According to Wagner, progress is both necessary and possible but must be recast into moulds of criticism and imagination. However, in order to conceptualize future progress, we must undo the Eurocentric conceptions that have dominated modern imaginations. This book recognises the multitude of different definitions for progress and provides rational commentary for a majority of the political theories that have developed on a global scale over the last decades. The author’s research reveals that the condition, as well as the horizon, for any possible progress will require collective self-determination.
Peter Wagner, a German sociologist, is a social and political theoretician at the University of Barcelona. In his work, he aims to reconstruct the sociology of “modernity” and has published a dozen works, including Modernity as Experience and Interpretation (Polity Press, 2008).