The equation between the concept of society and the nation-state in modernity is known as methodological nationalism in scholarly debates. In agreement with the thesis that methodological nationalism must be rejected and transcended, this article argues that we still lack an understanding of what methodological nationalism actually is and, because of that, we remain unable to answer the substantive problem methodological nationalism poses to social theory: how to understand the history, main features and legacy of the nation-state in modernity. The first section of the article reconstructs the origins of the critique of methodological nationalism in the 1970s and differentiates between its logical and historical versions. It then critically reviews the most salient critique of methodological nationalism in contemporary social theory, that of Ulrich Beck. The final part of the article assesses the thesis of social theory's immanent methodological nationalism by demonstrating how social theory's equivocations towards the nation-state only mirror the nation-state's own ambivalence within modernity. It is shown that social theory's ambivalent attempts at conceptualizing the nation-state reflect the actual ambivalence of the position of the nation-state in modernity: its historical opacity, its sociological uncertainty and its normative ambiguity.

This article seeks to further our understanding of what methodological nationalism is and to offer some insights towards its overcoming. The critical side of its argument explicates the paradoxical constitution of the current debate on methodological nationalism – namely, the fact that methodological nationalism is simultaneously regarded as wholly negative and all-pervasive in contemporary social science. I substantiate the idea of this paradox by revisiting some of the most successful attempts at the conceptualization of the nation-state that have sought to transcend methodological nationalism in four disciplines: sociology, nationalism studies, anthropology and social psychology. The positive side of my argument offers a distinction between different versions of methodological nationalism with the help of which it tries to address some of the problems found in the literature. Theoretically, methodological nationalism is associated with, and criticized for, its explanatory reductionism in which the rise and main features of the nation-state are used to explicate the rise and main features of modernity itself. Historically, the article reassesses the problem of its prevalence, that is, whether methodological nationalism is a key feature of the history of the social sciences.

1 The question of the human in the Anthropocene debate (forthcoming in European Journal of Social Theory) Daniel Chernilo * Abstract The Anthropocene debate is among the ambitious scientific programmes of the past 15 or 20 years. Its main arguments is that, from a geological point of view, humans are to be seen as a major force of nature so that our current geological epoch is depicted as dominated by human activity. The Anthropocene has slowly become a contemporary meta--narrative that seeks to make sense of the 'earth--system' as a whole, and one whose vision of the future is dystopian rather than progressive: as the exploitation of the planet's natural resources has reached tipping point, the very prospects of the continuity of human life are being questioned. My goal in this article is to explore the implicit notions of the human - indeed of the anthropos - that are being mobilised in the Anthropocene debate. I will proceed in two steps: first, I shall spell out the main the main arguments of the Anthropocene debate with a particular focus on trying to unpack its implicit ideas of the human. Secondly, I use of my approach to philosophical sociology to highlight some of the limitations and contradictions of the ideas of agency, reflexivity and responsibility that underpin the Anthropocene debate.

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The problem of the differentiation of societies is at the core of the sociological imagination about the rise of modernity. In postwar sociology, T. Parsons developed the theory of generalized symbolic media in the mid-1960s to tackle, theoretically and historically, the issue of differentiation. According to him, the interchange media are defined as resources oriented to exchange processes between the subsystems of the social system. Starting with money, Parsons argues that the remaining media (power, influence, and value-commitments) have a set of characteristics defined as common properties for all media. After this first formulation, contemporary theorists such as Niklas Luhmann and Jürgen Habermas have developed and modified the Parsonian theory: Luhmann rejects the idea of interchange and proposes the use of communication; Habermas distinguishes between steering and communication media. In all three cases, the focus of the theory is on the characterization of the strongest dynamics of social co-ordination present in differentiated societies. A major result of these developments is the inclusion of new dimensions on which to conceive the properties of media, not only those of money but also language. Beyond differences, then, it is proposed that there is only one theory of generalized symbolic media which can be understood as a progressive research programme, in Lakatos' terms. Finally, the hand-in-hand evolution between the theory of media and Habermas' and Luhmann's re-conceptualizations on societal differentiation in contemporary societies will also be revealed.