Lawrence Hazelrigg - Böcker

The chapters in this volume represent steps in the direction of demonstrating the importance of efforts to theorize the dynamics of specific social, cultural, political, and/or economic processes to the social sciences in general. They aim to clarify how those efforts are central to the core mission of each of the social sciences, and how social theory is both especially well positioned to tackle this challenge and to accept responsibility for illuminating related possibilities. The papers address the nature and importance of 'process' in studying modern (industrialized, post-industrial, capitalist, postmodern, globalizing, etc.) societies - at macro, meso, or micro-scale. The volume's overall purpose is to assemble a set of essays that invent, develop, and/or demonstrate strategies for theorizing one or several dynamic processes, so as to identify, illustrate by example, and analyze specific problems as well as connect theorizations of process across different disciplines of inquiry.

During the 1980s the news media were filled with reports of soaring unemployment as 'downsizing' and `restructuring' became the new buzzwords. In this volume, the authors examine the U.S. auto industry and present a full-scale analysis of the work and retirement decisions of its workers.

While it was evident to the classics of social theory that modern societies are highly dynamic forms of social organization, and that this dynamic nature must be reflected explicitly and confronted directly in modes of analysis across the social sciences, over the course of the twentieth century, the acknowledgement of this fact has been weakening. As the social sciences became increasingly concerned with issues of professionalization and standards of validity inspired by more established disciplines, especially the natural sciences and economics, the focus on dynamic processes gave way to efforts to illuminate structural (i.e., static) features of modern social life. In recent decades, however, this preoccupation with structure has begun to give way to more process-oriented research orientations. In part, this renewed interest in dynamics rather than statics is reflective of the growing influence of Continental European traditions, especially in Germany and France. In this follow-up volume to "Theorizing the Dynamics of Social Processes (vol. 27)", the emphasis is placed on recent trends in Continental European social theory, and on the importance of political analyses to theorizing modern societies.