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Nietzsche's texts contain diverse and sometimes contradictory themes that defy singular summations and are open to divergent interpretations. He also often deployed puzzling and contradictory statements to provoke readers' thoughts. Although not claiming to illuminate the one true Nietzsche, I contend that his sociocultural and social psychological arguments about German antisemitism and nationalism not only contradict alt right views but also theorize conditions that give rise to this distinctive type of demagoguery. Confiictive appropriations of Nietzsche have been part of the battle over capitalist crises and reactionary populist revivals for over a century, and unregulated growth and massive expansion of the globed economy relative to the biosphere greatly increased material throughput and production of waste and generated a host of severe global environmental problems, including especially climate change. In this situation, the alt right contends that cosmopolitan people are deracinated, emptied of their cultural particularity, and spiritually lost. Progressives contend that cosmopolitans potentially benefit from more diverse people and perspectives, enhanced ability to empathetically play the role of the other, and consequent wider communicative capacities and refined powers of cooperation. Nietzsche too exhorted humans to "remain true to the earth" and its "garden joy," and implied a naturalist esthetics and pacification of nature, and he should be rescued from alt right by reaching beyond his legacy to envision and forge new political-economic alternatives and collective actions capable of sustaining life on the planet and creating and perpetuating a more just democracy that favors cosmopolitan human flourishing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers the author's insights comments made by critics to his essay about life and nature. It says that Michael E. Zimmerman challenges the intention as well as the underpinnings of the essay while John Barry uses his claims to articulate own opinion regarding the subject matter of the essay. It states that though Zimmerman chooses not to engage in his arguments such as aspects of culture in nature and climate change predictions, he gives challenge to both discussions and provides his response. It also gives emphasis to Barry, which he describes as determinately engaging his claims more while articulating his own positions, mentioning the author's themes such as eco-feminism, peak oil, and well-being.

An essay is presented on climate change in relation to the aspects of global economy. It correlates consumption and capitalism to the persistence of climate change and states that culture is associated with the way people use limited resources. It notes that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change expresses the 70% increase in the rates of greenhouse gases between 1970 and 2004. Moreover, it suggests on considering critical theories on resolving the climate situation.

The article presents an analysis on the distinction of the process of internationalization of capitalism from the regime of capital accumulation called globalization. It states that globalization emerged as a response to the socio-economic rigidities of Fordism wherein Henry Ford instituted industrial mass production and deemed mass consumption the key aspect of economic growth. It concludes that the difficulties that transnational corporations encounter in realizing their capital allow for the possibility of democratization of global social relations.

We address here how the U.S. neoliberal policy regime developed and how its reconstructed vision of modernization, which culminated, under the rubric of globalization, was neutralized by 9/11 and neoconservative geopolitics. We analyze the phases in the rise of neoliberalism, and provide a detailed map of its vision of global modernization at its high tide under Clinton. We also address how the Bush Doctrine's unilateral, preemptive polices and the consequent War on Terror and Iraq War eroded U.S. legitimacy as the 9lobalization system's hegmon and shifted the discourse from 91obalization to empire. Cold War modernization theorists, neoliberal globalization advocates, and Bush doctrine neoconservatives all drew on an American exceptionalist tradition that portrays the U.S. as modernity's ‘lead society,’ attaches universal significance to its values, policies, and institutions, and urges their worldwide diffusion. All three traditions ignore or diminish the importance of substantive equality and social justice. We suggest that consequent U.S. policy problems might be averted by recovery of a suppressed side of the American tradition that stresses social justice and holds that democracy must start at home and be spread by example rather than by exhortation or force. Overall, we explore the contradictory U.S. role in an emergent post-Cold War world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theorists often point to social theory's normativity, but Gouldner's later works provide the most explicit, comprehensive treatment of it as post- traditional normative discourse - a practice distinct from sociology and sociological theory, yet linked historically and analytically to them. His argument about the need for a discourse space to debate social science's normative directions and to strengthen its connections to civil society is relevant today. Because Gouldner's approach has gaps and is somewhat fragmented I will reconstruct his argument about social theory per se. Although I point to problems that derive from his incomplete pragmatic turn, his approach offers an excellent departure point for discussing the meaning of social theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since democracy is a social construction, historical periods, such as Fordism and globalization, shape the ways in which democracy is conceptualized and practiced. While High Fordism engendered a form of democracy based on sophisticated social control, it also contemplated the enhancement of subordinate groups' substantive participation in decision making processes and the economic life. This form of democracy was changed by the end of Fordism and the emergence of globalization. Under globalization, the practice of democracy encounters the crisis of the social state and political representation, the emergence of transnational state forms largely free from direct control from their constituencies and hypermobility. These new conditions have been heralded as ideal for the growth of democracy by neo-liberal theories. Reflexive Modernization and Critical Theory accounts sharply reject this optimistic view. For them, the end of the Fordist era ushered in a crisis of democracy. For Reflexive Modernization the path to substantive forms of democracy goes through the reaffirmation of individuality over class in a society centered on increasingly deregulated markets.

This paper explores sociologist Max Weber's image of authoritarian bureaucracy and criticizes implicitly modern counterparts of this perspective for not providing sufficient emphasis on the dialectical interchanges between the mechanisms of domination and the responses of the ruled. The dynamic of state control and clientelistic adjustment contributed significantly to the decline of classical society and to the rise of protofeudalism. In Weber's view, the objective possibility of this political scenario is enhanced by the existence, in Western societies, of the aforementioned historical contradiction between democracy and bureaucracy. Substantively rational conceptions of democratic rights, in part generated by modern organizational development, become the basis of legal structures, collective actions, and social conflicts that oppose the instrumentally rational logic of bureaucratic domination. In this system the first and necessary step toward a substantive democratic alternative is awareness of the contradictory conditions generated by domination.

The article discusses various issues related to Fordism in the U.S. Fordism was first used to address a much more rationalized type of corporate capitalism, arising in the early twentieth century, typified by industrialist Henry Ford's assembly-line operation, management consultant Frederick Taylor's scientific management, and increased government intervention. Post-Fordism refers to a contemporary and substantial restructuring of the institutional and ideological complexes of capitalism. Authors focuses on post-Fordism's impact in the United States, its historical and ideological contexts, socio-economic consequences, and especially, its relation to democratic social relations and ideals. Because this shift is part of a transformation of international capitalism, they also tentatively map central dimensions of global post-Fordism. Authors also discuss some modest proposals about theorizing post-Fordism and democracy.