Author:
Roberts Michael,Wright J. Talmadge
Abstract
As one of the most important activist intellectuals in America, Stanley Aronowitz made several important interventions in US sociology, including the introduction of critical theory to US sociology; the critique of orthodox Marxism and the reconstruction of historical materialism; a novel interpretation of the US labor movement past and present; a radical critique of conventional education; and an engagement with British cultural studies, psychoanalysis, and poststructuralism through the founding of the influential journal
Social Text
. His early engagement with the Civil Rights Movement as a union organizer was complemented by his deep understanding of European philosophy, which informed both his teaching and his research and moved beyond the standard Old and New Left positions of the time.