Jürgen Habermas is a German philosopher and social theorist in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. His work addresses communicative rationality and the public sphere.
Erich Seligmann Fromm was a German-American social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist. He was a German Jew who fled the Nazi regime and settled in the United States. He was one of the founders of The William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, Psychoanalysis and Psychology in New York City and was associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory.
Ulrich Beck was a German sociologist, and one of the most cited social scientists in the world during his lifetime. His work focused on questions of uncontrollability, ignorance and uncertainty in the modern age, and he coined the terms "risk society" and "second modernity" or "reflexive modernization". He also tried to overturn national perspectives that predominated in sociological investigations with a cosmopolitanism that acknowledges the interconnectedness of the modern world. He was a professor at the University of Munich and also held appointments at the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (FMSH) in Paris, and at the London School of Economics.
Hans Albert was a German philosopher. He was professor of social sciences at the University of Mannheim from 1963, and remained at the university until 1989. His fields of research were social sciences and general studies of methods. He was a critical rationalist, paying special attention to rational heuristics. Albert was a strong critic of the continental hermeneutic tradition coming from Heidegger and Gadamer.
Elmar Altvater was professor of political science at the Otto-Suhr-Institut of the Free University of Berlin, before retiring on 30 September 2004. He continued to work at the institute, and published articles and books.
Hans Joas is a German sociologist and social theorist.
Gisela Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg is a German sociologist, ethnologist, sexologist, and writer further specializing into the fields of psychology, Indo-European studies, religious studies, and philosophy, since 1980 also increasingly anthropology. As Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg uses these approaches in research particularly in the fields of sexology, homophobia, and prejudice studies, the US Society of Lesbian and Gay Anthropologists of the American Anthropological Association ranked Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg's works on homophobia as internationally outstanding.
The Erich Fromm Prize is a German prize bestowed upon people who have advanced Humanism through their scientific, social, sociopolitical or journalistic engagement. The prize is named after Erich Fromm, a Jewish German-American philosopher, psychoanalyst and psychologist. The prize is conferred yearly since 1995, and since 2006, it is endowed with 10,000 €.
Alexander Ebner is a German social scientist and Professor of Social Economics, esp. Economic Sociology and Political Economy at the Goethe University Frankfurt. His main research fields are Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Governance and Public Policy, Regional Development, and the History of Economics.
Neo-Marxism is a collection of Marxist schools of thought originating from 20th-century approaches to amend or extend Marxism and Marxist theory, typically by incorporating elements from other intellectual traditions such as critical theory, psychoanalysis, or existentialism. Neo-Marxism comes under the broader framework of the New Left. In a sociological sense, neo-Marxism adds Max Weber's broader understanding of social inequality, such as status and power, to Marxist philosophy.
Wolfgang Zapf was a German sociologist.
A critical theory is any approach to humanities and social philosophy that focuses on society and culture to attempt to reveal, critique, and challenge or dismantle power structures. With roots in sociology and literary criticism, it argues that social problems stem more from social structures and cultural assumptions than from individuals. Some hold it to be an ideology, others argue that ideology is the principal obstacle to human liberation. Critical theory finds applications in various fields of study, including psychoanalysis, film theory, literary theory, cultural studies, history, communication theory, philosophy, and feminist theory.
The Max Weber Center for Advanced Studies is an international and interdisciplinary "high-ranking research centre which forms an avant-garde institution of the University of Erfurt," according to the European Commission's CORDIS. The Center's focal areas include "religion, science, and law as powers of interpretation and governance; interactions among cultures; social orderings and mentalities in radical change; and normative—in particular, ethical—issues."
Kevin B. Anderson is an American sociologist, Marxist humanist, author, and professor. Anderson is Professor of Sociology, Political Science and Feminist studies at University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). He was previously Professor of Sociology at Northern Illinois University, in DeKalb and Professor of Political Science, Sociology and Women's Studies at Purdue University.
Vera King is a German sociologist and social psychologist. She has been Professor of Sociology and Social Psychology at Goethe University Frankfurt and Director of the Sigmund Freud Institute in Frankfurt am Main since 2016.
Resonance is a quality of human relationships with the world proposed by Hartmut Rosa. Rosa, professor of sociology at the University of Jena, conceptualised resonance theory in Resonanz (2016) to explain social phenomena through a fundamental human impulse towards "resonant" relationships.
Hilda Weiss was a sociologist, trade unionist, and socialist. She lived in Germany until 1933 when Hitler came to power, then escaped to France. In 1939 she emigrated to the United States and lived there until her death in 1981.
In literary criticism and cultural studies, postcritique is the attempt to find new forms of reading and interpretation that go beyond the methods of critique, critical theory, and ideological criticism. Such methods have been characterized as a "hermeneutics of suspicion" by Paul Ricœur and as a "paranoid" or suspicious style of reading by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. Proponents of postcritique argue that the interpretive practices associated with these ways of reading are now unlikely to yield useful or even interesting results. As Rita Felski and Elizabeth S. Anker put it in the introduction to Critique and Postcritique, "the intellectual or political payoff of interrogating, demystifying, and defamiliarizing is no longer quite so self-evident." A postcritical reading of a literary text might instead emphasize emotion or affect, or describe various other phenomenological or aesthetic dimensions of the reader's experience. At other times, it might focus on issues of reception, explore philosophical insights gleaned via the process of reading, pose formalist questions of the text, or seek to resolve a "sense of confusion."
William Scheuerman is an American philosopher and James H. Rudy Professor of Political Science at Indiana University Bloomington. He is known for his works on political theory. Scheuerman is a winner of the David and Elaine Spitz Prize for his book Between the Norm and the Exception: The Frankfurt School and the Rule of Law.
Social acceleration is a sociological concept of time in late modernity developed by German sociologist Hartmut Rosa. It was featured in his book Beschleunigung. Die Veränderung der Zeitstrukturen in der Moderne.
