First of all, it should be noted that theories of society, at least since the 18th century, have increasingly lost the character of utopian designs. Gradually and hesitantly, modern theories of society reflect the changed social reality, or rather, they increasingly refrain from creating images of society whose desirability is used to measure social reality. But even this statement is not absolute. Utopian theories of society continue to exist, albeit perhaps only marginally, if one considers the number of their adherents who are pressing for their realization. But even theories of society apparently born from the middle of the social sciences are interpreted as blueprints of politics, or the urge of new social realities being drafted into the center of the theories of society should not be underestimated.

In any case, contingent social transformations are increasingly becoming a characteristic aspect of modern theories of society, which are therefore much more ambivalent and open and do not require ambitious prognoses even when compared to older theories from Comte to Marx and even Durkheim. However, a more systematic exposition of some of the salient theoretical attributes of classical discourse on modern society and how its assumptions may be transcended is still lacking. I will attempt to provide a first sketch of a perspective more in tune with contemporary social, economic, and political realities.

Daniel Bell’s (1973) theory of post-industrial society was not only widely read, but also extensively commented upon, a work known by more people than who had actually read The Coming of Post-Industrial Society during the heroic days of sociology in the last third of the 20th century and often even interpreted as a blueprint for the politics of the day, even though the post-industrial society concept is not at all political. It is worthwhile to revisit his theory and his predictions in a new context. I will reflect on Bell’s theory and his predictions in greater detail, also in light of their intellectual context, especially since this theory is one of the few works in which the critic cannot immediately think of the remark: “ ‘Post’ is the code word for perplexity that gets caught in the fashionable” (Beck, 1986:12).³

Bell’s (1973:373) theory of post-industrial society exemplifies the more recent, modern systemic features of theories of society, perhaps not in every detail but to a significant degree. Part of the ambiguity of Bell’s theory of post-industrial society is linked, no doubt, to the fact that he has written and explicated its central features for more than a decade between the mid-sixties and the mid-seventies. It is unavoidable that my effort—in the spirit of symmetry—is by no means immune either, that this theoretical effort resonates with, and appeals to some degree at least, to the political issues of the day. The theory of the post-industrial society was in turn—in the analyses of many social theorists of the beginning 21st century—overtaken or replaced by the so-called “information age/revolution”. To what extent the information age—often conceived only as a result of technical changes—should be better understood as the age of the knowledge society is one of the questions to which an answer should be found here.

Contemporary social theories are much more bound to the present and abstain from both extensive historical reflection and discussions of what might be termed utopias. Classical discourse, in contrast, was much less present-bound and took for granted that it was simultaneously concerned with history and with designs for the future. The restriction of contemporary social theory has a number of causes, chief among them being an increasingly rigid division of intellectual labor in social science. Also, the widespread credence of methodological prescriptions proclaim that “positive” discourse is best served through a “proper” delimitation of theoretical reasoning to assure a “genuine” disciplinary issue.

My brief discussion of the genealogy of theories of modern societies begins with a few remarks on the emergence of modern societies, in particular the logic of the orthodox perspective of modern communities. Among the traditional assumptions are four characteristics related to the space of modern society, the functional differentiation of the social fabric, the dominant culture, and the conviction that societies change according to a certain evolutionary logic. After a brief comment on the permanence with which societies are in transition, I analyze modernization as a question of the extension and expansion of social and intellectual action. Modernization is, one can also put it this way, an increase in complexity. Sociology is part of this increase in complexity and must be self-exemplifying. I then describe in greater detail modern society as an industrial society and the perspective of the so-called post-industrial society. The theory of knowledge society and knowledge capitalism must therefore be more complex than classical theories of industrial society and more multifaceted than the theory of post-industrial society. Novel concepts and relations are essential tools toward a more complex analysis of the expansion of social conduct.

The concept of society remains an essential idea of social science discourse in spite of recent challenges by the concept and process of globalization, often understood to be the largely separate (split from the rest of society) globalization of the economic system (e.g., Touraine, [2010] 2014:96). Even as the frontiers of the nation-state, as the traditional boundaries of society became less central in recent decades, the concept of society was elevated and converted to now—in some theoretical perspectives at least—world society. Examples of this theoretical development are theories of modernity or world system analysis, feminist or critical post-colonial theories.

I will first critically outline the logic of the orthodox perspective and then attempt to offer an alternative theoretical perspective of long-term social development that is both non-teleological and non-evolutionary.

Despite the cognitive diversity and nuances of contemporary social science discourse, a fact which finally has become an important part of the self-consciousness of sociologists, economists, anthropologists, and historians, it is perhaps somewhat surprising to conclude that there are dominant intellectual orthodoxies and the appearance of “premature closure” among reigning theories of society including common blind spots. These attributes then transcend otherwise firmly entrenched strategic and substantive disagreements among social scientists about what problems need what attention, namely urgent researchable issues, proper theoretical strategies, fruitful methods, and interpretation of findings variously generated. In spite of vigorous cognitive dissent, there are a few common as well as core thematic features of theories of contemporary society, mostly derivative of classical discourse, which inform much of the theoretical and empirical work in social science today. Until recently, the various theories of modern society were united by a common blind spot, the failure to attend to the carbonization of the atmosphere as the result of the industrialization. Progress toward decarbonization has been dismal.

Among the important commonalties of contemporary social scientific theories of society are (1), the tendency to fix boundaries of societal systems as identical with those of nation-states; as a result, for most perspectives, “causality” is intrasocietial; (2), the conviction that the key to the distinctiveness of modern society is primarily related to the persistent functional differentiation of societal subsystems and greater specialization of social institutions; (3), the widespread confidence that traditional or irrational beliefs are transcended by rational knowledge resulting in a greater rationalization of social activities. The function of course is liberating society. Zygmunt Bauman (2000:3) explains, “the first sacreds to be profaned were traditional loyalties, customary rights and obligations which bound hands and feet, hindered moves and cramped the enterprise.”

These expectations coming from the social sciences, as I will document, are disappointed again and again by the fact that not inconsiderable parts of the population in modern societies adhere to so-called “conspiracy theories” or fundamentally question scientific findings that are shared by a large number of scientists in modern societies; or even more elementary, that people arrange/explain their mundane everyday life (but also extraordinary events) based on traditional ideas and, far from being liberated, find themselves trapped with the confines of cages of the new order (such as social classes). Finally, (4), there is the virtual certainty that societal formations of one historical stage or type ultimately are replaced by entirely different, new social arrangements. In the final analysis, the last assumption about the course of society over time is one wedded strongly to the notion of progress.

Taken together, the premises of the orthodox logic of theories of societies that dominated social science discourse for a considerable period of time carried with it a distinct politics that claimed to have grasped the complete knowledge of the future. It is no accident therefore that Daniel Bell’s (1973) subtitle of his The Coming of Post-Industrial Society is “A Venture in Social Forecasting”. Although Francis Fukuyama (1999/2000:130) praises Daniel Bell for the accuracy of his forecasting, theories of society could just as well function as self-fulfilling prophecies. It is not unusual that political parties, corporations, cities, or international organizations take a theory of society as guide for their future. The theory of modern society as knowledge societies is no exception to this rule.

I will critically examine each of the premises of the orthodox logic of classical theories society in greater detail: The unit of (macro-)- social scientific analysis tends to be society in the sense of the nation-state. Society, for all intents and purposes, becomes indistinguishable from the nation-state.⁵ Social transformations primarily occur as the result of mechanisms that are part of and built into the structure of a given society. The conflation of modern society with the nation-state is a legacy of the 19th-century origins of social science discourse. Obviously, there may have been and perhaps still are some good intellectual and practical-political reasons for the identification of the boundaries of the social system with those of the nation-state.⁶ For example, the formation of social science discourse to some extent coincides with the constitution of the identity of the modern nation-state and violent struggles among nation-states. Yet, it is quite inadequate to retain the restrictive framework of the territorial state today. The major institutions of modern society, the market economy, large cities, the state, higher education, sport, tourism, religion, science, technical artifacts, everyday life, and also the ecology of a society are all profoundly affected by a progressive “globalization” or transnationalism of human affairs or by circumstances in which “disembodied institutions, linking local practices with globalised social relations, organize major aspects of day-to-day-life” (Giddens, 1990c:79). However, state-based territorial power and power plays have not disappeared but continue to be relevant attributes of geopolitics.

The complex networks along many axes that have developed are a revolutionary social development in the recent history of mankind. The course of human history was almost always marked by information and knowledge, which geographically speaking included at most a daily foot march and social integration based on face-to-face interaction. There are undoubtedly exceptions today that represent the principle of the simultaneity of the non-simultaneous but in most cases the (empirically) relevant boundaries of the social system and human consciousness are no longer those of national borders.

The eclipse of time and distance in economic activities, environmental changes that recognize no boundaries, the global connectedness of the electronic media, the internet, the progressive internationality of the scientific community, growing transnational cultural activities, and the dynamics of multinational corporate activity and political institutions all represent persuasive evidence for re-constituting the focus of social science discourse away from society and the nation-state toward groups of national societies, networks of transnational political and economic power and divisions not only within the world, but also the global society (Bauman, 1992; Giddens, 1990c; Beck and Malsow, 2014). In short, the spatial identity of major social processes, communication, economic activities, social mobility, and inequality are no longer aligned with national boundaries. The Covid-19 pandemic of 2020 and 2021 and its predecessors in turn clearly shows that this has not always been the case in the past.

But to question the adequacy of such an emphasis does not necessarily imply embracing uncritically the notion of “global society” or a global economic and cultural unity and uniformity of humanity. A boundless world is unrealistic. The assertion of a boundless world misses “the link between boundary setting and identity: whoever wants identity must have boundaries” (Kocka, 2010:37). Nor does a shift in th...