Normative Intermittency: A Sociology of Failing Social Structuration

ISBN-13: 9783031061738 / Angielski / Twarda / 2022

Gregor Fitzi

Opis

This book addresses the manifold crisis of current societies and understands it as a failure of normative social structuration. As an exemplar for this development, it analyses the decline of welfare state models and the corresponding societal compromise. Yet, it evaluates them as a symptom of a wider malaise of normative orders in complex societies. The question thus arises as to how social science can study the ongoing societal transformation. The book frames the phenomenon as ‘normative intermittency’ to capture its fluid alternation of social structuration and destructuration and develops its analysis in three steps: first, it draws a theoretically reflected symptomatic of its occurrences; it then establishes the sociological diagnosis necessary to understand its unfolding and finally evaluates its political outcomes. Methodologically, the book advocates a complete overhaul of the analytical frames of sociology to gauge the intermittent rhythm of the ongoing societal transformation. Thus, it develops an innovative reading of classical sociological theory beyond a number of unreflected axiomatic assumptions of the current sociological mainstream. Thanks to the assessment of the political outcomes of failing social structuration the book turns to a discussion of the development of possible emancipation paths in the form of ‘transformative social action’; reflexively, this accounts for the results of the sociological diagnosis of the crisis of normative social orders. The main analyses within the book scrutinise a number of empirical phenomena that establish normative intermittency in current societies and refer to the major debates that are taking place on the related topics in the state of art of sociological and political theory.

Spis treści

Table of contents

The path to critical sociology. 4

Part I: Societal symptomatic. 13

1. The manifold crisis of complex societies. 13

1.1 Missing social legitimation. 13

1.2 Social and environmental risks of ‘crumbling late capitalism’ 21

1.3 The shifting idea of socialism.. 33

1.4 The loss of the welfare-state compromise. 46

2. The malaise of normative societal structuration. 55

2.1 Normativity beyond defensive modernity. 55

2.2 Secularism and its adversities. 62

2.3 Normative intermittency in qualitative differentiated societies. 70

3. Economic liberalism and social fragmentation. 81

3.1 Functional neutrality lost: colonising society through economic logic. 81

3.2 Increasing social fragmentation. 88

3.3 Societal self-interpretation and sociological critique. 96

Part II: Sociological diagnosis. 104

4. Evidences in structure theory. 104

4.1 Weakening social structuration. 104

4.2 Intermittent legal validity. 111

5. Troubles in action theory. 119

5.1 Participant perspective. 119

5.1.1 Beyond the hypostasis of collective action subjects. 119

5.1.2 The unsurmountable fragmentation of social action centres. 123

5.1.3 The participant logic of social action. 126

5.2 Observer perspective. 134

5.2.1 Contract-driven social action. 138

5.2.2 Consensus-driven social action. 141

5.2.3 The observer logic of social action. 144

5.3 Conclusions in action theory. 147

 

6. Shifting legitimacy: the theoretical issue of social validity. 153

6.1 Establishing intermittent social orders from the participant perspective. 153

6.1.1 Competing enforcement of multiple social structures. 153

6.1.2 Intermittent validity beyond lifestyle. 156

6.1.3 Creative cultural performance. 159

6.2. Establishing intermittent social orders from the observer perspective. 162

6.2.1 The ratio of social order. 162

6.2.2 Asymmetric consensus. 165

6.2.3 Conflict, power and the rule of law.. 172

6.3 Scholium 1: the micro-sociological limits of institutionalisation. 176

6.4 Scholium 2: the anthropological limits of validity. 179

6.5 Conclusions in the theory of social validity. 183

7. Consequences in structure theory. 187

7.1 Qualitative societal differentiation revisited. 187

7.2 Modernity as intermittent destructuring structuration. 191

7.3 Intermittent foundation of legal and political orders. 198

7.4 Social integration through cultural conflict 204

7.5 Institutionalised liquefaction beyond trust 210

7.6 Consensus conflicts and societal colonisation. 215

8. Conclusions in sociological diagnosis. 222

8.1 Failing social structuration as regression from legitimacy to consensus. 222

Part III: Political outcomes. 229

9. Recovering normative social structuration

9.1 Seeking social and environmental progress. 229

9.2 Transformative social action for the 21^st century. 236

Bibliography. 244

Editions: 244

Literature: 244

 

O autorze

Gregor Fitzi is Associated Researcher at the Centre Georg Simmel, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, France. 

Blurb

This book addresses the manifold crisis of current societies and understands it as a failure of normative social structuration. As an exemplar for this development, it analyses the decline of welfare state models and the corresponding societal compromise. Yet, it evaluates them as a symptom of a wider malaise of normative orders in complex societies. The question thus arises as to how social science can study the ongoing societal transformation. The book frames the phenomenon as ‘normative intermittency’ to capture its fluid alternation of social structuration and destructuration and develops its analysis in three steps: first, it draws a theoretically reflected symptomatic of its occurrences; it then establishes the sociological diagnosis necessary to understand its unfolding and finally evaluates its political outcomes. Methodologically, the book advocates a complete overhaul of the analytical frames of sociology to gauge the intermittent rhythm of the ongoing societal transformation. Thus, it develops an innovative reading of classical sociological theory beyond a number of unreflected axiomatic assumptions of the current sociological mainstream. Thanks to the assessment of the political outcomes of failing social structuration the book turns to a discussion of the development of possible emancipation paths in the form of ‘transformative social action’; reflexively, this accounts for the results of the sociological diagnosis of the crisis of normative social orders. The main analyses within the book scrutinise a number of empirical phenomena that establish normative intermittency in current societies and refer to the major debates that are taking place on the related topics in the state of art of sociological and political theory.

Gregor Fitzi is Associated Researcher at the Centre Georg Simmel, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, France.