Klaus Dörre

The Leviathan is back! This is how one could summarize what is currently happening in parts of the world due to the Corona pandemic. In his seminal work, Leviathan, or the Matter, Forme and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil, Thomas Hobbes chose the analogy of a sea monster to express the contradictory nature of the modern state. During the era of neoliberalism, it seemed that the Leviathan was in retreat. This...

In April 2020, while I am writing this, the economy is heading towards a recession. Nobody can make an exact prediction about developments in the coming months, as it is uncertain how long the pandemic will last. But it is probably not too far-fetched to anticipate a deep slump in the economy. The only question is how deep the slump will be. Economic...

The economies of early industrialized countries have left the time of rapid growth behind. One of the reasons for this end of rapid economic growth in these countries is a trend towards tightened profits that James Galbraith has called “the choke-chain effect”. The term describes the fact that the resource- and energy-intensive...

In some parts of the world the 2008/9 crisis of finance already sparked renewed interest in the oeuvre of Karl Marx and his congenial partner Friedrich Engels. In particular, The Capital seemed to be custom-made to understand and explain the crisis-ridden development of capitalism and shed light on the contemporary capitalist economy and its effects like the global increase of social inequalities, increasing unemployment, precarity, and poverty as...

Starting with this issue, Global Dialogue’s editorship has changed. Brigitte Aulenbacher and Klaus Dörre have taken over the editing duties from Michael Burawoy who created this magazine with enthusiasm. Prepared by a team of collaborators from many countries and translated into seventeen languages, Global Dialogue publishes contributions from sociologists from all over the world for a global academic and non-academic audience...

Ulrich Beck’s Risk Society triggered an intellectual earthquake in Germany upon its initial publication. Beck asserted the controversial position that social reality no longer corresponded to sociologists’ terminology, arguing that a quasi-revolutionary shift towards a new variant of modernity had occurred within the seemingly intact institutional shell of industrial modernity. Whoever sought to comprehend this shift would have to break...

Universities and institutions of higher education across the globe are being impacted by structural change, guided by principles of the entrepreneurial university. The imposition of New Public Management principles means that universities are increasingly being managed like private enterprises. Resources are being allocated according to performance records and target agreements. Academic capitalism has entered Germany, and its main instruments are university...