Vocation of Reason

H.T. Wilson, Ph.D. (1968) is a Professor at York University, Toronto. His most recent works include No Ivory Tower (Voyageur,1999), Bureaucratic Representation (Brill, 2001) and Capitalism after Postmodernism (Brill, 2002). His present work addresses the impact of spatial and temporal values on social, political and economic institutions and practices.Thomas M. Kemple, Ph.D. (1992) in Social and Political Thought, York University, Toronto. He has published on classical sociology and contemporary cultural theory, including Reading Marx Writing: Melodrama, the Market, and the 'Grundrisse' (Stanford University Press, 1995).

• AcknowledgementsList of Tables and FiguresEditor’s Foreword – The age of Weber, by THomas M. KempleAuthor’s Introduction – The Ambivalence of Reason: Max Weber’s Analysis of Western ModernityPART ONE. THE LIMITS OF ‘RATIONALITY’: FROM TRADITIONAL TO CRITICAL SOCIAL THEORYEditor’s note on Part II. Reading Max Weber: Critical Theory and the Limits of SociologyII. Critical Theory in America, 1938-1978: A Case of Intellectual Innovation and its ReceptionIII. Critical Theory and Social Science: Episodes in a Changing Problematic from Adorno to HabermasIV. Functional Rationality and ‘Sense of Function’: Critical Comments on an Ideological DistortionV. Use Value and Substantive Rationality: Marx and Weber on Dichotomization in Modern Social TheoryPART TWO. RECONSTRUCTING SOCIAL SCIENCE: FROM SOCIAL THEORIZING TO REFLEXIVE PRAXISEditor’s note on Part IIVI. Technocracy as Late Capitalist Ideology: Between Spectre and MythVII. Communication, Deprivation and Mobilization: Notes on the Achievement of Communicative Action and Related DifficultiesVIII. Science, Technology, and Innovation: Reflections on Capital and Common SenseIX. Essential Process of Modernity: A Critical Analysis of Social Science Research Practices and an AlternativeX. Time, Space and Value: Recovering the Public SphereIndex