Formative contextFormative contexts are the institutional and imaginative arrangements that shape a society's conflicts and resolutions. They are the structures that limit both the practice and the imaginative possibilities in a socio-political order, and in doing so shape the routines of conflict over social, political and economic resources that govern access to labor, loyalty, and social station, e.g. government power, economic capital, technological expertise, etc.
Middle-range theory (sociology)Middle-range theory, developed by Robert K. Merton, is an approach to sociological theorizing aimed at integrating theory and empirical research. It is currently the de facto dominant approach to sociological theory construction, especially in the United States. Middle-range theory starts with an empirical phenomenon (as opposed to a broad abstract entity like the social system) and abstracts from it to create general statements that can be verified by data.
Post-marxismevignette|Portrait de Karl Marx (1875). Le post-marxisme est un courant en philosophie et théorie sociale reposant sur les écrits de Karl Marx et sur le marxisme pur, contournant le marxisme orthodoxe. Sur le plan philosophique, le post-marxisme va à l'encontre du dérivationnisme et de l'essentialisme (par exemple, il ne voit pas dans l'État un instrument qui « fonctionne » de façon univoque et autonome au nom des intérêts d'une classe donnée). De récentes vues sur le post-marxisme se rencontrent chez Ernesto Screpanti, Göran Therborn et Gregory Meyerson.
Late modernityLate modernity (or liquid modernity) is the characterization of today's highly developed global societies as the continuation (or development) of modernity rather than as an element of the succeeding era known as postmodernity, or the postmodern. Introduced as "liquid" modernity by the Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, late modernity is marked by the global capitalist economies with their increasing privatization of services and by the information revolution.
