Political Sociology: Between Civilizations and Modernities

Abstract

This article outlines a comparative-civilizational multiple modernities perspective on political sociology. In the context of the major currents within political sociology — modernization approaches, critical and neo-Marxist as well as postmodern and global approaches — it is argued that a comparative-civilizational multiple modernities perspective is defined by several characteristics. First, against functionalist-evolutionist modernization approaches it emphasizes the fragility, contradictions and openness as well as civilizational multiplicity of political modernity and political modernization processes. Second, against critical and neo-Marxist approaches, it insists on the cultural and institutional contradictions of political power, social protest and political conflict. Third, against post-modern and post-colonial micro-sociological approaches, often primarily micro-sociological, it holds to a macro-sociological constructivist orientation. Fourth, against the primarily socio-economic and political-institutional approaches to global political sociology, it again emphasizes the historically changing, culturally contradictory and pluri-civilizational dimensions of international relations and world politics. Though sharing with all these major currents in political sociology some common ground, the outlined comparative-civilizational multiple modernities perspective conceptualizes and analyses, more specifically, the varying impacts of civilizations, empires and world religions on the complex dimensions and levels of the political arena and on power relations in a modernizing and globalizing world.