Two German social theorists walk into a bar. Zwei Schnapps bitte!

What do they talk about?

They talk about their work; and the most stimulating section of this book is the third and last, when they do exactly that: they engage in conversation about their differences, and a few friendly sparks fly.

First, each writes at length about their own recent projects. These are very important, and the summary forms offered here are useful and insightful. Each has their watchword – for Reckwitz, singularity; for Rosa, resonance, following on acceleration. Each has a big book to go with the deal, but here readers may appreciate the Lesser Logic. This is big picture stuff.

These two R’s are striking for their differences, as well as their similarities. On the similarities, they share a missionary sense of dedication to sociology as a crisis discipline, the so to say natural or core discipline of modernity. They believe social theory, or the theory of society to be languishing in anglo cultures, better represented in muscular form in Germany.

Reckwitz performs first up. The mood of his contribution is a little more given to system, that of Rosa perhaps a little closer to romanticism. Reckwitz calls his ‘The Theory of Society as a Tool’. This is positioned with reference to practice theory. It has serious ambitions, including offering non-academic readers a vocabulary with which to understand themselves, common sense elevated to good sense as it were. The approach is then intended to be applied, both inside and outside the academy. It is directed to the practice of modernity, defined as a society of extremes. In summary, ‘Modern society is characterized by a temporal regime with three main components that exist in a state of tension: the regime of novelty, increased feeling of loss, and temporal hybridization’ (p. 53). This is sharp thinking, and precise styling. It follows that the dynamic of loss confronts modernity with a fundamental paradox, or dilemma of progress. Loss is not only observed in the ontological; it also refers to people on the street, who may be losers in the game of modernity. Modernity is agonistic, but patterns of suffering and creativity will not be identical. Reckwitz periodises: bourgeois, to industrial, to late modernity. Late, here, may take on both its meanings.

Like Rosa, Reckwitz speaks in a voice that is consciously self-conscious. Theory here is to be understood as critical analytics, and also as an experimental project. It is open to falsification, rather than built for denunciation or elimination. Theory should no longer be viewed as a weapon, at least not between colleagues. We are of course, two generations after Althusser. But this approach is refreshing all the same. The result is curious in its orientation to the world, and also in a sense personal.

Rosa’s mood is similar. His section is entitled ‘Best Account Outlining a Systematic Theory of Modern Society.’ Best Exotic Marigold Hotel? The idea of best account comes from Rosa’s teacher, Charles Taylor (Reckwitz, in contrast, worked together with Giddens). Best account, like best available, takes all possible issues into consideration, including the view from everyday life. This way of thinking is also open to revision or modification. Contingency is held in tension together with the pursuit of thinking that makes a difference.

Rosa brings his own motifs: dynamic stabilization, another paradox of modernity; and then the expansion of our share of the world, what in a different language Castoriadis would refer to as the imperative of rational mastery. Modernity also indicates desynchronization and alienation; heightened social acceleration, to simplify here, and its attendant result in alienation – a four headed economic, ecological, political and mental-health crisis and the need for social resonance in response to these crises. If this is a critical theory, it is some way from Adorno, even if perhaps reminiscent of Habermas in Legitimation Crisis, adding listening and responding to the formal approach of the speech act.

At this point, the two Germans enter a bar, and the conversation between them, mediated by Martin Bauer, commences. Reckwitz appears as closer to historical sociology, with reference to the work of Peter Wagner but, we should add Johann Arnason, Rosa closer intuitively to phenomenology or hermeneutics, the dynamic of self-interpretation following Taylor. There are some tensions here over themes like resonance, enlightenment, and even salvation; but I recommend this section as perhaps the best place to start for the new reader. By intention or not, this volume serves as a useful introduction to some of the most lively and stimulating work coming out of Germany today.

But to close, for the moment, is the German case special in this? Different readers will think of counter examples: in the US, there are thick projects like the Alexander School; Calhoun in his different collaborations; Randall Collins;  team projects like those sponsored by Wallerstein , John Hall and Erik Wright; one-person industries, such as those of Perry Anderson, Michael Mann, Goran Therborn; in the UK, practice theory itself, Mike Savage, Elizabeth Shove; all those working under the influence of Foucault or Bourdieu or Touraine; in the antipodes, perhaps even a project like Thesis Eleven.

A final heretical postscript: is it at all possible that German social theory is moving at a different temporality and ambition, given its detour under the NSDAP and subsequent Americanization after World War 2, this elongated by the interrupted but thick legacy of the Frankfurt School? I wonder.

This not a race, not even a drinking contest. There may indeed be great and impressive things happening in German social theory, as these materials suggest. But might it be possible that the relative decline of sociology in the anglosphere corresponds with accelerating decline of anglo modernity? The transformation of disciplines in the face of neoliberalism, the managerial university business model, the digital turn and the turn of universities away from the earlier German-American Bildung model?

Perhaps when it comes to social theory the Germans will have been first and last.