.utk.edu/~utsocdep Department of Sociology @ University of Tennessee]
* [http://www.uniradio-magdeburg.de/70-0-14-5-07-prof--harry-dahms.html Möglichkeiten und Gefahren des garantierten Grundeinkommens aus gesellschaftstheoretischer Sicht -- Lecture at Otto von Guericke University, Magdeburg, Germany, on possibilities and dangers of basic income]
* [http://www.bepress.com/bis/ Basic Income Studies web-site]
*Theodor W. Adorno
*Jürgen Habermas
*The Matrix
*Philippe Van Parijs