{"id":223,"date":"2013-05-01T07:32:49","date_gmt":"2013-05-01T07:32:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/?p=223"},"modified":"2016-03-30T20:49:13","modified_gmt":"2016-03-30T20:49:13","slug":"mammonist-capitalism-ubiquity-immanence-acceleration-and-the-social-consequences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/08-2\/c58-conference-paper\/mammonist-capitalism-ubiquity-immanence-acceleration-and-the-social-consequences\/","title":{"rendered":"Mammonist Capitalism \u2013 Ubiquity, Immanence, Acceleration. And the Social Consequences"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\t<div class=\"dkpdf-button-container\" style=\" text-align:right \">\n\n\t\t<a class=\"dkpdf-button\" href=\"\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223?pdf=223\" target=\"_blank\"><span class=\"dkpdf-button-icon\"><i class=\"fa fa-file-pdf-o\"><\/i><\/span> <\/a>\n\n\t<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">In this paper, I will elaborate on a conceptual sketch of nothing less than contemporary capitalism, whether we call it new capitalism, finance capitalism, flexible capitalism, or rentier capitalism, and some of its social and human consequences.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">It is a bold undertaking. I put together concepts from both classical and contemporary social theory in order to develop images and conceptions of capitalism and what it does to society. I understand concepts as \u201dmeans of orientation\u201d, as Weber (1988a, 536) defined his ideal types. Claims are on the one hand experimental or essayistic \u2013 an attempt, an outline that tries to approch this thing capitalism from different angles without enclosing it. I also will use the hyperbole \u2013 stretching descriptions, using generalizations. Brief, a reflection, an essay, certainly not founded on extensive research but on interest and extensions of other things I did. Hopefully, thus, the presentation will be a point of departure for an interesting discussion.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Some key concepts will be Mammonism, acceleration, ubiquity, self-dynamics, precariat, inertia, conformity, flexibility, specter of uselessness.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Among others, I will refer to classical modern thinkers like Marx, Simmel, Musil, Benjamin, and to contemporary ideas in the works of Deleuze, Rosa, Crouch, Illouz, Standing, Hochschild.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Mammonism<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">In his famous short essay on \u201dcapitalism as religion\u201d, Benjamin called capitalism a \u201dcult\u201d, if not the cult, of modern culture. We all belong to it, and for all the differentiations it leads to, it also means a belonging \u2013 to which we cannot say no. Capitalism saturates and structures society and mentalities. It provides life with meaning \u2013 or it substitutes meaning for capitalist values and objectives. Capitalism also is the object of worship, the profit being its core \u201dornament\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Weber did not conceive of capitalism as a religion, not even a \u201dsecular religion\u201d (Voegelin 1993). But this prime manifestation of rationality, of the processes of rationalization which run through history and shape it, had one of its origins in religion \u2013 that is, in a most irrational phenomenon, if we limit rationalization to instrumental or goal-oriented rationalization.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Simmel talked less of capitalism and more of money \u2013 what we do with money and what money does to us. Money is an awesome instrument with which you may destroy and construct anything \u2013 \u201dcreative destruction\u201d in Schumpeter\u2019s (1942) words.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">But money emancipated itself from the mere function of an instrument a long time ago. It regulates life, it deprives everything of its inner value and attach to it an alien, quantitative value and so reduces everything to one and the same level. On the marketplace, everthing becomes a commodity, whether we talk of material goods, services, thoughts, bodies, competences, subjectivities. And money, according to Simmel (1999, 17), emerges as divinity: the Mammonism of modern, capitalist society.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Religion, says philosopher Hermann L\u00fcbbe (1975, 177), is first and foremost a \u201dpraxis of coping with contingency\u201d. Obviously, this would be a core definition of capitalism as well. Not the invalidation of contingency, but its optimal exploitation.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Acceleration<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Capitalism and money replace society, community, religion. And they replace or at least define time. \u201dTime is money\u201d, Benjamin Franklin wrote \u2013 a modern, quantifiable answer to that eternal question what is time. And inversely: \u201dmoney is time\u201d, writes Samuel Weber (2009).<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Time, especially when expressed through speed and acceleration, is a core element in contemporary capitalism, whether we talk of the productive or the non-productive, financial capitalism.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Trade with shares and other sophisticated, esoteric securities \u2013 funny label \u2013 are chiefly made by computers. Algorithms are the core component in selling and buying \u2013 not human decisions. The quicker the reactions, the more likely the profit; the closer the location of the computer to the main servers, the more milliseconds to gain. Average time of retaining shares has imploded to less than half a minute. (Who, then, is the owner of companies? Who is responsible for their business?) Wall Street rather employs mathematicians than financial analysts. Time is money. And the more resources, the more time to gain.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Since the financial crisis some five years ago, a financial crisis largely provoked by computers and algorithms, a number of studies have been made on this \u201ddoomsday machine\u201d (Lewis 2011), this \u201dmonster\u201d (Hudson 2010), which is financial capitalism. Frank Schirrmacher (2013) talks of the financial markets as a \u201dcyberwar\u201d where players are predominantly machines and man himself has become an egoistic, narcissist machine nourished by self-interest, anxiety, distrust (bellum omnium contra omnes \u2013 also a core characteristic of T\u00f6nnies\u2019 Gesellschaft). To understand this reality, a mere rational choice theory would do. In fact, Schirrmacher says, the influence of rational choice theories and of game theories have brought forward this new anthropological form which we call homo economicus. They are, like any other theory, especially economic theories, performative, are, in the words of Donald MacKenzie (2006, ), \u201dengines\u201d, not \u201dcameras\u201d. However, they change not just man, but the entire world: the world as \u201darithmetical problem\u201d (Simmel 1989, 612).<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">(Man becoming a machine&#8230;: he is attracted to machines since he resembles them, envies them, worships them \u2013 the machine as fetish. And: machines invade him, literally \u2013 drugs regulate his moods, communication devices govern his attention, channel his thoughts.)<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">German sociologist Hartmut Rosa (2003, 2006) talks of that \u201dacceleration\u201d which is characteristic of a global and globalizing \u201dhigh-speed society\u201d. Acceleration defines virtually all segments of society, but emerges as most significant in and through technology. Technology in turn, especially information and communication technology, penetrates and saturates social structures and individual lifeworlds \u2013 and occasionally invades or replaces subjectivity, \u201dthe human factor\u201d. Identity, Rosa says, becomes \u201dsituative\u201d, and actions are characterized by \u201dreactive situativity\u201d. Brief, identity defined in subsequent situations and moments, actions being immediate responses to situations; identity, action and situation as elements of an immanent game without past and future.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Some variations of Rosa\u2019s elaboration would be:<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">In his discussion on flexible capitalism, Richard Sennett (1998) portrays a fragmented, \u201dcorroded\u201d social character, by nature slow, now facing swift, permanent, uncontrolled and uncontrollable technological and organizational transformation that shapes a life in \u201depisodes\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Philosopher Odo Marquard (1987, 126) side immediately with Rosa. Modernity is not merely permanent transformation, but permanently \u201daccelerated transformation\u201d; accordingly the \u201drate of obsolescence\u201d increases. Acceleration has become the \u201dusance of modernity\u201d, a modern commonplace.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Korean media theorist Han (2012), in turn, talks of \u201dhyperacceleration\u201d: productivity and communication occur far beyond their \u2018own\u2019, \u2018original\u2019 goals and consist of \u201dhyper-productivity\u201d and \u201dhyper-communication\u201d. On an ordinary human level, uncontrolled behaviour in the form of \u201dhyper-activity\u201d is a common characteristic. We may receive medical treatment for that. What about society?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Acceleration appears as a modern, contemporary category. Austrian novelist Robert Musil (1978, 402) conceived of it as ideal and ideology too as he talked of the \u201daccelerism\u201d which characterized especially economic life. An ideology that promotes oblivion and undermines memory, cultural as well as individual.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Back in 1848, Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto stated that modernity turns everything that used to be solid into air.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Ubiquity<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Does acceleration move in a linear direction, does it mean progress? If we mean technological, logistical progress \u2013 obviously. With regard to other aspects of life \u2013 not necessarily. With regard to some issues, for instance climate \u2013 no.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Contemporary society and capitalism take place in what appears as an eternal present. Bauman and others have varied this fundamentally aesthetic view. Activities lack collective direction. They lack origin. They occur, they happen, the entire society is in permanent movement, a mobile society where social and economic and financial mobility is praised. An endless process of trial and error, an eternal and changing loop, a \u201dblind flight\u201d, as Norbert Bolz (2005) writes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Time not as linear, not as evolution and not as cycles, but in the shape of a expanding and contracting \u201dsphere\u201d. (Bernd Alois Zimmermann) A sphere that contains, that consists of, that expresses emergences and disappearences, immense manifoldness and multiple movements. A sphere constituted by the simultaneousness of differences and of differerent times. (Cf. Koselleck [1992, 323ff] and Blumenberg [1986, 249]: Gleichzeitigkeit des Unglichzeitigen.) A temporal expression of Durkheim\u2019s anomie.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Ivor Southwood (2011) discusses this state of contemporary capitalism with regards to individuals on the job market. The individual is constantly on the move. Navigating in a world of \u201dunknown unknowns\u201d (Rumsfeld), he or she is working (at best) and simultaneously working for labour (more job, other job, securing job).\u00a0 It\u2019s a 24\/7 activity, a hyper-activity \u2013 a \u201dnon-stop inertia\u201d, Southwood writes, a furious standstill, in the words of Paul Virilio (1999) a \u201dpolar inertia\u201d (cf. Rosa). Immobility is for those socially excluded only.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Individuals on the flexible labour market have to achieve this and that simultaneously, have to be proactive, to be able to \u201dlet go\u201d, have to live \u201don the edge\u201d (Sennett 1998). And capitalism and its transforming logics are present everywhere, all the time \u2013 un unstoppable chain reaction of the same and of differentiations. The ubiquity of capitalism.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Sovereignty, autonomy, self-sufficiency<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Capitalism emerges as the perhaps most viable institution in world history. No institution has changed society that much, no institution has proven so able to adapt to new circumstances (those circumstances that capitalism itself brings forth). The entire classical sociology agreed on this. And was itself a response to the transformation which capitalism generated.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Classical sociology observed how capitalism was not merely an instrument in the hands of capitalists, but a force in itself, instrumentalizing the capitalists, for whom only the exploitation of the workers remained. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Simmel (1996) developed the dual notion of \u201dobjective culture\u201d and \u201dsubjective culture\u201d. Man created money, machines, laws etcetera in order to regulate and facilitate life. Yet money and machines tended to emancipate themselves from their creators. They developed a life on their own, manifested a self-dynamics, gained autonomy and sovereignty. Man was subordinated under his own creations \u2013 \u201disolated\u201d, \u201dalienated\u201d (1996, 405). Simmel spoke of \u201dthe tragedy of culture\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">After Simmel, who might not have been first, we have seen many conceptual variations of this theme. Simultaneously, experiences of the self-dynamics of institutions grow.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">The most suggestive expression today might be the banking system. Banks are absolutely necessary and relevant for the system, we are told. Without them, the system fails \u2013 society, economy, family&#8230;<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">The financial and economic crisis in 2008 meant not the collaps of banks (except for the very worst), but their momentum. Colin Crouch (2011) speaks of their survival and in general of the \u201dstrange non-death of neo-liberalism\u201d. Banks and global enterprises under neo-liberalism are less interested in free markets and more in dominance and support. And in that very ideology which tells us they are necessary. It is an ideology that makes it possible to exploit states and tax payers and borrowers. Banks embrace states, states embrace banks \u2013 which in turn generate ever larger profits (the states taking the losses). Banks are at the heart of that financial capitalism which is non-productive.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Politics grant bad banks financial support. Power and responsibility are separated: banks make profits, tax-payers take the losses, there are the fortunate ones and those plagued with misfortune. Protests have been occasionally fervent, bu no cause for alarm. Foucault (2003) might explain. He writes about the nature of sovereign power: it is not essentially brought forward from above, but from below, by the subordinated, those who fear for their lives, their well-being. They manifest a \u201dradical will to life\u201d just as the child does to its mother.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Money (banks, financial or rentier capitalism): \u201da creative, specialised manifestation of violence\u201d, Musil (1978, 508) wrote, emancipated from society, community, those 99 per cent of the individuals.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">And too big to fail. There is no alternative \u2013 TINA. An insult to reason, to imagination.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Precarious life<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">A new social class is emerging, writes Guy Standing (2011): the precariat. It is described also by for instance Richard Sennett, Arlie Russel Hochschild, Saskia Sassen and Barbara Ehrenreich.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">The precariat is swelling, differentiated and universal. It is populated by people coming from the dwindling middle class, from the working class and from the remainder \u2013 \u201dthe outer class\u201d, which Bill Clinton spoke of, Lumpenproletariat in Marx\u2019 vocabulary, in the Weimar Republic the Luftmenschen, scattered characters living from this and that. It consists of people who have jobs and who may have lost them soon, and of people who have no jobs and weak prospects. Of the internship generation and the post-crash generation. Of the digital bohemians. Of people who are haunted by what Sennett (2005) calls \u201dthe specter of uselessness\u201d. Of people in permanent suspense. Of people accustomed to continuous availability and persistent debt (study loans, mortgages). They find themselves responsible for their own life but have insufficient means to govern this life.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Competition is sleepless and restless, fierce and global, right down to the simplest business. (On competition as permanent state, see Simmel 1995 and Rosa 2006.) Decisions about existing and potential positions are taken elsewhere. Labour hiring companies, providers of HR solutions are the specialists in managing that contingency which is flexibility (they may have peculiar names, for instance CoCo Job Touristik GmbH). They manifest contemporary labour life as \u201dspace of flows\u201d (Castells 2000) or it\u2019s \u201dnon-place\u201d character (Aug\u00e9 1995): work disembodied from local and geographical context and meaning and rather a matter of functional, contingent networks (shopping malls, internet retailers).<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Precarious people have but insufficient means to master flexibility\u2019s permanent instability. The salariat, in turn, the well-paid managers, professors and government officers, lives off flexibility and knows how to manage their lives and hearts; they also manage the precariat and its hearts, its habits. The elite, the upper one per cent, the oligarchs, is emancipated from social realities. Their conspicuous wealth is created out of wealth and smartness. Reality is abstracted and emerges as investment options.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u201dRage\u201d is growing, writes Peter Sloterdijk (2009). It grows with uncertainty, with increased \u201dunknown unknowns\u201d. It may or it may not have obvious reasons, but the potential is massive. Spain and Greece, London and Paris have seen rage in different forms, some emptied of all meaning and legitimacy, but most expressing protest or despair of citizens threatened to become \u201ddenizens\u201d (Standing 2011).<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">The Occupy movement exists no more, but the context that brought it forth has changed little.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Where is the tipping point? Is there a tipping point?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Human optimization<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">A century ago, Max Weber (1998b, 521) described modern man as \u201dnot an integrated human being but a combination of singular useful and functional qualities\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">His description easily fits as ideal and ideology today. Optimization is required everywhere \u2013 swift, complete, compliant, life-long, reactive, proactive optimization. (Makropoulos 2002) And possibly happy \u2013 \u201dsmile or die\u201d is our recurrent daily ultimatum, writes Ehrenreich (2010).<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Optimization concerns individuals, concerns organizations, concerns markets, concerns societies (which turn in to markets). The functional, adaptive, compatible network is the general form. Man, organization, market, society and further products and consumers constitute unimpaired continua.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Niklas Luhmann (197) writes about what he calls the most significant social quality or competence today: \u201dconnectivity\u201d. We relentlessly re-apply for jobs, demonstrating our employability and our compatibility (to men and to machines); we persistently re-apply for social roles, adapt to social settings, using our \u201dradar\u201d (Riesman 1950).<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Gilles Deleuze (1990) develops the image of the dividual: a contemporary human form divided into different parts, functions, segments and optimized for different roles and settings. For multi-tasking. The disciplinary individual, of which Foucault talked, was a specialized, discontinuous producer whereas the dividual is \u201dundulatory, in orbit, in a continuous network\u201d. Contemporary man prefers \u201dsurfing\u201d rather than isolated, specialized sports, writes Deleuze (1990, 244).<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">No project is forever; any time is the time to move on.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">To be undulatory, to adapt \u2013 to be conform. The large majority stay there. Some reside at the front edge of conformity. They are not the avantgarde, just hyper-active, hyper-functional, being the fittest and possessing the strongest impulses for survival. Those who are up for a career must be cunning cutting-edge conformists.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">One indispensable quality in the optimization of individuals regards the competence to control and deploy emotions in the presentation of self and the management of impressions of the other. Eva Illouz (2007) and Arlie Hochschild (2011, 1983) discuss how emotions have become not merely elements in consumption and marketing, but a force of production to the extent that we may talk of capitalism as emotional capitalism, as capitalist emotionalization, especially in the service industry. Emotions become technically reproducible, varied, enhanced (Benjamin); they are no longer the adversary of reason and rationality, but their manifestation in the age of technology. Just as there are social and economic forms of capital, there is emotional capital, which may be individual or organizational. Emotional capitalism, capitalist emotionalization: manifestations of the collapse of the frontiers between private and public (labour life), manifestations of intimacy as means of optimization.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">The classical modern assembly line produced material goods. It manifested standardization, routines, repetition, fragmentation, simplicity, and looked just about the same in Detroit, in Stalin\u2019s factories and in the handbooks of the management schools.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">A century later, an assembly line 2.0 has appeared, populated by the well-educated and continuously upgraded information engineers, project coordinators, symbolic analysts, and communicators, and below them the simple office executors. They are all functionaries absorbed in abstract processes and systems. Expected and actual results are blurred and replaced by evaluations. Informality (Informalism) is natural. Each and everyone has to be reachable anytime, everyone is armed with smartphone and laptop. Everything is temporary and everything that has been done can be, ought to be, will be made undone. The new assembly line: information processing and partial implementations, imperfection, dependence and ambiguous origins and goals, all of it \u201dlean\u201d, naturally. Marx would have recognized it all: the executors of \u201dvirtualism\u201d (Crawford 2009) constitute a progressive derivative of the alienated working class.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Democracy, post-democracy, society, post-society&#8230;<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">At the end of these sweeping, uncompromising conceptual generalizations \u2013 a few questions.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">How will society be possible when characterized, constituted by accelerism and fierce, increasing competition (individual, organizational, national)?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">How will vast unemployment, insecure labour markets, and generational cleavages affect solidarity?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">What are the alternatives when markets invade and replace politics and the public sphere?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">What are the possibilities of civil society? (Perhaps a question most interesting in societies where previously a strong welfare state had marginalized civil society, and now neo-liberalism assumes this dominating role. I think of Sweden, for instance.)<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">How may individual lives hold together when torn to pieces by availability, employability, competition, flexibility? Relations, families?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">What do political alternatives, alternative politics look like when established parties, from leftist to conservative parties, all embrace privatization, deregulation and new public management as both ideology and practical solution? When politics emancipate itself from responsibility and transfer it to enterprises and consultancies \u2013 none of which can be accused for having anything to do with democracy? Or when decision making actually becomes so complex that outlines of future societies are impossible?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">What is, accordingly, the meaning of democracy, when alternatives are blurred, power diffused and responsibilities outsourced? What\u2019s there to vote for? Are we entering a \u201dpost-democratic\u201d society? (Crouch 2004) What would be new forms of democracy \u2013 forms which would attract the interest of the 99 per cent.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">References<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Auge, Marc, Non-Places. Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. London: Verso, 1995<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Benjamin, Walter, \u201dCapitalism as religion\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">(<a href=\"http:\/\/www.rae.com.pt\/Caderno_wb_2010\/Benjamin%20Capitalism-as-Religion.pdf\"><span style=\"color: black;\">www.rae.com.pt\/Caderno_wb_2010\/Benjamin%20Capitalism-as-Religion.pdf<\/span><\/a>)<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Blumenberg, Hans, Lebenszeit und Weltzeit. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1986<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Bolz, Norbert, Blindflug mit Zuschauer. M\u00fcnchen: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2005<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Castells, Manuel, The Information Age. Economy, Society and Culture. Volume I: The Rise of the Network Society. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2000<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Crawford, Matthew B., Shop Class as Soulcraft. An Inquiry into the Value of Work. New York: Penguin, 2009<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Crouch, Colin, The Strange Non-Death of NeoLiberalism. London: Polity Press, 2011<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Crouch, Colin, Post-Democracy. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Deleuze, Gilles, \u201dPost Scriptum: Sur les soci\u00e9t\u00e9s de contr\u00f4le\u201d, in Deleuze, Gilles, Pourparlers. Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1990, 240\u2013247<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Ehrenreich, Barbara, Nickel and Dimed. Undercover in Low-wage America. London: Granta Books, 2010<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Ehrenreich, Barbara, Smile or Die. How Positive Thinking Fooled America and the World. London: Granta Books, 2010<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Foucault, Michel, \u201dSociety must be defended.\u201d Lectures at the Coll\u00e8ge de France 1975\u20131976. London: Allen Lane, 2003<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Han, Byung-Chul, Transparenzgesellschaft. Berlin: Matthes &amp; Seitz, 2012<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Hochschild, Arlie R., The Outsourced Self. Intimate Life in Market Times. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2012<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Hochschild, Arlie R., The Managed Heart. The Commercialization of Human Feeling. Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1983<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Friform\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Hudson, Michael, The Monster<span class=\"Inget\">. <\/span>How a Gang of Predatory Lenders and Wall Street Bankers Fleeced America &#8211; and Spawned a Global Crisis. London: Time Books, 2010<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Friform\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Friform\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Illouz, Eva, Cold Intimacies. The Making of Emotional Capitalism. London, Polity, 2007<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Friform\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Friform\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Koselleck, Reinhart, \u201d\u2019Neuzeit\u2019. Zur Semantik moderner Bewegungsbegriffe\u201d, in Koselleck, Reinhart, Vergangene Zukunft. Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1992<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Friform\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Friform\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Lewis, Michael, The Big Short. Inside the Doomsday Machine. New York: Norton, 2011<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Friform\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Friform\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">L\u00fcbbe, Hermann, \u201dVollendung der S\u00e4kularisierung &#8211; Ende der Religion?\u201d, in L\u00fcbbe, Hermann, Fortschritt als Orientierungsproblem. Aufkl\u00e4rung in der Gegenwart, Freiburg im Breisgau: Rombach Verlag, 1975, 169-181<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Friform\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Friform\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Luhmann, Niklas, Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1997<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Friform\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">MacKenzie, Donald, An Engine, Not a Camera. How Financial Models Shape Markets. Boston: MIT Press, 2006<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Makropoulos, \u201dDer optimierte Mensch\u201d, S\u00fcddeutsche Zeitung, 26\u201327 Oktober, 2002<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Friform\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Friform\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Marquard, Odo, <\/span><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Apologie des Zuf\u00e4lligen. Philosophische Studien. Stuttgart: Reclam, 1987<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Friform\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Friform\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Marx, Karl &amp; Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto. Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks, 2008<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Friform\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Friform\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Musil, Robert, Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften. Erstes und Zweites Buch. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1978<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Friform\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Power, Nina, One Dimensional Woman. London: John Hunt Publishing, 2009<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Rifkin, Jeremy, The End of Work. The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-market Era. New York: Penguin, 2004<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Friform\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Friform\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Riesman, David, Nathan Glazer &amp; Reuel Denney, The Lonely Crowd. A Study of the Changing American Character. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Friform\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Brdtext1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Rosa, Hartmut, \u201dSocial Acceleration. 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Kulturelle und sozialstrukturelle Konsequenzen der Konkurrenzgesellschaft\u201d, Leviathan, Vol. 34 (2006), Nr 1, 82\u2013104<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Friform\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Friform\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Schirrmacher, Frank, Ego. Das Spiel des Lebens. M\u00fcnchen: Karl Blessing Verlag, 2013<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Friform\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"Friform\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial;\">Schirrmacher, Frank &amp; Thomas Strobl (eds), Die Zukunft des Kapitalismus. 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The text refers to classical modern thinkers like Marx, Simmel, Musil, Benjamin, and to contemporary ideas in the works of Deleuze, Rosa, Crouch, Illouz, Standing, Hochschild. It is summoned up by asking some important, complex questions that regard democracy, community and autonomy.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":338,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[666,667,203,198,668,321,669],"coauthors":[1327],"class_list":["post-223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-c58-conference-paper","tag-acceleration","tag-anomie","tag-capitalism","tag-democracy","tag-mammonism","tag-society","tag-ubiquity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/338"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1251,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223\/revisions\/1251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}