In this book, Reckwitz outlines a specific consciousness of inheritance in late modernity, the realisation that as individuals, social groups, national communities, and even as a species, have inherited something from the past, will do so in the future, and that we will also hand something down to coming generations. That this legacy might not be exclusively positive, but also negative, disastrous, or profoundly ambivalent is clear to us – something which sets us apart from previous generations. We are painfully aware of the fact that it is impossible not to inherit something. This book discusses why that is the case, how this realisation is being addressed in society (for example in cultural products such as the series Succession), and how it runs through public debates about issues such as public monuments, intergenerational justice, and climate change.
Persons
Andreas Reckwitz
Andreas Reckwitz, born in 1970, is professor of Social Theory and Cultural Sociology at the Humboldt University of Berlin. His 2017 book Die Gesellschaft der Singularitäten was nominated for the Prize of the Leipzig Book Fair and awarded the Bayrischer Buchpreis. He was awarded the Leibniz Prize in 2019 and was a Fellow at the Thomas Mann House in Los Angeles in 2022.
Andreas Reckwitz, born in 1970, is professor of Social Theory and Cultural Sociology at the Humboldt University of Berlin. His 2017 book Die...
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
Loss
»Political Book« Prize 2025
Contemporary society is marked by forms of loss in manifold ways: from the effects of climate change to the protest movements of those who have...English world rights (Polity), Chinese simplex rights (Shanghai People's Publishing House), Brazilian Portuguese rights (Editora Vozes), Arabic world rights (Librairie Orientale), Italy (LUISS), Netherlands (Boom), Denmark (Reitzels), Sweden (Daidalos), Korea (Saemulgyul), Japan (Jimbun Shoin), Hungary (Gondolat)
Late Modernity in Crisis
In times of profound social upheavals and manifest crises, there is a need for fundamental analyses that take a look at contemporary society as a whole, examine its structural features and...
English world rights (Polity), Spanish world rights (NED Ediciones), Chinese simplex rights (Shanghai People’s Publishing House), Chinese complex rights (Wu-Nan), France (MSH), Denmark (Reitzels), Korea (Saemulgyul), Greece (Propobos)
The End of Illusions
Up until just a few years ago, Western societies seemed to be moving forward in the assumed certainty of social progress: the worldwide triumph of democracy and the market economy seemed...
English world rights (Polity), Spanish world rights (Nola), Chinese simplex rights (Social Sciences Academic Press), France (MSH), Denmark (Reitzels), Norway (Cappelen Damm Akademisk), Korea (Saemulgyul), Japan (Jimbun Shoin), Croatia (TIM Press), Turkey (Kültür Yayinlari), Greece (Alexandria)
The Society of Singularities
The particular is the clincher and the unique is prized while the general and the standardised remain, on the contrary, rather unattractive. The average person with his or her average life...
English world rights (Polity), Spanish world rights (Katz), Chinese simplex rights (Social Sciences Academic Press), Chinese complex rights (Business Weekly Publications), Russia (Directmedia), Arabic world rights (Sefsafa), France (MSH), Italy (Meltemi), Denmark (Reitzels), Korea (Saemulgyul), Japan (Iwanami Shoten), Czech Republic (Nakladatelství Filosofia Filosofického), Hungary (Gondolat), Bulgaria (KX – Critique and Humanism), Slovenia (Krtina)
The Invention of Creativity
Be creative! In today’s society the pressure and the desire to be creative and to produce ever newer things is extraordinarily widespread.
What was once reserved for the artistic...
English world rights (Polity), Spanish world rights (Catarata), Chinese simplex rights (Shanghai People's Publishing House), France (Presses du réel), Italy (Quodlibet), Denmark (Reitzels), Korea (Saemulgyul)
Previously published in the respective language/territory; rights available again: Poland (National Centre for Culture)