Harry F. Dahms is Professor of Sociology, co-director of the Center for the Study of Social Justice and co-chair of the Committee on Social Theory at the

University of Tennessee The University of Tennessee (officially The University of Tennessee, Knoxville; or UT Knoxville; UTK; or UT) is a public land-grant research university in Knoxville, Tennessee. Founded in 1794, two years before Tennessee became the 16th state ...

. Dahms's primary research and teaching areas are theoretical sociology (social, sociological, and critical theory),

economic sociology Economic sociology is the study of the social cause and effect of various economic phenomena. The field can be broadly divided into a classical period and a contemporary one, known as "new economic sociology". The classical period was concerned ...

globalization Globalization, or globalisation (English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English; American and British English spelling differences#-ise, -ize (-isation, -ization), see spelling differences), is the process of foreign relation ...

social inequality Social inequality occurs when resources in a given society are distributed unevenly, typically through norms of allocation, that engender specific patterns along lines of socially defined categories of persons. It posses and creates gender c ...

, and

social justice Social justice is justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, Equal opportunity, opportunities, and Social privilege, privileges within a society. In Western Civilization, Western and Culture of Asia, Asian cultures, the concept of social ...

. He is the editor of ''Current Perspectives in Social Theory'', and director of the International Social Theory Consortium (ISTC).

Education and career

Dahms obtained his master's degree in 1986 from the

University of Konstanz The University of Konstanz (german: Universität Konstanz) is a university in the city of Konstanz in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Its main campus was opened on the Gießberg in 1972 after being founded in 1966. The university is Germany's ...

, Germany, where he worked for and was supervised by

Ralf Dahrendorf Ralf Gustav Dahrendorf, Baron Dahrendorf, (1 May 1929 – 17 June 2009) was a German-British sociologist, philosopher, political scientist and liberal politician. A class conflict theorist, Dahrendorf was a leading expert on explaining and a ...

, and his PhD in 1993 from the New School for Social Research in New York, for a thesis entitled "The Entrepreneur in Western Capitalism: Schumpeter's Theory of Economic Development". While at the New School, he was supervised by Arthur Vidich and advised by

Andrew Arato Andrew Arato ( hu, Arató András ; born 22 August 1944) is a professor of Political and Social Theory in the Department of Sociology at The New School, best known for his influential book ''Civil Society and Political Theory'', coauthored with ...

and José Casanova. He taught at Florida State University in Tallahassee from 1993 to 2004, and was a visiting professor at the

University of Göttingen The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen, (german: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, known informally as Georgia Augusta) is a public research university in the city of Göttingen, Germany. Founded ...

, Germany (1999–2000) and the

University of Innsbruck The University of Innsbruck (german: Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck; la, Universitas Leopoldino Franciscea) is a public research university in Innsbruck, the capital of the Austrian federal state of Tyrol, founded on October 15, 1669. ...

, Austria (2011 and 2012)."Curriculum vitae"
University of Tennessee.

Work

Dahms's 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 Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...

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 “

” (including the debates about restructuring, transnational corporations, and

neo-imperialism In historical contexts, New Imperialism characterizes a period of colonial expansion by European powers, the United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, i ...

) 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 The Frankfurt School (german: Frankfurter Schule) is a school of social theory and critical philosophy associated with the Institute for Social Research, at Goethe University Frankfurt in 1929. Founded in the Weimar Republic (1918–1933), dur ...

at one end, to

Joseph Schumpeter Joseph Alois Schumpeter (; February 8, 1883 – January 8, 1950) was an Austrian-born political economist. He served briefly as Finance Minister of German-Austria in 1919. In 1932, he emigrated to the United States to become a professor at H ...

's social theory of

capitalism Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price system, priva ...

, 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. Dahms is also associate editor of ''Basic Income Studies'', ''Soundings. An Interdisciplinary Journal'', and a member of the editorial board of ''The Newfound Press'', and imprint of the University of Tennessee Libraries.

Selected works

*
The Vitality of Critical Theory.
' Emerald, 2011. * ''Nature, Knowledge, and Negation'' (ed.). ''Current Perspectives in Social Theory'', 26, Emerald, 2009. * ''No Social Science Without Critical Theory'' (ed.). ''Current Perspectives in Social Theory'', 25, Emerald, 2008. * ''Globalization Between the Cold War and Neo-Imperialism'' (Special Volume Editor). ''Current Perspectives in Social Theory'', 24, Elsevier/JAI, 2006. *''Transformations of Capitalism: Economy, Society and the State in Modern Times''. London: Palgrave, and New York: NYU Press, 2000.

Notes

External links

Harry F. Dahms — Research and Teaching Lab
University of Tennessee.
Center for the Study of Social Justice
University of Tennessee. {{DEFAULTSORT:Dahms, Harry The New School alumni American sociologists Living people Universal basic income writers Year of birth missing (living people)