In this moving and thought-provoking volume, Arthur Kleinman tells the unsettling stories of a handful of men and women, some of whom have lived through some of the most fundamental transitions of the turbulent twentieth century.
Here we meet an American veteran of World War II, tortured by the memory of the atrocities he committed while a soldier in the Pacific. A French-American woman aiding refugees in sub-Saharan Africa, facing the utter chaos of a society where life has become meaningless. A Chinese doctor trying to stay alive during Mao's cultural revolution, discovering that the only values that matter are those that get you beyond the next threat. These individuals found themselves caught in circumstances where those things that matter most to them--their desires, status, relationships, resources, political and religious commitments, life itself--have been challenged by the society around them. Each is caught up in existential moral experiences that define what it means to be human, with an intensity that makes their life narratives arresting.
These stories reveal just how malleable moral life is, and just how central danger is to our worlds and our livelihood. Indeed, Kleinman offers in this book a groundbreaking approach to ethics, examining "who we are" through some of the most disturbing issues of our time--war, globalization, poverty, social injustice--all in the context of actual lived moral life.

Dieses Buch soll anders sein. Es führt in den soziologischen Blick und in die wichtigsten soziologischen Grundbegriffe ein, ohne aber in lexikalischerGenauigkeit, definitorischer Schärfe und simulierter Neutralität soziologische Sätze in Stein zu meißeln. Eher von leichter Hand wird versucht, der Soziologie und der Erarbeitung ihres spezifischen Blicks über die Schulter zu schauen. Das Buch erzählt eine Geschichte, die Geschichte von Herrn A, einem Banker, der in Liebesdingen und in seinem Beruf Einiges erlebt. An dieser Geschichte wird der soziologische Blick praktisch, gewissermaßen empirisch, eher kurzweilig eingeübt. Das Buch richtet sich nicht nur an Studierende der Soziologie, sondern auch an all jene, die einen Blick in ein Labor soziologischen Denkens wagen wollen.

This collection of five essays by Germany's most prominent and influential social thinker both links Luhmann's social theory to the question "What is modern about modernity?" and shows the origins and context of his theory. In the introductory essay, "Modernity in Contemporary Society," Luhmann develops the thesis that the modern epistemological situation can be seen as the consequence of a radical change in social macrostructures that he calls "social differentiation," thereby designating the juxtaposition of and interaction between a growing number of social subsystems without any hierarchical structure. "European Rationality" defines rationality as the capacity to see the difference between systems and their environment as a unity. Luhmann argues that, in a world characterized by contingency, rationality tends to become coextensive with imagination, a view that challenges their classical binary opposition and opens up the possibility of seeing modern rationality as a paradox. In the third essay, "Contingency as Modern Society's Defining Attribute," Luhmann develops a further and probably even more important paradox: that the generalization of contingency or cognitive uncertainty is precisely what provides stability within modern societies. In the process, he argues that medieval and early modern theology can be seen as a "preadaptive advance" through which Western thinking prepared itself for the modern epistemological situation. In "Describing the Future," Luhmann claims that neither the traditional hope of learning from history nor the complementary hope of cognitively anticipating the future can be maintained, and that the classical concept of the future should be replaced by the notion of risk, defined as juxtaposing the expectation of realizing certain projects and the awareness that such projects might fail. The book concludes with "The Ecology of Ignorance," in which Luhmann outlines prospective research areas "for sponsors who have yet to be identified."

沃尔夫·莱佩尼斯以其著作《忧郁和社会》（1969），《自然史的结束》（1976）和对19世纪社会学的研究为理解现代社会做出了重要贡献。1981年，他的四卷本《社会科学的历史》问世，研究了这一学科的认知、社会和历史同一性。他的代表作《三种文化——在文学与科学之间的社会学》，讨论了社会科学的建立及其在英、法、德各国的不同特色，成为这一领域研究的经典之作。1997年，莱佩尼斯因其为法国文学批评家圣博夫所撰传记《圣博夫——在现在的门槛上》而为更多人所了解。他的新书《文化与政治——德国历史》于2006年7月出版，展示了18世纪到20世纪政治与文化之间的棘手关系。2006年德国书业和平奖授予给了沃尔夫·莱佩尼斯。

The papers in this collection were presented at a symposium sponsored by the Conference on British Studies at the University of Delaware. Six leading experts on different aspects of eighteenth-century Britain wrote on a general theme which cuts across traditional disciplinary boundaries. This theme is the lot of the ordinary individual in eighteenth-century society. This collection provides a wealth of information and valuable insights for the scholar of eighteenth-century Britain.

Anthony Giddens has been in the forefront of developments in social theory for the past decade. In The Constitution of Society he outlines the distinctive position he has evolved during that period and offers a full statement of a major new perspective in social thought, a synthesis and elaboration of ideas touched on in previous works but described here for the first time in an integrated and comprehensive form. A particular feature is Giddensa s concern to connect abstract problems of theory to an interpretation of the nature of empirical method in the social sciences. In presenting his own ideas, Giddens mounts a critical attack on some of the more orthodox sociological views. The Constitution of Society is an invaluable reference book for all those concerned with the basic issues in contemporary social theory.