Habermas and Giddens on Praxis and Modernity

A comprehensive and original comparison of two of the most important and influential contemporary social theorists

This major new contribution forms a constructive comparison of the social theories of Jürgen Habermas and Anthony Giddens that focuses on their approaches to modernity, their endeavours to develop new perspectives, and their critical rethinking of the modernist vision of an autonomous society.

In Habermas and Giddens on Praxis and Modernity Craig Browne investigates how two of the most important and influential contemporary social theorists have sought to develop the modernist visions of the constitution of society through the autonomous actions of subjects. Comparing Habermas’s and Giddens’s conceptions of the constitution of society, interpretations of the social-structural impediments to subjects’ autonomy and attempts to delineate potentials for progressive social change within contemporary society, Browne draws on his own work, which has extended aspects of the social theorists’ approach to modernity. Despite the criticisms developed over the course of the book, Habermas and Giddens are found to be two of the most important theorists of democratization and social democracy, the dynamics of capitalist modernity and their paradoxes, social practices and reflexivity, and the foundations of social theory in the problem of the relationship of social action and social structure.