This Festschrift honors the enduring legacy of George Ritzer, one of sociology’s most influential and recognizable figures. Ritzer’s scholarship has helped shape core areas of the discipline—ranging from consumption and social theory to globalization and beyond—while also generating new conceptual terrains such as McDonaldization, prosumption, and the study of “nothing” and “something.”
George’s work is both timely and timeless. He has been, and continues to be, a sort of social seer, someone who is able to both see what is seemingly most relevant in the contemporary moment, but also that which is likely to remain impactful in the future. He not only sees what is worthy of critical analysis today, but also what is likely to be critical to analyze tomorrow.
By Gregory Jones-Katz
With Karl Marx in America[i], Andrew Hartman burrows and raises molehills, creating extensive networks of historical and political ideas for our intellectual nourishment. Throughout its hefty 500 pages and nine chapters, Hartman adroitly historicizes a wide range of American readers’ uses of Marx since the mid-nineteenth century.
Zygmunt Bauman was born in Poznan 19 November 1925. We celebrate the centenary of his birth by sharing an interview with Peter Beilharz by Southern People’s Weekly. Enthusiasm for Bauman’s ideas remains high in China, as elsewhere. We remember him fondly, as an ongoing friend and inspiration for Thesis Eleven. Happy Birthday, Zygmunt Bauman!
This special issue is a product of over a decade of collaboration between Thesis Eleven and Sichuan University’s College of Literature and Journalism. The issue provides a platform for emerging Chengdu scholars and developed around the idea that this younger generation of Masters students might consider writing less directly in their immediate fields of research and more in terms of general and personal interest. It offers a window into some of the concerns and patterns of thinking of the next generation and the worlds that they inhabit, where tradition and modernity intersect.
Fu Qilin, Marxist Aesthetics in Eastern Europe (Chinese Science Publishing, 2025)
Reviewed by David Roberts
by Peter Beilharz
Claus Offe was a fine scholar, a sharp thinker, and a good person. An extraordinary colleague, and a fascinating example of the marginal Frankfurt thinker.
Peter Thomas, Radical Politics: On the Causes of Contemporary Emancipation (Oxford University Press, 2023)
Reviewed by Alastair Davidson
by Alonso Casanueva Baptista
Awareness of the shifting landscape began on the second day of the conference. During the afternoon presentations, I heard the quick flight of fighter jets. Immediately, I got curious, but people around me seemed set on paying full mind to the research of their fellows. Outside the Faculty of Philosophy—the headquarters for the student protest movement—people walked languid, placidly up and down the streets of the city centre.
Thursday November 27, 2025
6:00-8:00pm, The Greek Centre, Melbourne.
You are warmly invited to the 2025 Thesis Eleven Annual Lecture. This year Professor Mark Davis (University of Leeds) joins us to discuss the essential role of sociology in responding to contemporary challenges during periods of crisis and transformation. This event is hosted by Thesis Eleven Journal and sponsored by the Greek Centre for Contemporary Culture.
Interview with Matthew Sharpe, translator Domenico Losurdo, Nietzsche, Philosopher of Reaction: Towards a Political Biography, Brill, 2025.
By James Dorahy
Cornelius Castoriadis et al., A Socialisme ou Barbarie Anthology: Autonomy, Critique, and Revolution in the Age of Bureaucratic Capitalism, translated and edited by David Ames Curtis (Eris, 2018)
Reviewed by Chamsy el-Ojeili
Introducing ‘Impact’: A Journal from our Friends and Colleagues at Eastern Michigan University
The current issue Volume 3, Number 1 (2025) of Impact: A Journal of Community and Cultural Inquiry in Education is the product of Thesis Eleven editors Peter Beilharz and Sian Supski’s visit to Eastern Michigan University in 2024.
Join union leaders and historian Sean Scalmer in discussion of his new book, A Fair Day’s Work: The Quest to Win Back Time (Melbourne University Press).
Time and Place:
6pm, Tuesday 16 September, Solidarity Hall, Victorian Trades Hall, 54 Victoria St, Carlton.
This special issue looks at the importance of imaginaries of total destruction – what we are electing to call annihilation aesthetics. The volume considers the historical present of technologically enabled violence, dealing in the process with concerns about mass terror and mediatisation, the logics of technological violence from the nuclear to the artificial age and the importance of culture in developing a viable critique.
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