ABSTRACT
The focus of this chapter shifts to the social theory of the Frankfurt School and is specifically concerned with the theme of social transformations in modernity. The central question posed is: what are the major social transformations of modernity from a critical theory perspective? A distinctive feature of critical theory has been its attempt to locate the present in the context of a historical account of modernity. This concern with history is not for the sake of understanding the past but for interpreting the present and future possibilities contained within the present. This is perhaps what distinguishes critical theory from Foucault’s genealogical approach with which it has some similarities in being also ‘a history of the present’. However, unlike for Foucault, the task for critical theory is always to identify openings to the future. The chapter begins with an account of modernity as understood by critical theory. This leads to a discussion on capitalism in relation to modernity and the problem of whether capitalism is to be understood as the defining characteristic of contemporary society. The chapter then moves on to look at the problem of technology, which was one of the main expressions of the Frankfurt School’s critique of modernity. In the current context of the digital age and so-called surveillance capitalism, the critical theory of technology has become once again highly salient. It is argued that the distinctive feature of the critical theory approach to technology is to oppose the dominant view of technology as neutral and as deterministic. Instead, it is seen as shaped by society and specifically by capitalism (while admitting the possibility that it can be shaped by other modes of social and economic organization). While the nature of the digital technologies today is vastly different to anything the critical theorists had in mind when they referred to technology, the new technologies can be seen as part of the wider edifice of capitalism. Technology is not neutral and neither is it a self-determining power but is engrained in capitalism.
