This informative book provides a challenging re-evaluation of one of the crucial ideas of Western civilization - the notion of progress. The contributors, from all over the world, present their diversified perspectives on its fate.

Introduction, Jeffrey C. Alexander, Piotr Sztompka; Part 1 Beyond progress and modernity; Chapter 1 Between progress and apocalypse: social theory and the dream of reason in the twentieth century, Jeffrey C. Alexander; Chapter 2 Problems of crisis and normalcy in the contemporary world, Robert Holton; Chapter 3 The decadence of modernity: the delusions of progress and the search for historical consciousness, Carlo Mongardini; Chapter 4 The cultural code of modernity and the problem of nature: a critique of the naturalistic notion of progress, Klaus Eder; Part 2 Rethinking the agents of progress; Chapter 5 Intellectuals and progress: the origins, decline, and revival of a critical group, Ron Eyerman; Chapter 6 Progress in the distribution of power: gender relations and women's movements as a source of change, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Marilyn Rueschemeyer; Chapter 7 The end of western trade unionism?: social progress after the age of progressivism, David Kettler, Volker Meja; Part 3 Rethinking the mechanisms of progress; Chapter 8 Secularization and sacralization, Kenneth Thompson; Chapter 9 The democratization of differentiation: on the creativity of collective action, Hans Joas; Chapter 10 The relative autonomy of élites: the absorption of protest and social progress in western democracies, Eva Etzioni-Halevy; Part 4 New concepts of progress; Chapter 11 Models of directional change and human values: the theory of progress as an applied social science, Stepan Nowak; Chapter 12 Agency and progress: the idea of progress and changing theories of change, Piotr Sztompka; Index;