Originally published in 1987 Modern German Sociology is a collection of essays containing sociological work published in German since World War II. Included are sections from such out-standing figures as Theodor Adorno, Alexander Mitscherlich, Jürgen Habermas, Niklas Luhmann, and Ralf Darendorf.

Preface Introduction Part I: German Sociology: A Retrospective 1. Sociology in the Interwar Period: Trends in Development and Criteria for Evaluation 2. The Tragic Consciousness of German Sociology 3. The Social Sciences Between Dogmatism and Decisionism: A Comparison of Karl Marx and Max Weber Part II: Approaches to Theory 4. Sociology as a Science of Social Reality 5. Recent Developments in the Relation Between Theory and Research 6. The Retreat of Sociologists into the Present 7. Modern Systems Theory and the Theory of Society 8. The Tasks of a Critical Theory of Society Part III: Diagnoses of Contemporary Society 9. The Crystallization of Cultural Forms 10. Late Capitalism or Industrial Society? 11. Life Chances, Class Conflict, Social Change 12. The Poverty of the Bourgeois Democracy in Germany Part IV: Class, Bureaucracy, and the State 13. The Origin of Class Societies: A Systems Analysis 14. Modes of Authority and Democratic Control 15. Toward a Theory of Late Capitalism 16. Beyond Status and Class: Will There Be an Individual Class Society? Part V: Identity and Social Structure 17. Personal Identity as an Evolutionary and Historical Problem 18. Psychoanalysis as Social Theory 19. The Nature of Human Aggression 20. On the German Reception of Role Theory 21. Structures of Meaning and Objective Hermeneutics Index