Social theory: Legacies and future directions – An interview with Gerard Delanty

Abstract

This is an interview with Gerard Delanty. It discusses his intellectual trajectory and involvement in social theory and in particular explores his approach to critical theory. The interview also focuses on his editorship of the European Journal of Social Theory, now celebrating its 25th anniversary and the 100th issue

Introduction

This conversation took place during Professor Gerard Delanty’s visit to University Adolfo Ibáñez, Santiago de Chile, on 26 May 2022.

Its aim was twofold. On the one hand, we wanted to mark and indeed celebrate Gerard Delanty’s trajectory as a leading force behind the institutionalization of that always fuzzy field that goes under the name of ‘social theory’. Under his editorship, the European Journal of Social Theory has become a leading outlet through which a wide range of topics, traditions and approaches have found a space for international circulation, collaboration and debate. Professor Delanty’s retirement from his chair in Sociology and Social and Political Thought at The University of Sussex offered an opportunity to reflect upon the continuities and discontinuities that have criss-crossed the development of social theory as a global interdisciplinary field. A longer term perspective also works as a welcome reminder of how ideas and writers go in and out fashion and how questions of political power, cultural identities and social change do recur even under different guises.

On the other hand, we sought to gain a deeper conceptual and historical outlook on the themes and concerns that have constituted his own intellectual agenda for the three decades. An incredibly prolific writer, Professor Delanty’s contributions range from European citizenship and the Anthropocene to global modernity, cosmopolitanism and the idea of the university. As the interview below makes clear, behind this thematic diversity there are also some permanent concerns: the development of a critical theory of society devoted to understanding long-term and structural patterns of social change. Crucially to our mind, this is an approach to critical social theory that eschews its traditional Eurocentric bias without surrendering the universalistic orientation of its key normative commitments. The global perspective it offers works neither as the aggregative summation of national or regional trajectories nor as a mere doubling-down on the importance of specific sets of practices or institutions. It focuses instead on the self-reflexive accomplishments of modern social life: the cosmopolitan imagination, immanent critique and normative learning.

It is a wonderful coincidence that the interview can now be published following the 25th anniversary of European Journal of Social Theory and the 100th issue

Interviewers

• DC: Daniel Chernilo

• AM: Aldo Mascareño

DC: How about starting with your intellectual trajectory? What led you to study sociology in Ireland and what influenced your PhD and interest in social theory?

Thank you for putting that question to me. It forces me to go back to the intellectual climate of the late 1970s when I went to university. I was initially interested in philosophy and psychology as these disciplines seemed to deal with the big questions I was interested in, but I quickly found out in my first year at university that psychology did not offer what I was looking for – it was then, as it is now, a largely scientific discipline. I took sociology as a secondary subject, but I ended up majoring in sociology and philosophy. I was drawn to these disciplines not in their entirety but for the perspectives they offered on questions I had been reading about, such as the nature of unconsciousness, the primitive origins of society and the nature of life. I had read a quite a bit of philosophy and was familiar with Nietzsche, Sartre, Marx and Freud. I was also interested in ancient history and archaeology, which I took as a subsidiary subject. I read and was fascinated by the works of Gordon Childe, the Marxist archaeologist, and Arnold Toynbee’s theory of history.

But it was really the cross-over between sociology and philosophy that interested me. I became drawn to a philosophical kind of sociology or a sociological version of philosophy especially in relation to historical questions. In any case, it was the ideas of the Frankfurt School that helped to shape my thought and the wider context of so-called Western Marxism. In those days Marcuse, who died in 1979, was still influential. I wrote my BA dissertation on his last major work, The Aesthetic Dimension, and went on to write an MA dissertation – when an MA degree was a 2-year dissertation programme – on the Frankfurt School, principally Adorno and Benjamin. Erich Fromm was also a major influence on me. I recall reading his 1941 Fear of Freedom in my first year at university, a book that led me to reading the work of other Freudians, such Wilhelm Reich. At this time, in the late 1970s, post-structuralism was also a significant influence, especially Foucault and Derrida. I was also inspired by Roland Barthes and his classic work Mythologies. But by the time I started to think about a PhD, it was the German tradition of critical theory and especially Habermas that I found more meaningful. This offered a more coherent position that was lacking from the very different bodies of thought I had been reading.

I had learnt French in school in Ireland and spent some time in Paris, but I started to learn German in the early 1980s and spent increasingly more time in Germany (Freiburg, Berlin and, with the help of a DAAD fellowship, a year in Frankfurt). I attended seminars and lectures by some of the Frankfurt luminaries, such as Karl-Otto Apel, Helmut Dubiel as well as Habermas in 1985–1986. I had already embarked on a PhD on the theory of the public sphere reinterpreted from the perspective of the so-called New Social Movements, which were reshaping the intellectual landscape in the early 1980s. This was all inspired by Habermas’s seminal Theory of Communicative Action. After finishing in 1987, I spent some years in Naples, where I had a temporary teaching post as a Letore at the Oriental University Institute, and it was there that I developed my ideas. But it was not until the major transformations of 1989/1990, when circumstances being what they were, I found myself back in Germany, this time in Hannover. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, the unification of Germany, the collapse of the USSR, I found a new perspective on modernity and Europe that led to my first publications in the mid-1990s.

Regarding social theory, I am not sure I had a clear view on it, at least until the mid-1990s when I took up a position at the University of Liverpool and set up the European Journal of Social Theory. I certainly always positioned myself within sociology, despite considerable dismay about the discipline. Nonetheless, I have found sociology a more appropriate location for addressing the sort of questions I was interested in than philosophy, history or cultural studies.

DC: How do you see the changes in the position of Sociology in the university? How has Sociology changed since the 1970s?

Sociology has been often declared dead, a product of industrial society whose time has passed. It has often been said it lacks a specific subject matter. I do not agree with these announcements. Perhaps the notion of the end of sociology is part of its self-critical nature. But it clearly has not declined; it is arguably the case that the oppositive has occurred. In any case, almost every discipline has suffered a crisis of identity. The 1960s and 1970s was a period that saw the huge expansion of sociology and from the 1980s onwards there was a revolution in theory in the discipline and this has continued into the present. Not all this theory was productive; some of it led to pointless pursuits, including anti-positivism much of which was simply opposed to empirical sociology. The result was a divergence of theory and empirical research. So, I do not look back with a sense of loss.

One of the major changes in my view is that the old social theory that dominated in the 1970s was very western. The Frankfurt School tradition for example, which as I said was my chief inspiration, was extremely Eurocentric in its concerns, with almost no concern whatsoever with questions relating to colonialism. Habermas’s major reconstruction of critical theory in the Theory of Communicative Action was exclusively concerned with problems in western societies. This is also the case with regard to the work of Bourdieu and Foucault. The concern with New Social Movements and political emancipation in Habermas and other theorists was conceived entirely from the perspective of the post-industrial societies of the western world. Then, there is the absence of any adequate theorization of nature, at least nothing that is in anyway relevant to current issues. It is true of course that Foucault brought about a massive transformation in theory, right across the social and human sciences concerning how we think about power, the self and history. His work opened new visions beyond the limits of western history, even if that was his own preoccupation, as reflected in feminism and post-colonialism.

Sociology as a discipline has changed considerably for many reasons. One reason has been the tremendous incorporation of women into it. It has also expanded significantly in many parts of the world. In Latin America, sociology is now very well established and has a strong presence in Higher Education. Inevitably these developments have led to new questions. Sociology has been much transformed by sociology outside the western world and perspectives opened up by post-colonial oriented theorists, especially in Latin America. I am thinking here of the notion of multiple modernity, the notion of a world variety of modernities, but also very different historical experiences of capitalism. As with many disciplines, but especially sociology, interdisciplinarity has been far-reaching. Sociology is now as much outside the discipline, having been incorporated into many other disciplines, as within it, as well as in the large area of trans-disciplinary studies. Undoubtedly the global turn, along with the earlier cultural turn, has done much to reorient sociology.

While I would prefer to avoid a lament of loss, there is one aspect of sociology today that for me represents a loss, namely a decline in macro-sociological analysis. With the decline has also come a failure to address big questions. It is true that some of this has been relegated to the domain of theory. The classical sociological tradition had a strong connection to macro-analysis – as reflected in the legacies of Marx, Durkheim and Weber. This concern was tied to an interest in big questions about the nature of society, the relation of the economy to society, the individual and society and so on. Today, it seems to me, there is loss in this perspective. It is possibly due to the decline in macro-sociology and the general shift to micro-sociology. It is almost impossible, at least in Britain, to teach anything that has a historical dimension to sociology students. Micro-sociology is where the interest lies, and this leads to very different kinds of questions. I do not want to bemoan this kind of sociology, but I regret the loss of macro-sociology, which now seems to exist only as a very specialized comparative historical research. It may be the case that this, in fact, has created a space for social theory, as a specific field and one that goes beyond sociology and that despite the tendency in undergraduate sociology courses for social theory to be reduced to the history of sociological theory. My own vision of sociology is very much a historical and philosophical one; it is about looking at the present in historical perspective.

I could mention another development, but I would not characterize it as a loss. The link between sociology and philosophy was very strong in the past, at least from my experience. But now the ties have been severed, despite interdisciplinarity. This may be due to the growing influence of analytical philosophy. In the past, sociology learnt a lot from developments in philosophy, as in the impact of philosophy from Kant to Heidegger and Wittgenstein, post-modernism and post-structuralist thought, but I suspect there is not more to be learnt and consequently the loss of the link that once existed is not necessarily to the detriment of sociology, which now has its own theoretical foundations.

AM: What do you see as the main differences between the questions posed by Latin American and sociology in the Asian and the European or western world? You mentioned post-colonialism, which is also a claim against modernity. Can sociology respond to these kinds of questions, which are more political than theoretical?

The concerns of Latin American sociologists may be more political than those of Asian sociology and this may be true of mainstream sociology in much of the rest of the world. But in my view, social science is either good or bad; it is not whether it is pursuing the correct political goals, but whether it is adequate to the task. However, it cannot avoid normative issues. Normative principles are embedded in society and need to be reconstructed or reinterpreted, since they are rarely clear cut or unproblematical and often in conflict with each other. From my own experience in Latin America, especially in Brazil, I really do not see a fundamentally different project. There is a huge diversity of sociological approaches world-wide, so I am not sure that there really is a Latin American, Asia or European sociology. I see only differences within all these traditions. Certainly, that is the case in Europe, sociology is very different in France from Britain or Germany. But, I agree, post-colonial theory has been particularly influential in Latin America. Nonetheless, it makes no sense to me to say there is a post-colonial sociology and some other kind, a Eurocentric one for example. If sociology in Europe is Eurocentric, then it is just bad sociology.

Let us consider the question of modernity, for instance. To see post-colonial theory as a questioning of modernity is one thing – and is it not the case that all theory involves questioning? – but a rejection of modernity is another. This would not make much sense in my view. What would we have if this were the case? The notion of modernity has always been questioned, with notion of ‘special paths’ and alternative forms part of the very notion. Too, within western thought, there has been a pronounced questioning of modernity since Nietzsche and Heidegger. My approach to this issue is not to see modernity as European or western at all. It may have first emerged in Europe, but much of Europe was backwards and unmodern when other parts of the world were more modern. I see modernity as a concept that is best defined in quasi-universal terms of certain characteristics and orientations – we can argue about this, but for example the belief in human freedom or autonomy, the openness of the future, the capacity for critical thought – which can exist anywhere in the world. To be sure, these conditions are shaped by the historical and cultural context, but they also not reducible to specific contexts. In my view, it is more productive to see modernity in terms of world varieties than a European model that was exported to the rest of the world. There are thus varieties of modernity, early and late maternities, alternative modernities and so on and there is also within the European context very different routes to modernity. But if you reject the notion of modernity – with the claim that, say, Latin America is different – you are throwing out too much. You are also making indefensible claims about the European historical experience, not all of which can be understood in terms of a singular and dominant colonial model of modernity. Then, there are the civilizational – by which I mean the pre-modern historical influences – which are heterogeneous and with different degrees of historical influence.

Of course, all such terms must be used critically. But if you reject the established terms of theoretical discourse – without doubt some terms have to be rejected – you are very likely going to replace them with much the same. It makes more sense to me, as Derrida argued I believe, to use language against itself. This goes too for concepts. Modernity, after all, is a concept, not a thing written into the fabric of history. So, I think that the repositioning of modernity from a non-western perspective is really important along with a questioning of Eurocentric presuppositions. But I certainly do not accept a position that relates all concepts to a western source with the conclusion that they are intrinsically western.

DC: So how would you characterize the main ideas or institutions of modernity, if modernity is not necessarily European, or only European?

To answer questions of this sort I often go back to Habermas, whose work is very instructive on such matters, even if his work is also marked by a certain residual Eurocentrism. So, for example, a very important theme in his work is the notion of societal learning, the idea of self-problematization and critique, the search for communicative solutions to solve social problems. According to Habermas, all human societies have, due to the cognitive wiring of human beings, the capacity for dialogue and reasoning. It is this capacity that gives them the ability to think critically and to find communicative solutions to the problems that otherwise would divide them or even destroy them. Modern societies – as marked by the modern constitutional state, the rule of formal law, democracy, human rights and so on – have given institutional form to these capacities. Now, in my view, these ideas – which can be related to ideas of reason – are not specifically European, even if they were first manifest in Europe. All human societies have these capacities, since they are part of the human condition itself.

Let us take Kant’s principle of hospitality, as another example of one of the defining features of modernity. Of course, he had in mind the European republican states and his perspective was limited by this narrow horizon. Nonetheless, I do not think that the concept and argument he advanced in Perpetual Peace in 1775 is inherently Eurocentric. The principle of hospitality is a normative idea that goes far beyond the circumstances of its original formulation, and I think it captures one of the defining tenets of cosmopolitanism.

AM: Perhaps the principle of learning is universal, but surely not the principle of hospitality. This cannot be found in all societies. It would not apply to the Mayan civilization, for instance. So what is specific to the critical theory tradition?

So you are asking what defines the specificity of critical theory? This is a good and challenging question. In my book, Critical Theory and Social Transformation (2019) I tried to address this question. I am not sure I fully agree about what you say concerning the universality of the principle of hospitality, but I accept your point that it may not have been present in all cultures. As I understand it, this principle applies to modern societies, not necessarily to all historical societies. It is also not something that is necessarily fully present as it were but part of the make-up of modern societies. In Britain today there clearly has been an attempt to make things as difficult as possible for new comers and, for that matter, for everyone else too. But, the point is that these attempts cannot fully overcome the normative progress that is still embedded in the society. The clock cannot be so easily put back.

In any case, this is a slightly different problem from the question of the specificity of critical theory. Let me try to answer this question more directly. Critical theory in the Frankfurt School tradition, in my view, does have some distinguishing features that mark it off from other approaches, including other kinds of critical theory, a term that now covers a wider spectrum of approaches. It is of course not the only ‘critical’ kind of critical theory. One characteristic is that it seeks to maintain a normative dimension to critique. In that sense it is a contrast to, say, Foucault’s critique. In this case, the normative position is best seen in terms of a quasi-universalistic stance. A pronounced tendency in contemporary thought is the rejection of normative positions based on universality. A plethora of particularisms are instead the basis of critique. But I think in the critical theory tradition associated with the Frankfurt School – which of course was never a unified movement, let alone a school despite Horkheimer’s efforts – there is a commitment to a certain kind of universality. Even in the context of the horrors of the twentieth century, both Adorno and Benjamin saw the necessity to maintain some universal conception of justice and truth, even if it were not clear what its historical form would be. In face of utter despair, critique must retain a belief in the possibility of redemption.

It is true that critical theory did not always adequately separate the universal from the particular. This is also the case with Habermas, who has confusedly equated the European legacy with universal principles or structures. But let us try to be more specific. As I mentioned, the idea of societal or collective learning is one such universal structure inherent in at least modern societies. This does not mean that there cannot be regressions or stagnation. Honneth has argued for the principle of recognition as a core moral principle of human societies. Now, while in my view he makes too much of this, it is undeniably an important part of the structure of universality present in modern culture. Mention can also be made of the idea of self-problematization or critical thinking; that is the capacity to self-problematize oneself. I think this is also a universal characteristic of modern societies. More generally, the notion of immanent critique captures some of these ideas, that is the argument that the future can be shaped by the potentials within the present.

But also, going back to Kant, the notion of a common humanity. As I said, I do not think this is a European invention, even if Europe was the limits of Kant’s view of the world. The principle of hospitality in any case has been incorporated into legal notions of human rights, so like it or not it transcends cultural context. I realize a problem might be with this notion of universality, as it is devoid of cultural specificity, that it is always open to interpretation. Thus, today there is widespread support for such principles as democracy, peace, human rights but no, or very little, agreement on what they actually constitute.

I also have in mind, concerning the specificity of critical theory, Adorno’s argument about ‘taking responsibility for the present’.

AM: You have written on many topics, including nationalism, European history, citizenship, community, the public sphere and so on. From what we have been discussing today it is clear that underlying these topics is a concern with big questions, an interest in globalization, a desire to look at the present in historical perspective, for instance. I am wondering if there is a common question, or set of common questions, guiding your work, for example a concern with democracy, justice, equality? I am trying to unpack some of the hidden agendas, as it were, in your work.

In the course of my career of now more than 30 years the answer to this question undoubtedly changed many times. One topic led to another. My first major publication in 1995, Inventing Europe, sought to deconstruct the idea of Europe, or better put reconstruct it in a way that would be more relevant to the present. This opened up a range of questions that I then explored, and which were connected to globalization, then still a novel concept, such as the notion of the post-national, the nature of European modernity, making sense of European integration in the context of the tremendous transformations since 1989/1990. These works were based on social theory in general and more specifically driven by critical theory. In the 1990s I was certainly interested in new possibilities for European integration, for at that time there was a moment when cosmopolitan alternatives were in the air. Since the turn of the millennium, we are of course more sceptical of the cosmopolitan moment as the major force in the world. It also coincided with neoliberal global capitalism. On a more general level, I would characterize the central question in my work to be how we should understand the major social and political transformations in modern society. Initially I pursued this with respect to Europe, especially in relation to the nature and significance of European integration for the nation state and the dominant forms of political modernity that took shape since the end of the eighteenth century.

As mentioned, I looked at this question through the lens of critical theory. As I discussed in my book, The Cosmopolitan Imagination, I tried to connect critical theory with cosmopolitan social and political thought. Against an overly normative understanding of cosmopolitanism in political philosophy, I argued that cosmopolitanism is inherently a critical mode of thinking and can be linked to some of the key concerns of critical theory. I also saw this as a way to bring critical theory away from its rather European specificity. From then onwards, I tried to open my own thinking to greater engagement with world history, first Asia (mainly Japan and China) and later with regard to Latin America. This was also reflected in a new interest in modernity from a global perspective and the idea now well established in global and transnational history of the world as a product of interrelated connections. I put forward, first in 2002 in an article in Thesis Eleven, a notion of a ‘post-western Europe’ taking shape following the demise of the Cold War construction of Europe.

AM: I would like to ask you a question about something you said earlier about one of the characteristics of critical sociology, taking responsibility for the present. This is very interesting, but what does this mean in the perspective of critical theory? I can see how sociology has a responsibility for explaining the present. I am thinking about the Covid-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine or the fragmentation of identities all over the world, for example. In addition to the cognitive dimension of sociology, you talked about the normative dimension, the present in normative terms. What could that mean? Does it mean intervention, writing articles in newspapers as in the idea of public sociology, or political action?

I agree this needs to be clearer. In invoking this notion of responsibility for the present, I think something different from political action is meant. I am sceptical of those sociologists who equate sociology with activism, especially in the territory of cultural politics, though to a point I think academic activism has its place. I have been, or rather was, involved in attempts to combat the calamity of Brexit, for instance. This perhaps may be also an example of public sociology, a notion that I believe does capture well the idea of academic interventions on matters of public interest. But the notion of taking responsibility for the present points to something else and which is not quite so easy to capture. It is more than merely explanation, even if this is one of the main tasks of sociology, to explain the nature of social life and to provide compelling accounts of major developments in the world today. Sociologists have not been particularly good at doing this and are often overtaken by, for example, historians or even political scientists. Perhaps because academics in these disciplines use less complicated explanations, such as the form of the narrative, which led themselves more easily to public communication than the complex theoretical arguments of sociologists. This is certainly a problem with critical theory, which is often mired in philosophical baggage. Nonetheless, despite these problems, a few points can be made, which hopefully will also help to clarify how sociology could be more influential in public debates.

Critical sociology, as in critical social theory, has always stood for a more dialectical relation with social reality than one that simply makes normative judgements about what is desirable, as in, for example, normative political theory. It seeks to understand and give expression to the self-transformative capacity of society, in the sense of identifying possibilities for the future. The future is something that we have a responsibility for, rather than being predetermined or residing in an unrealizable utopia; it is made in the present. Taking responsibility for the present is about understanding choices and courses of action so that the future can be claimed by the present. This is not then activism, in the sense of taking on the cause of a specific group or advancing a political project. In some ways, the notion is captured by Alain Touraine’s concept of the historicity and self-movement of society. Perhaps the notion of normativity is not the right term here; what I mean is something closer to critique as a disclosure. By this I mean critique as a way to address critical moments or major crises through explanatory and interpretative strategies. The existence of a crisis invites a response. In my recent book, Critical Theory and Social Transformation (2020) I tried to develop some of these ideas.

AM: Let me follow this up by asking about the present situation of world society today. In the last 3 years we have had the first real global event, the Covid-19 pandemic. This is a situation, unlike for example the 1918 flu, which in many ways was a global event, but not on the same level as the current pandemic which has occurred at a time of much greater globalization. It is perhaps a characteristic of the twenty-first century and now in the past few months, since February 2022, we have the war in Ukraine. This war in some ways not too different from other wars fought by the United States or Russia, but it is possibly different in that it is local war with global consequences. Are these events, the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, characteristics of the twenty-first century? What is different about this century from the twentieth?

People have always tended to see their situation as unique, at least in modern societies. Modernity entailed a strong sense of the present as new, different from what went before. So this sense of a rupture is part of the make-up of modernity and it took on an intensified form in the second half of the nineteenth century with industrialization, the arrival of the railway, the opening of the Suez Canal and the Panama Canal, the invention of telegraph, the camera and so on. All these things made the world more connected and created an immediacy in experience, a familiar theme in early Sociology. But, with all due consideration to these considerations, I would not want to relativize too much the current situation. After all, the sense of modernity as a common experience was not really global; many parts of the world were drawn into it, but not all. Many parts of the western world remained isolated and even pre-modern.

It may be objected that the two events you mention – the pandemic and the war in Ukraine – are largely northern hemisphere events and thus not genuinely global. That indeed was the first reaction to the war in Ukraine, at lease from Latin American countries. I think it is clear now that this is not the case and the pandemic, while hitting most of the northern hemisphere hard, has been significant in Latin America, as is clear from the shocking situation in Brazil. We could also add, climate change, since these two events have coincided with a dramatic change in global warming.

All things considered, I am inclined to agree the current situation is different from what has gone before. Once something happens somewhere everyone knows about it within a few minutes. The interlinked nature of the world economy is another major reason. Brazil and China are tied to each other, as is the United States and China. There are of course attempts to untie some of these dependencies, as in the example of Europe to wrestle itself free of Russian gas and oil; in this case, hastening the transition to green energy as a positive outcome of the war. As things now stand, there is clear global interdependency on energy and food, with both of these vividly illustrated by the war in Ukraine, which has led to an energy and a food crisis. The war there has also revived the nightmare of a nuclear war and has led to the drawing of a new Iron Curtain across Europe. It is also significant that the war in Ukraine has come just after the pandemic, which of course is not yet over but the critical point has been reached. It is almost as if a perpetual crisis was engineered. These events have certainly given a new significance to emergency governance, which is clearly Putin’s art of government in Russia.

Put all these developments alongside the rise of authoritarian politics, since 2016 with the election of Trump and Brexit. There has been a pronounced rise in illiberal democracy, as in Turkey, Russia, India, also in authoritarian regimes with limited democracy, but equally troubling what I call authoritarian democracy, that is a shift within liberal democracies towards authoritarianism, as in the case of the United Kingdom since 2016. Democracy may be still be protected, but is clearly at risk, as was all too clear from the insurrection in Washington on the 6 January 2021. Alongside these trends is the rise of radical White supremacism, which is linked to the regime in the Kremlin and to the radical populist right. It is difficult not to see these phenomena as connected, or as the product of underlying forces. Yet, one should not make the mistake of seeing them as predetermined; the outcomes could have been otherwise – Trump and Brexit, to take these examples, were narrow wins and could easily have been different.

I agree that the pandemic is best seen as the first major global experience, even if people experienced it differently. A global experience does not mean that it is the same for everyone.

DC: Do you think sociology and social theory is well equipped to understand these changes in the world today? Are we in sociology too fixated with the past? Are we too focused on the classical cannon? And how equipped are such theoretical approaches, let us say Bourdieu or post-colonialism, to examine these trends?

Sociology in general is probably best equipped to deal with many of these issues, especially the pandemic. This is a very social phenomenon, which highlighted many of the core themes in sociology, for example inequality, social change, power, solidarity, the social construction of disease and so on. But certainly there are limitations. One weakness, which is also the strength of sociology, is that it operates with a very social conception of society as the product of social relations. Bruno Latour, as is well known, questioned this aspect of sociology, which makes it ill-equipped to understand the material foundations of society, non-social phenomena, such as viruses and other pathogens. These are, in a sense, social creations, but not easily understood in terms of sociological theory. Pathogens are social in that they are products of social interventions, as in the case of antibiotic resistance, new varieties of viruses emerging as a consequence of vaccinations terminating or transmuting the older strains. As with the virus that has caused Covid-19, many of these are Zoonotic, products of the relations between humans and their animals. There will in all probability be more pandemics. But sociology, along with other the social sciences, is well placed to understand one of the major shocks of the pandemic, namely the shock of the state’s response with lockdowns and what were often arbitrary and irrational measures with excessive surveillance, frequently on the basis of spurious advice from so-called experts.

A key issue, and one that is very sociological, is whether the pandemic is a turning point or a tipping point; in other words does it lead to major societal change or portend catastrophe? By definition, it is true more or less that pandemics are catastrophes; they can also be tipping points leading to regression or paralysis. However, they can also be major moments of transition or transformation or simply just a continuation of change already underway. I think it is very interesting to look at the pandemic in this light, but in order to address the issue you raised a moment ago of major change today, I think the pandemic alone is probably not sufficient, but in combination with other developments, other crises, one be able to see the signs of a significant rupture.

AM: In all crises that you mentioned – the pandemic, climate change, war and so on – what should be the role of liberal democracy and constitutionalism?

The pandemic has been a major challenge for democracy for sure and a great deal has been learnt. The initial response was that the pandemic was a danger for democracy, which needs to be protected. But, it is now clear that this is inadequate. Democracy is necessarily also part of the solution to the problems pandemics present. Assuming that the danger presented by the pandemic is very great, governments must respond. But how should they do so? Suspending democracy is not a solution. Democratic solutions are required. One conclusion can be drawn from the now large body of research coming out on the pandemic is that democracies are better equipped to deal with the problems of pandemics and epidemics than non-democracies. Authoritarian regimes may have the added advantage on imposing rigorous shutdowns and lockdowns, but this works only for a short time. At some point, the restrictions will have to be lifted. It also seems that local-level solutions often work best, but the pandemic, as a global event, also requires governance beyond the local and the national.

It can also be seen in historical perspective, at least in Europe, that the control of infectious diseases was related to the rise of the modern constitutional state. One of the functions of the modern state is protection against infectious diseases, which until the middle of the twentieth century were the chief causes of death throughout the world. Relevant here is the control of Cholera in the late nineteenth century, smallpox, and the 1918 flu which led to the rise of modern public healthcare systems and may have had a role to play in establishing the foundations of the independence of India, which was one of the parts of the world most devastated by the virus. It might quite well be the case that we will have to go through this again, if the trend continues for a rise in new infectious diseases.

DC: Before we end it would be interesting to hear a little about the European Journal of Social Theory and the ideas behind its creation as well as your reflections on its success.

The European Journal of Social Theory was founded in 1998, when the first issues appeared. It was very much a product of the mid-1990s, a period that was relatively optimistic about new transnational developments. In founding the journal, which I proposed to Sage Publishers in 1996, I had the idea of creating a specific publishing outlet for social theory. This was a period too in which social theory was very much on the rise. The theoretical developments of the 1970s and 1980s consolidated in the 1990s, with a more clearly demarked identity for social theory. At this time, there were no other journals devoted to social theory as such; it was mainly covered in the more mainstream journals and to an extent by cultural studies. But it was clear that social theory was distinct from cultural studies and also from sociological theory, in the narrower sense of the term.

I proposed calling the new journal, ‘European’ to distinguish it from the dominant national traditions of publishing. I did not see it as European in contrast to American, Asian or African traditions. In the 1990s, there was a strong sense of the formation of a common or shared European culture beyond national culture. So, it was European in that sense as non-national. I also saw it as a space for scholarship in social theory for the wider European context. Of course, that was also going to be limited by the fact that it was an English language journal. But I never saw it as European in a very specific sense. Though, the perception of the journal in the United States is that it is very European. I think that says as much about the nature of publishing in the United States.

The EJST is now a well-established journal and does relatively well, for an interdisciplinary journal, on the Social Science Citation Index, where it is listed under Sociology. I think it has benefited from the absence of a specific journal for social theory. I also tried to keep the remit as broad as possible, without favouring any specific school of thought. I certainly had in mind in founding the journal the idea, or ideal, of reconnecting sociology and philosophy, perhaps something in the direction of social philosophy. However, I did not push this too far and I also recognized, as I mentioned earlier, that philosophy and sociology have gone in very different directions today. The journal also caters for different kinds of social theory, the more philosophical or conceptional theory, as in interpretations of theorists, and broader notions of social theory, such as addressing ‘big questions’. I certainly see the kind of social theory it fosters as distinct from sociological theory, and certainly the history of sociological theory, but I would not wish to define its area too tightly. The status of social theory as an interdisciplinary field remains an open question. Some will see it as akin to, say, cultural studies, others as a by-product of sociological theory with a cross-over of philosophy. I have tried now to steer the journal away from too much preoccupation with philosophy and more in the direction of an interdisciplinary area across the social and human sciences. But a journal is defined by those who publish in it. There is of course some selection which allows editorial direction, but ultimately it is the kind of articles submitted that shape the field.

AM: I want to ask a question about theory. You mentioned some things at the beginning of the interview and now another aspect relating to the concept of theory. For example, you mentioned earlier the distinction between the micro and the macro. In my view social theory is not just about the micro or the macro but it could give an explanation and reconstruction of micro and macro trends. What is your understanding of theory?

One of the challenges within social theory, and more specifically sociological theory, since the 1980s was to link the micro and macro. Aside from some examples to the contrary, I am not sure this has ever been successful. The result was rival sociological traditions. In Britain, a more micro-oriented sociology has thrived. This has generally been supported by phenomenological approaches. As I said, I think the absence of a well-developed macro tradition has been to the detriment of sociology, since this tradition was the basis of some of the big questions posed by the classical figures. However, I agree that ideally the micro and the macro need to be connected in order to have a fuller or more complete interpretation of society. Somehow this needs to go beyond either explanatory or interpretative approaches. My own preference is for the latter but not at the cost of losing explanation. I see explanation as a key function of sociology, as it is of any science. But, in the footsteps of Max Weber, I think this cannot be disconnected from interpretation and, going beyond Weber, critique.

AM: I would like to ask about social movements. You mentioned social movements, in particular the new social movements of the 1970s and 1980s. How can these more universalistic movements of this period, perhaps extending into the 1980s, be compared to the social movements today, which are more identarian? What is the role of social movements in relation to politics and democracy? Is it the same as in the 1960s and 1970s or has it changed?

I think there are big differences. Social theory in the 1980s and 1990s was shaped in no small part by the tremendous developments in the world in the 1960s and 1970s that produced the New Social Movements, by which I mean the progressive movements that reflected so-called post-material values, such as the feminist movement, perhaps the most significant, the civil rights movement in the United States, the environmental movement, the anti-nuclear or peace movement of the 1970s. These developments coincided with new ideas in theory, first in philosophy with post-structuralism and the revival of Western Marxism, such as the Frankfurt School in the English speaking world. All these movements, political and intellectual, shaped the direction of social theory, which consolidated in the 1990s.

By the early 2000s, after 9/11, things changed. The New Social Movements ceased to be new; in many cases they achieved their goals, or at least they were no longer revolutionary and became mainstream. Globalization took a different turn, unleashing anti-cosmopolitan currents. Some of the goals of the New Social Movements, especially on cultural issues, were also compatible with the rise of the New Right, I mean the neoliberal right, which was broadly comparable with some of the cultural inspiration for the new social movements in so far as these entailed an emphasis on personal autonomy, rights and freedom. In that respect there was a certain compatibility, at least where the New Social Movements were not pursuing the old left’s goals of economic justice. Capitalism disappeared from their political vocabulary and also vanished from social theory, until after the crisis of 2008–2010 when it returned.

It is also clear that the radical political right – I mean so-called right-wing populism, neo-nationalist, identarian movements – gained ground since early 2000s with very different political and more authoritarian projects. Much of this has been analysed by Manual Castells’ pioneering trilogy on the information age. These movements were in part a reaction to the progressive New Social Movements but were also given an impetus by the neoliberal political culture that consolidated in this period. Neither the New Cultural Left nor the by now weakened Old Left was able to put up much resistance to these moments that culminated in the Alt-Right, White supremacism, radical right-wing populism and various kinds of neo-nationalism. We have seen the transformation of the United States by these movements that are also bolstered by the more general rise of authoritarian politics in the rest of the world. As I see it, these moments are supported by a strong sense of White victimhood, which has a lot to do with the decline of the industrial working class, its loss of social status and income stagnation.

It is a different question whether there are new social movements emerging today that offer an alternative to these trends. I think we need to go beyond the horizons of the older new social movements of the 1960s and 1970s. These were founded on a now problematical notion of emancipation. This was the background to the major theorists of social moments, such as Touraine but also Habermas whose work was based on the possibility of emancipation resisting domination. Today we can longer operate with a general notion of emancipation. Since Foucault, we know that emancipation easily morphs into domination. And, what is emancipation for some is domination for others.

It is difficult to characterize the new progressive movements today. But it is clear that they exist. Sitting here up in the slopes of Andes, in this magnificent location where we are doing this interview and with this striking view of Santiago, I am not unaware that down in the city people are talking about social movements. And there is the constitutional process going on in Chile these days which has created a space for new movements.

There are some ways to conceptualize the emerging new social movements. The notion of the 'multitude' is one such way, though I do not think it gets us very far. It is clear, however, that the referents or the context has changed, for these movements are no longer only or primarily located in the western world, which was the case with the New Social Movements of the 1960s and 1970s.

AM: Do you see a relation between social movements and the new media today?

This must be one of the really significant aspects of social movements today, whether of the right or of the left. The digital age has fundamentally transformed the nature of protest, political action and mobilization. In some ways it has individualized collective action, since the smartphone it has made possible a form of action that is very individual, with someone sitting with a phone in their hands rather than necessarily going out to the public realm. It is not necessarily all bad news, it can enable a new kind of politics. Until now, this has been more effectively mastered by the radical right, as in the use of algorithms to influence voting behaviour, the existence of troll factories and so on.

DC and AM: To conclude, we would like to ask what you see as the most promising or exciting areas of research in social theory today?

I think social theory must move on from reinterpretations of the classical figures, which now include most the prominent thinkers of the 1960s and 1970s. There is little scope for new insights, and this is true too of the Frankfurt School and other versions of critical theory. Foucault’s unmaking critique, for instance, is no longer new or radical. Social constructionism has reached its limits. That does not mean that all the issues the major theorists wrote about are no longer relevant. For example, there is a new interest in capitalism. I have just completed, with Neal Harris, a book on capitalism, Capitalism and its Critics. Certainly, climate change and the relation of human societies to the planet are central to social theory now, as are issues relating to the material foundation of societies. I am currently interested in theories of the future. Some of the older philosophical questions, such as the human condition, are very relevant, the nature of life and I think there can be fruitful engagement with the natural sciences. Within Europe for European theorists, in light of the Ukrainian–Russian war and the reshaping of the geopolitical context, there is now scope for new thinking about the future of Europe as a peace-based project.

DC and AM: I think we are finished now.

GD: Thank you very much for your challenging and interesting questions. It was a pleasure to discuss these topics.

Short note on the interviewers

Daniel Chernilo is a Professor of Sociology at Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez in Chile and a Visiting Professor of Social and Political Thought at Loughborough in the United Kingdom. He has written widely of the history of social theory, nationalism, cosmopolitanism and humanism.

Aldo Mascareño is a Senior Researcher at Centro de Estudios Públicos and Professor of Sociology at Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Chile. His main research areas are systems theory, social–ecological systems, sociology of law and sociology of Latin America, areas in which he has conducted different research projects and published several books and articles.