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Prof. Dr. José Maurício Domingues

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Laureate of Anneliese Maier research award 2018

Alexander von Humbold Foundation

The Hamburg Institute for Social Research (HIS)

Researches at the LAI

Born in Brazil in 1960, José Maurício Domingues has been conducting research as a Professor at Rio de Janeiro State University in Brazil since 2010. He took his doctorate at the London School of Economics and Political Science in the United Kingdom in 1989 and returned to Brazil in 1994, originally as a postdoc.

From 1997 to 2000, he was a Professor at Rio de Janeiro Federal University, subsequently transferring to the Rio de Janeiro University Research Institute where he also acted as Executive Director from 2005 to 2007.

In 2010, he was a visiting researcher at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. He also spent time pursuing his research in China, India and Israel.

Since 2018 he has been conducting research as Anneliese Maier Prize Winner between Germany and Brazil.

José Maurício Domingues is on the editorial boards of various international and Latin American journals.


The work of the Brazilian sociologist José Maurício Domingues is distinguished by a consistent regard for theory.

He develops global, sociological theory and is considered one of the few researchers who manages to connect the theoretical debates conducted in Latin America with those in the English-, French- and German-speaking worlds. This has made him one of the most important contemporary theoreticians investigating global modernity from the perspective of comparative civilisations.

The scope of his empirical references is particularly impressive: Most theoreticians of modernity gained their insights from their respective national and linguistic contexts. Domingues on the other hand, having investigated the development of modernism in Europe, Latin America and North America, decided to familiarise himself with the literature on India, China and Israel where he also spent time on his research.

The main aim of his collaboration with the Hamburg Institute for Social Research and the Institute for Latin American Studies at FU Berlin is to analyse political modernity from a historical and comparative angle with a special emphasis on identifying trends and processes related to the theory of power in these developments.

MOST RECENT BOOKS

Critical Theory and Political Modernity (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave, 2019 – no press).

Emancipação e história. O retorno da teoria social. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 2018 (english version, Leiden: Brill, 2017/Chicago: Haymarket, 2018).

Esquerda: crise e futuro. Rio de Janeiro: Mauad, 2017.

Estudos e críticas em teoria social. São Paulo: Annablume, 2016.

O Brasil entre o presente e o futuro. Conjuntura atual e inserção internacional. Rio de Janeiro: Mauad, 2013 (pp. 1-120). 2ª. edition, revised and expanded: 2015.                                                                                                                                                                                                             

MOST RECENT ARTICLES

"A new Brasil, a new left", democraciaAbierta, october 2018.

Political regimes and advanced liberal oligarchies”, Constellations, vol. 25, 2018.

Public opinion and collective subjectivity: a conceptual approach”, Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory, vol. 19, 2018.

“Novas direções do pensamento crítico”, in Carlos Benedito Martins e Carlos Sell (orgs.), Teoria sociológica contemporânea: autores e perspectivas. São Paulo: Annablume e Sociedade Brasileira de Sociologia, 2017.

From citizenship to social liberalism or beyond? Some theoretical and historical landmarks”, Citizenship Studies, vol. 21, no. 2, 2017.

Las formas básicas de la interacción social”, Miriada. Investigación en ciencias sociales, año 9, vol. 13, 2017.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

IN THE MEDIA

“Um novo Brasil, uma nova esquerda”, Maisdeum, vol. 2, Setembro de 2018.

“Oligarquia e democracia no Brasil contemporâneo”, Jornal do Brasil, 04/04/2018.

A fragmentação da esquerda e o futuro em aberto. Entrevista especial com José Maurício Domingues”, by Patricia Fachin, Instituto Humanitas Unisinos, 11/09/2017.

Brazilian political cycles and the impeachment of president Dilma Roussseff”, Open Democracy, 01/09/2016.