Seyed Javad Miri is a professor of sociology at institute of humanities and cultural studies (IHCS) in Iran. He works mainly on social theory, religious thought and philosophy. Among his recent works we can mention Goffman and Giddens in the Balance of Intercivilizational Existentialicism and also Giddens and Structuration Theory.

As the project of modernity has come to take the shape of a distinct civilizational paradigm based on a secular metaphysics it would be beyond my reach in tackling all aspects of it briefly as it is the case in this work. Because a civilization is not only composed of thoughts but deeds too and the manifestations of these two are not only displayed in ideas but discernible in actualized forms such as architectures, films, sculptures, paintings, arts, and so on and so forth, not mentioning the commons customs and habits of people which may reflect in their cuisines, dressings, forms of social behaviours and interactions and so on. At times I have tried to go beyond the formal understanding of sociology as a discipline among many others by resorting to a larger definition of sociology, i.e. the secular worldview of modern man about his place in what is called the social order. I have, in other words, attempted to approach sociology as the epitome of modern worldview which is disconnected from the Holy and not concerned with the question of Transcendence in relation to ontology, epistemology and existentialogy.