Understanding the Course of Social Reality

This book offers a comparison between our earthly society and the society of a hypothetical twin planet with the aim to understand and deal with some of the main problems of our global society, as well as to advance interaction with some extra-terrestrial society no less advanced than ours that sooner or later will be discovered. The underlying premise of the book is that the contemporary world finds itself in what may well be the most confused age of human history. Growing technological changes and innovation make it difficult to understand the course of social reality, while the intensification of the relations between different regions of the Earth and the power achieved by financial capital on a world scale amplify the dimensions and visibility of disequilibria and iniquities, and sharpen frustration and sentiments of insecurity. Social thought, as it has developed at the service of a quasi-stationary world, lacks the ability to understand and govern the tumultuous economic and social processes in progress.
The most efficacious way to meet this fleeting social reality is to scientifically highlight basic institutions and values and their steady changes caused by the accumulation of creative and choice processes. In doing so, long-run trends can be explored in order to understand and manage the disequilibrating-reequilibrating motion characterizing the life of dynamic societies. This book shows the 'necessity' of institutional and ethical transformations utilizing an utopian flavour.

Presents extensive criticisms of the methodological foundations of social sciences Provides an interpretation of economic, social and historic processes Offers an organizational view, centred on the interaction of being and doing Extends the analysis to ethical structures, rejecting both cultural relativism and cultural absolutism Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Inhalt
Chapter 1. Introduction.- Chapter 2. The Scientific Frame of this Story.- Chapter 3. Prologue of the Tale.- Chapter 4. On Landing on the Planet Dunatopia.- Chapter 5. A Brief Historical Excursus on the Evolution of Dunatopian Society and Its Institutions: Structural Organization and Innovative Dash.- Chapter 6. Power Forms and their Practice in Dunatopia. Service-Power and Domination-Power. Judicial Power.- Chapter 7. The Planetary Political System of Dunatopian Society.- Chapter 8. Dunatopian Economic System.- Chapter 9. Non-Market Productive Activities and Other Aspects of the Dunatopian Social System.- Chapter 10. The Reasons Why the Ideologies, Political and Economical Institutions and Public Interventions on Earth Obstruct the Building of a Supranational Order.- Chapter 11. On the Methods of Science on Earth and Dunatopia.- Chapter 12. The Ethical Problem on Earth and on Dunatopia. Ethics and Religion.- Chapter 13. On the Transition from Capitalism and Dunatopism.