01897nam a22001457a 4500 528999 528999 250211b ||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d Maccarini, Andrea M. 50604 Barbarism and modernity in S.N. Eisenstadt’s theory: Towards a cultural sociology of radicalism International Sociology 39(6), Nov, 2024: p.631-649 The emergence of ‘radical’ social and political actors, ideologies and identities seems to be a hallmark of the crisis of liberal democracy that is spreading throughout global society. Despite its growing uneasiness about these facts, social science has not produced much theoretical innovation about them. This article aims to contribute to this task, by bringing to bear a conceptual framework elaborated by Shmuel N. Eisenstadt through his reflections on modern barbarism. I argue that the author’s understanding of barbarism has a significant interpretive potential for the sociological analysis of contemporary radical identities, and suggest some ways to reconsider ‘populism’, thereby redefining the very concept of radicalism. The article starts by introducing the pivotal notions which constitute the conceptual framework of our author. The following section outlines the main argument of Eisenstadt’s theory of barbarism, unpacking the way in which those concepts interweave to conjure a cultural theory of exclusionary, violent identities and institutional regimes. The final section highlights the significance of such approach for a cultural sociology of radicalism, by exploring the relations between the author’s views and some selected trends in contemporary social theory.- Reproduced https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/02685809241287172 Barbarism, Eisenstaedt, Modernity, Sociology of culture. 50605 International Sociology AR 0 0 ddc 0 0 404093 IIPA IIPA 2025-02-11 39(6), Nov, 2024: p.631-649 AR135191 2025-02-11 AR