Maria N Antonopoulou

Biography

Maria N. Antonopoulou was born in Athens, in 1946. She completed her secondary education at the Tossitsion Arsakion high school of Athens. She studied history and archeology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. She obtained her degree in March 1971. In October of the same year she followed the postgraduate course of “Diploma in Social Sciences”, at the University of Birmingham, U.K., which she obtained in July 1972. In October of the same year (1972) she followed a Master course in Sociology. She was awarded her Ph.D. degree in July 1976. Since May 1977 she has been teaching at the Department of Sociology of the Panteion University, originally as a lecturer, an assistant professor (1984), an associate professor (1989), and since 2000 as a full professor.

Research interest and content of works

In the Ph.D. thesis (1976) Method and Reality in Max Weber, she undertakes an analysis of Max Weber’s methodology. In this work she attempted to solve the problem of “value neutrality” that has in the past created confusion to his students, many of whom rejected his work as contradictory, while others classified him as a “positivist”, in spite of his central thesis of the essential role of “values” in the knowing process. She argues that the solution to the problem rests in the concept of “value-idea” that guides the researcher, and the “ideal type”, that is the concept at which the knowing process ends.

In 1992 (2nd. ed.) she published the book Theory and Ideology in the Thought of the Sociological Classics. The work attempts to locate the ‘ideological’’ premises of the theoretical constructions of the sociological classics (Comte, Marx, Durkheim, Pareto, Weber, Simmel). It attempts to trace the ideological core that runs through their theoretical constructions, and conditions their effort to deal with the problems of modern society.

In 2000 she published the book Social Action and Materialism. Study in Sociology of Knowledge. The book treats the abstraction of matter as a historical concept and of the theory of materialism as theory and ideology of the commodity society, par excellence of the capitalist society. It exposes the different versions of the concept of matter since antiquity to today, referring to the historical times it appeared. This exposition makes possible the hypothesis that the social relation of the exchange of commodities constitutes the social locus that is responsible for the formation of the abstraction of matter as a category. This makes possible the emergence of materialism as a world view, that is as a theory of nature and society. The book argues that the abstraction of matter emerges together with that of “exchange value”, of the “value” under which the commodities are exchanged. Exchange value expresses a social relation. When the exchange of commodities becomes a common practice in society, a displacement takes place from the subjects (the humans) to the objects they exchange (the commodities). Thereby the social relation is substituted by the relation of the things exchanged. Their bodily form is imposed, and matter, the concept of matter emerges as the essence of the social bond. The book examines the various cases of commodity society, since antiquity to the present, and analyses the consecutive conditions of the formation of the concept of matter in these societies. The society of the generalized commodity exchange, that is capitalist society developed the concept of matter as the first ontological essence and brought to the fore universal materialism, in opposition to antiquity, where no systematic materialism of whatever sort was put forward.

In 2008 she published the book The Sociological Classics. Social Theory and Modern Society. The book examines the formation of sociology as a distinct social science and the theories of the sociological classics within the context of the formation of modern society. These theories are examined in the light of the modes of social relations and the forms of social consciousness that the historical course of the last centuries has developed. It is noted that contemporary society at a global level faces severe problems, of perhaps even greater significance and acuteness, than those faced by European society at the dawn of the modern age, at the time in particular of the formation of capitalist society. This makes the work of the sociological classics particularly timely. A part of the material of the book is common with that of the above Theory and Ideology in the Thought of the Sociological Classics. Here however, apart from the fact that new chapters have been added, the line of the analysis of the theoretical constructions of the sociological classics has been shifted to the ways they examine social relations, as well as to the concepts that express the latter. A. Comte conceived of the natural sciences as the “positivist spirit” and main condition of modern society. He thus introduced positivism and scientism in sociology. In the case of Karl Marx the book deals with questions such as the relation of categories to the historical social relations they express. In the case of Max Weber the book argues, among other things, that he constructs no closed theoretical system and therefore for Weber the knowing process remains "open". According to Weber we comprehend the modes of living of people, through understanding the contents of their social relations within their historical settings. E. Durkheim asked directly the question of the social origin of concepts and categories of thought, while V. Pareto understood socially valid ideas and values as means of social domination. G. Simmel described society as a complex network of unstable social relations and pointed at the endemic crisis of the culture of "modern" society.

In 2011 she edited the book Max Weber. Our contemporary, which includes articles by distinguished scholars on Weber.

Βooks

Articles