Once, one of the central tasks of sociology was to clarify modern society through the social prerequisites and consequences of its crisis-prone nature. The authors of this volume are committed to this often-neglected concern and place the question of the diagnostic potential of sociological analysis at the center of a debate. According to one of their theses, time-diagnostic-based social criticism is a core activity of sociology. A second thesis states that any critique of contemporary society must necessarily also be a critique of capitalism. Through three different but complementary perspectives on current processes of land appropriation, activation, and acceleration, a sociological critique of contemporary society is developed, which simultaneously highlights points of departure for political action.