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Economic Liberalism and Social Fragmentation

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Normative Intermittency

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Abstract

The chapter inquires into the structural social shift that characterised over forty years of neoliberal societal restructuration. Thus, it develops a sociological reflection on neoliberalism with reference to the positions of Boltanski-Chiapello, Brown, Harvey, Piketty and Streeck. Colonisation between societal domains with different leading logic and social fragmentation, resulting from a mix of dualisation, precarisation and conditionality of labour markets, are singled out as the decisive societal transformations of the last decades (Emmenegger, Fana, Greve, Rubery, Standing and Wolf). The chapter reconstructs how social fragmentation and alienation are faced within societal self-interpretation and how, in contrast to this, sociological critique handles the issue from a reflexive scientific perspective. This analysis methodologically introduces the sociological diagnosis that is developed in the following chapters.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre Georg Simmel, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France

    Gregor Fitzi

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Fitzi, G. (2022). Economic Liberalism and Social Fragmentation. In: Normative Intermittency. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06174-5_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06174-5_4

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

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