Reflections on America (PDF)

At a time when so many cracks have emerged within the imagined
community of 'the West', this important new book, by one of
the leading social scientists in Europe, examines the intellectual
history of comparing Europe and the United States. Claus Offe
considers the perspectives adopted by three of Europe's
greatest social scientists - Alexis de Tocqueville, Max Weber
and Theodor W. Adorno - in their comparative writings on
Europe.

While traveling, studying and working in the US, all three
constantly looked back to their European origins, trying to
decipher from their American experience what the future may hold
for Europe, be it for better or worse. Alexis de Tocqueville, the
French aristocrat, observed the functioning of American democracy
with a mix of admiration, envy and deep concerns about the fate of
liberty in the 'democratic age'. Max Weber, the German
sociologist, reported enthusiastically about the youthful energy he
found in the United States, which, however, he saw as gradually
succumbing to the stifling tendencies of European
bureaucratization. Theodor W. Adorno, the critical theorist and
refugee from Nazi Germany, observed with a sense of despair the
workings of the American 'culture industry' which he
equated to the totalitarian experience of Europe, only to switch to
a much more favorable picture upon his return to Germany.

Europe and the US are conventionally assumed to share the same
trajectory and develop according to some common pattern of
'occidental rationalism', with the observed differences
resulting from mere lags and relative advances on one side or the
other. In this insightful book, Offe questions the relevance of
this paradigm to transatlantic relations today.