Professor Johann Arnason

Johann Arnason is chief editor of the internationally recognised journal of social theory Thesis Eleven , which has played a large role in the dissemination of European critical theory in theEnglish-speaking world. He held a personal chair in Sociology at La Trobe University from 1994 to 2003.
With training in both philosophy and sociology, Johann Arnason started his academic career inGermany before coming to Australia in 1975. His early research focused on the work of the Frankfurt school, specifically on the Marxist concept of pr axis . His critical appraisal of Marcuse'sreappropriation of this concept led him to stress the need for critical theory to be grounded in an anthropological basis if it were to escape from reductive technological determinism. Retaining the concept'sinsight into the cultural creativity of human activity, he went on to engage with macro-sociological issues and to formulate a theory of modernity motivated by the need to do justice to both thecontingency and cultural creativity/diversity of human history.
This led him to turn away from Habermas' evolutionary view of human development back to Weber's concept of culture. As part of this, Arnasonhas engaged extensively with civilizational theory. More recently, he has become one of the leading figures in a new strand of thought known as the school of "multiple modernities," which has beengaining increasing recognition since the publication in 2000 of a special issue of the journal Daedalus devoted to it. This school of thought seeks to overcome both the classical modernizationparadigms of the cold-war period and the notions which gained favour after the collapse of East European communism of an "End of History" ( Fukuyama ) or a clash of civilizations (Huntington).
Arnasonexamined in The Future that Failed (1993) the collapse of Soviet communism as that of an alternative project of modernity with imperial aspirations. This assessment drew on theories of democracy and...