5th ISA Forum of Sociology (6-11 July 2025)

The recent centenary of the founding of the Institute for Social Research, which under Max Horkheimer’s subsequent leadership gave rise to the program of a critical theory of society, is a timely conjuncture for addressing the questions of whether and how that program can be pursued today. Indeed, contemporary capitalist modernity has reposed some of the questions that shaped Critical Theory in ways closer to its original formative conditions. These include concerns about the continuing consequences of economic crises, a new phase of the rationalization of the domination of nature and society, the antinomy between the liberation of subjectivity and the decline of autonomy, the mutation of legitimating ideologies, and the ominous rise of authoritarian political movements. While Critical Theory continues to circle around a series of core considerations, the claim to derive from these original committments a sociologically transformational critique of injustice and irrationality makes it necessary to address a series of questions: Have the ‘generational’ reconstructions of Critical Theory eventuated in a rupture with its original template? What theoretical illumination of societal developments, human subjectivity, or domain of practices today offers the possibility for a synthesis equivalent to the program of ‘interdisciplinary materialism’ or the one centered around communication pragmatics? How does Critical Theory stand in relation to other perspectives, like strands of feminism and post-colonial theory that adopt the broader label of critical theories or those that reject the idea of critique altogether? In which ways may these and other approaches enrich or challenge Critical Theory?