This innovative volume provides insight into the vast changes in societies now and in the near future, and highlights the need for a new sociological approach to analyse these changes. It particularly reviews and critiques existing theories of globalization and analyses how global changes affect all subsystems of social membership systems: the scientific, academic, legal and political systems. The authors propose a new theoretical paradigm in sociology to analyse this "next society". The book studies emergent communication structures between these systems and looks at the concept of membership as a new research area in the study of the next society. In this context, it particularly assesses the problems of further modernization of Chinese society, and the directions of this modernization. This book is of interest to researchers and students of social theory, globalization studies, theory of evolution, and those studying modern Chinese society.

Autorentext

Gerhard Preyer (Dr. phil. habil.) is Professor of Sociology at the Institute of Sociology, Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt a. M., Germany. He teaches courses on sociology at the Goethe University and philosophy at West European Universities and China. His areas of research are the philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, sociological theory and comparative sociology. He is the editor of ProtoSociology. An International Journal of Interdisciplinary Research. Some of his recent publications are: S. Miguens, G. Preyer, C. Bravo Morando eds., Pre-Reflective Consciousness. Sartre and Contemporary Philosophy of Mind (London: Routledge 2016, New York 2017); G. Preyer ed., Beyond Semantics and Pragmatics (Oxford UK: Oxford University Press, 2018); G. Preyer, G. Peter eds., Social Ontology and Collective Intentionality. Critical Essays on the Philosophy of Raimo Tuomela with His Responses (Cham: Springer, 2017); G. Preyer, Soziologische Theorie der Gegenwartsgesellschaft (3 vols., 2e), Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2018). Reuss-Markus Krauße (Dr. phil.) works on the ProtoSociology project at the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main. He is a management consultant and intercultural trainer for successful cooperation with business partners from China. He has published several research volumes in German, among them being: Hybridisierung Chinas Modernisierung und Mitgliedschaftsordnung der chinesischen Gesellschaft (Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2016), Ohnmächtige Weltmacht China: Modernisierung ohne Harmonie (Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 2017, with G. Preyer).