Peter Wagner Livres

This book explores the evolution of modernity, highlighting how globalization, individualization, inequalities, and fundamentalism have reshaped societal structures. It argues for a new sociological analysis that recognizes the plurality of answers to fundamental societal questions, emphasizing personal experiences and interpretations of modernity, particularly in Europe.

This book is divided into two parts, exploring 19th-century social theory and its influence on modernity and capitalism in the 1950s and 60s. It discusses key social science concepts like choice and society, while addressing the collectivist alternative often dismissed by postmodernists. A significant contribution to contemporary social theory.

This is a brief, authoritative and accessible introduction to the idea of modernity, written by a leading social theorist. Wagner shows that modernity was based on ideas of freedom, reason and progress, but he examines the extent to which these ideas have been, and can be, realized in the modern world.

Focusing on the evolution of social theory from the 19th century to the modern era, the book explores the intersection of social planning and capitalism's 'golden age' in the 1950s and 60s. It delves into foundational concepts such as choice, decision, action, and institution, while also addressing the collectivist alternative of society, culture, and polity, often criticized by postmodernists. This work offers significant insights into contemporary social theory and the challenges faced by social science today.

By examining the philosophical foundations of social inquiry, this book contends that sociology has neglected critical analysis of the human condition. It highlights five essential questions related to inescapability and attainability: the certainty of knowledge, the viability of politics, the continuity of self, the accessibility of the past, and the transparency of the future. Through a historical lens, it explores how these questions have been approached over the last 200 years and their relevance in contemporary discourse.

This book acknowledges the severe problems with effective and significant collective action, but arrives at a more optimistic diagnosis of our time by rethinking the political from the angle of the experiences with progressive and conservative collective action in different parts of the globe: Brazil, South Africa and Europe.

This monograph provides the theoretical foundations needed for the construction of fundamental solutions and fundamental matrices of (systems of) linear partial differential equations. Many illustrative examples also show techniques for finding such solutions in terms of integrals. Particular attention is given to developing the fundamentals of distribution theory, accompanied by calculations of fundamental solutions. The main part of the book deals with existence theorems and uniqueness criteria, the method of parameter integration, the investigation of quasihyperbolic systems by means of Fourier and Laplace transforms, and the representation of fundamental solutions of homogeneous elliptic operators with the help of Abelian integrals. In addition to rigorous distributional derivations and verifications of fundamental solutions, the book also shows how to construct fundamental solutions (matrices) of many physically relevant operators (systems), in elasticity, thermoelasticity, hexagonal/cubic elastodynamics, for Maxwell’s system and others. The book mainly addresses researchers and lecturers who work with partial differential equations. However, it also offers a valuable resource for students with a solid background in vector calculus, complex analysis and functional analysis.

This book explores the possible meanings of the 'Global South' and assesses the advantages and disadvantages of adopting it for understanding the contemporary world. It casts a wide exploratory net, addressing historical transformations of world-interpretation and wider cultural-intellectual meanings.