Work
His research and teaching pertains to the tensions in the modern age between economic change, on the one hand, and politics, culture and society, on the other. Interpreting the contributions of Marx and Weber, in particular, as foundations for a dynamic theory of modern society, he starts out from the proposition that it is only from the perspective of “globalization” (including the debates about restructuring, transnational corporations, and neo-imperialism) that the contradictions and paradoxes of modern society can be disentangled.
The spectrum of his theoretical reference points reach from the critical theory of the Frankfurt School at one end, to Joseph Schumpeter's social theory of capitalism, at the other. In modern society, a particular kind of social order fused with a specific type of social processes, into an inherently irreconcilable force-field that maintains stability by devising mechanisms designed to contain the destructive power of the contradictions, in the process continually deepening those contradictions. The consequence is a widening gap between the categories social scientists employ to “meaningfully” interpret present conditions, and the categories that would have to be developed and deployed to maintain the possibility of meaning—socially, culturally, and politically.
In the interest of setting the stage for developing categories that are tailored explicitly to capture the contradictory nature of modern society, he has begun to frame the latter as compounded layers of alienation. A related line of inquiry pertains to the possibilities to tackle alienation that might result from implementations of basic income, or guaranteed minimum income.
In addition to being Editor of Current Perspectives in Social Theory, he is also Associate Editor of Basic Income Studies, Soundings. An Interdisciplinary Journal, Advisory Editor of The Sociological Quarterly, and a Member of the Editorial Board of The Newfound Press, and imprint of the University of Tennessee Libraries.
Read more about this topic: Harry Dahms
Famous quotes containing the word work:
“The economic dependence of woman and her apparently indestructible illusion that marriage will release her from loneliness and work and worry are potent factors in immunizing her from common sense in dealing with men at work.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
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“Erasmus was the light of his century; others were its strength: he lighted the way; others knew how to walk on it while he himself remained in the shadow as the source of light always does. But he who points the way into a new era is no less worthy of veneration than he who is the first to enter it; those who work invisibly have also accomplished a feat.”
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