Social Theory and Regional Studies in the Global Age

Preface

Preface The project for integrating social theory and regional studies was an inaugural program of the Stony Brook Institute for Global Studies, and is appropriately appearing in its publication series, Pangaea II: Global/Local Studies. The project required a new social theory and a novel approach to regional studies, and this volume is a pioneering work in the construction of such a new social theory appropriate for the global age. Among the contributors to this volume, Wolf Schäfer and myself are co-directors of the Institute, and Edward Tiryakian and Björn Wittrock are members of its International Advisory Board, as was the late S. N. Eisenstadt (September 10, 1923–September 2, 2010). Edward Tiryakian has been particularly supportive of this project throughout, and made extensive comments on the draft introduction to this volume for which I am most grateful. Eisenstadt was to write the foreword to this volume, which is now dedicated to his memory as the founder of the study of axial civilizations and multiple modernities. We are also saddened by the untimely death of another key contributor, Willfried Spohn, on January 16, 2012, but pleased to be able to offer his contribution here as chapter 4. An earlier version of chapter 5 appeared in the Institute’s electronic journal, Globality Studies (globality.cc.stonybrook.edu/?p=158). An earlier version of chapter 1 was published under the same title in the Archives eruopéennes de sociologie 51, no. 3 (2010): 363–99, and I am grateful for the permission of its editor to include it in this volume. —Saïd Amir Arjomand xiii ...