Jóhann P. Árnason, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, La Trobe University

Jóhann P. Árnason

May welcomed Professor Jóhann P. Árnason, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia to CMS. Jóhann Árnason is a comparative historical sociologist whose research has focused on the comparative analysis of civilizations and on theories and varieties of modernity. He has written or edited books about the Soviet model, the dual civilization of Japan, the Greek polis and the Eurasian world in the tenth to thirteenth centuries as well as critical theoretical works such as Praxis and Interpretation and Civilizations in Dispute: Historical Questions and Theoretical Traditions.

While at CMS, Jóhann P. Árnason offered a seminar on 'Medieval Western Christendom as a Civilization: Interpretations and Comparisons' which presented different historical sociological perspectives on the process(es) of civilization and suggested developments in the Latin West in the twelfth century that allow us to consider the period as an 'axial age'. Subsequent discussion centered on several  competing narratives of Western European history and the development of modernity.

Jóhann P. Árnason also participated in a seminar on 'The Crisis of the Twelfth Century', organized to discuss the ramifications of Thomas Bisson's book by that title and more broadly political thought and reality in the twelfth century as well as present-day representations of the century as a fulcrum in Western history.

Jóhann P. Árnason's work is said to 'combine close textual analysis with wide-ranging sociological inquiry...[presenting] a challenge to the narrow approach to critical theory'. At the turn of the millenium, he was called 'one of the most creative macro-sociologists of the 1980s and 1990s...[one who] never lost his interest in philosophical questions'. 

Born in Iceland, Jóhann P. Árnason studied philosophy, history and sociology in Prague and Frankfurt. He taught at Heidelberg University and Bielefeld Unversity before moving to La Trobe in 1976 where he taught until 2003. From 1987 to 2003, he was an editor of the social theory journal Thesis Eleven. He now teaches irregularly at the Faculty of Humanities of Charles University, Prague.