Making history: Agency, structure, and change in social theory

The problem of historical change has come to assume central importance among English-speaking social scientists in the past ten to fifteen years. Much attention has been focused on how we relate institutions and institutional change to actions, and how we think of history as the outcome of this process. This book looks at both Marxist and non-Marxist positions in this debate, examining in detail the work of Hobsbawm, Thompson, Cohen, Althusser, Giddens and Habermas amongst others. Callinicos argues that both functionalism and methodological individualism, and the various attempts to reconcile these extremes, are untenable. Drawing on classical Marxism, analytical philosophy and recent historical work, Callinicos has produced a useful contribution to the debate, developing an argument which should affect its terms in the future.