Abstract

The essay presents the parallel development of Shmuel Eisenstadt’s historical and theoretical sociology from a critical correction of structural functionalism found in The Political Systems of Empires to the full development of the theory of indeterminacy of his later works that culminated in the ‘multiple modernities’ thesis. The key factor that shapes the course of Eisentadt’s theoretical progress is the crucial role of various elites to fill the open space between actuality and potentiality creating and sustaining institutions that permit the development of structural differentiation according to some fundamental cosmological and cognitive principles that shape the course of historical development inside these social systems. Infusing structural-functionalism with a strong dose of conflict sociology, Eisenstadt came to the conclusion that social development is not a process of internal systemic growth, but the unintended consequence of the elites’ efforts to institutionally control free resources. And while this process in the pre-modern past led to the development of relatively distinct civilizations, in the framework of modernity has created a global framework of fundamental contradictions of tensions intrinsically irresolvable.