The Death of the Social; Refiguring the Territory of Government

The death of the Social Refiguring the Territory of Government.pdf

-"'society', in the sense that began to be accorded to it in the nineteenth century [...] has also begun to lose its self-evidence, and 'sociology', as the field of knowledge which ratified the existence of this territory, is undergoing something of a crisis of identity. [...] Are we witnessing not just a temporary shift in political and theoretical fashions but an event: 'the death of the social'?"

-"'The social', that is to say, does not represent an eternal existential sphere of human sociality."

-"'the social' may be giving way to 'the community' as a new territory for the administration of individual and collective existence, a new plane or surface upon which micro-moral relations among persons are conceptualized and administered." (purely economic thought -> now involves a social aspect in "community")

-community means identifying with individuals rather than the state?

-"what began as a language of resistance and critique was transformed, no doubt for the best of motives, into an expert discourse and a professional vocation"

"Today, in contrast, a diversity of 'communities' is thought to, actually or potentially, command our allegiance [...] Such communities are construed as localized, heterogeneous, overlapping and multiple."

-"One's communities are nothing more -- or less -- than those networks of allegiance with which one identifies existentially, traditionally, emotionally or spontaneously, seemingly beyond and above any calculated assessment of self-interest. [...] Yet our allegiance to each of these particular communities is something that we have to be made aware of, requiring the work of educators, campaigns, activists, manipulators of symbols, narratives and identifications." (So, if we want our students to write for their multiple publics, we must let them identify these publics? Or is it our duty to make them aware of their communities?)

-"new modes of neighbourhood participation, local empowerment and engagement of residents in decisions over their own lives will, it is thought, reactivate self-motivation, self-responsibility and self-reliance in the form of active citizenship within a self-governing community." (Maybe we should talk about writing with communities?)