Projects

Democracy has been a goal of popular struggles throughout the modern era. In the late 20th century, it was widely viewed as the obvious path for progress in government.

Multiple and competing identities are prominent in modern life.

The figure of ‘the human’ is basic to the notion of a shared species and correlated normative constructs like human rights, legal personhood, and citizenship.

As human beings, we have partial capacity to choose our futures – individually, in specific groups and societies, and at global scale. This is a matter of both conscious choices and aggregate impact of unintended activity.

Valued as engines of social mobility, economic growth, and ‘progress’, universities have also been transformed by increased scale, internal differentiation, inequality, cost, and shifting expectations. How much they serve the public good is now questioned.

Projects of ‘theory’ seek (a) to understand enduring, general features and issues in social life, (b) to grasp specific historical transformations and comparative differences in relation to that general background, and (c) to relate normative arguments to empirical knowledge.

The development of material infrastructures has profoundly shaped the nature of modern society, yet it is poorly grasped in social theory.