Hans Joas

Hans Joas is Professor of Sociology and Dean of the Max Weber Center for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies of the University of Erfurt. Born in Munich, he studied sociology, history and philosophy at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich and the Freien Universität in Berlin. He has served on the editorial board of numerous journals, including the American Journal of Sociology, the American Sociological Review, the European Journal of Social Theory, and the archives européennes de sociologie. He is the author of dozens of books and articles in numerous languages, including: G. H. Mead: A Contemporary Re-examination of His Thought (Polity, 1985), Pragmatism and social theory (Chicago, 1993), The creativity of action (Chicago, 1997), The genesis of values (Chicago, 2001), War and modernity (Polity, 2003), and most recently, Do we need religion? On the experience of self-transcendence (Yale, 2007). He has also co-edited numerous influential studies of social theory and history, including: The Dialogical Turn: New Roles for Sociology in the Postdisciplinary Age (with Charles Chamic) (Rowman and Littlefield, 2004), Sozialtheorie: Zwanzig einführende Vorlesungen (with Wolfgang Knöbl) (Suhrkamp, 2004),and Die kulturellen Werte Europas (with Klaus Wiegandt) (Fischer, 2005).