European Journal of Social Theory 2011 Borghi 321 41
-
Upload
juan-martin -
Category
Documents
-
view
218 -
download
0
Transcript of European Journal of Social Theory 2011 Borghi 321 41
-
8/12/2019 European Journal of Social Theory 2011 Borghi 321 41
1/22
http://est.sagepub.com/European Journal of Social Theory
http://est.sagepub.com/content/14/3/321Theonline version of this article can be foundat:
DOI: 10.1177/1368431011412348
2011 14: 321European Journal of Social TheoryVando Borghi
and paradoxical turns in European welfare capitalismOne-way Europe? Institutional guidelines, emerging regimes of justification,
Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com
can be found at:European Journal of Social TheoryAdditional services and information for
http://est.sagepub.com/cgi/alertsEmail Alerts:
http://est.sagepub.com/subscriptionsSubscriptions:
http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navReprints:
http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navPermissions:
http://est.sagepub.com/content/14/3/321.refs.htmlCitations:
What is This?
- Aug 8, 2011Version of Record>>
at Fondation Nationale on February 1, 2013est.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/content/14/3/321http://est.sagepub.com/content/14/3/321http://est.sagepub.com/content/14/3/321http://www.sagepublications.com/http://est.sagepub.com/cgi/alertshttp://est.sagepub.com/cgi/alertshttp://est.sagepub.com/subscriptionshttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navhttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navhttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navhttp://est.sagepub.com/content/14/3/321.refs.htmlhttp://online.sagepub.com/site/sphelp/vorhelp.xhtmlhttp://online.sagepub.com/site/sphelp/vorhelp.xhtmlhttp://est.sagepub.com/content/14/3/321.full.pdfhttp://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://online.sagepub.com/site/sphelp/vorhelp.xhtmlhttp://est.sagepub.com/content/14/3/321.full.pdfhttp://est.sagepub.com/content/14/3/321.refs.htmlhttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navhttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navhttp://est.sagepub.com/subscriptionshttp://est.sagepub.com/cgi/alertshttp://www.sagepublications.com/http://est.sagepub.com/content/14/3/321http://est.sagepub.com/ -
8/12/2019 European Journal of Social Theory 2011 Borghi 321 41
2/22
One-way Europe?Institutional guidelines,emerging regimes of
justification, andparadoxical turns inEuropean welfarecapitalism
Vando Borghi
University of Bologna, Italy
Abstract
The article inquires into some of the most relevant current transformations of the ideaof the social in contemporary European welfare capitalism. Some crucial institutionalideas employability and activation of EU welfare capitalism and their connectionswith the new spirit of capitalism network capitalism are discussed. In particular,the way these ideas contribute to enacting institutional regimes of justification,framing in this a new idea of the social, is explored. The features of the latter will bedeepened with particular concern for two constitutive elements of European societal
self-representation individualization (as a social ideal and project) and publicness (as afundamental characteristic of the institutional programme) and regarding emergingparadoxes characterizing their current development. Arguments will be advanced inorder to show that the currently dominant institutional regime of justification does nothave a univocal, one-way fate of development, and both ties and opportunities are recon-figured. The idea of the social, even if reframed according to the social and institutionallogics the article explores, is a terrain of (cultural, political, social and institutional) con-flict. In this, possible counter-factual interpretations of the emerging institutional devicesand practices, already at work on the social stage, can be further developed andstrengthened.
Corresponding author:
Vando Borghi, Department of Sociology, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
Email: [email protected]
European Journal of Social Theory14(3) 321341
The Author(s) 2011Reprints and permission:
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1368431011412348est.sagepub.com
at Fondation Nationale on February 1, 2013est.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/ -
8/12/2019 European Journal of Social Theory 2011 Borghi 321 41
3/22
Keywords
activation, individualization, network capitalism, publicness, regimes of justification
The main topic of the article is the metamorphoses the idea of the socialis undergoing in
contemporary European welfare capitalism. Particular attention is dedicated to the trans-
formation involving one of the historical pillars of the idea of the social in European (and
Western) welfare capitalism, i.e., the project of individualization. In this, pragmatic
sociologys approach to a plurality of regimes of justification constitutes a crucial frame-
work, as particularly helpful for analysing the social logics of these metamorphoses. At
the same time, in order to grasp these processes in a deep sense, we need to look (also) at
a more specific level of these broader changes, that is, the institutional regimes of justi-
fication, which does not completely overlap with the terrain on which pragmatic sociol-
ogy has been developed.The article is divided into four parts. In the first part, I shortly revisit the institutional
context in which activation andemployability, as governmentality devices, emerged.
Subsequently, the interpretive perspective I adopt is introduced: institutional changes are
discussed as symptoms of deeper transformations, concerning the normative dimension
of EU welfare capitalism and, more particularly, one of its most relevant pillars, the proj-
ect of individualization. In the third part, I try to clarify these deeper transformations in
terms of a paradoxical development of the process of individualization. Finally, some of
the consequences of a metamorphosis of the idea of the social, related to the paradoxical
development of the individualizationprocess, are pointed out. In this, a discussion of theconcept ofpublicness, of its transformations in currently predominant regimes of justi-
fication, but also of possibly counterfactual regimes of justification in which interesting
institutional innovations can be/are experimented, is developed.
In this way, the most explicit statements regarding these changes for instance, the
reframing of work and unemployment according to the epistemic scheme of employabil-
ity in the device of the Open Method of Coordination can indeed be analysed as
mechanisms of sensemaking, contributing to enact the social on which institutions are
going to intervene, rather than as a set of formal, juridical rules. As Serrano Pascual and
Crespo Suarez (2007: 37980) suggest, It is less a question of regulating by recourse to alegal framework than of setting a defining cognitive framework in accordance with
which the measures to be adopted will then be devised. Activation and the guidelines
of employability can be properly studied as devices of governmentality (Dean, 1999;
Foucault, 1991): they work as instruments (Lascoumes and Le Gales, 2009) addressing
human behaviour in itself and shaping human conduct. A circular relationship exists
between these devices and the paradoxical torsion of one of the pillars of the Western
idea of the social, that is, the process of individualization (Honneth, 2004). The former
being, at the same time, a result and a facilitating factor of the latter. In other words, acti-
vation and employability as devices of governmentality are manifest signs as well as
their discursive corollary in terms of human capital and flexibility discourses of a more
profound transformation of the meaning of the modern project of individualization (Gar-
sten and Jacobsson, 2004; Serrano Pascual and Crespo Suarez, 2007; Strath, 2000;
Wagner, 2000), as well as of the idea of the social in the European context.
322 European Journal of Social Theory 14(3)
at Fondation Nationale on February 1, 2013est.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/ -
8/12/2019 European Journal of Social Theory 2011 Borghi 321 41
4/22
Devices of EU governmentality: employability and activation1
A few words will have to be spent in order to point out the meaning of the two pillars of
EU welfare capitalism: employability and activation. These two institutional guidelines
are strictly linked the one to the other and both mark not only linguistic, but also verysubstantial transformations as far as the idea of the social is concerned. On the one side,
employability abandoning the explicit reference to work as a socially organized con-
dition,2 resulting from a social process involving different actors emphasizes individ-
ual responsibility with regard to the personal position in the labour market; activation, on
the other side, has to do with a set of different practices that individuals, institutionally
sustained, have to (actively) pursue so that they canthemselvesbetter their employabil-
ity, identifying the latter as the best way to overcome difficulties and reducing social
risks (poverty, exclusion, dependency, etc.).
First, it was the OECD that in the 1990s began to propose the image of the active soci-ety as a new social picture in which a facilitated access to formal work for a larger set of
persons (particularly disadvantaged groups and women) became the most effective instru-
ment for combating a large part of the social problems addressed by traditional social pol-
icies. In its wake, the European Union, already since the Luxembourg meeting (1997),
explicitly adopted employability as the most qualifying objective of its reform design
towards active welfare states (Dingeldey, 2007: 4). In this framework, income support,
and social services in general, are always to be combined with measures aimed at improv-
ing individual employability, usually conceived through the vocabulary of human
resources and human capital (Dean et al., 2005, in particular: 45; Daly, 2007).Very schematically, activation can be identified through a set of measures aimed at
formalizing a specific link (more or less strict, depending on the different interpretations
we find of this principle) between social protection and labour market participation.3
According to that principle, social policies are deeply restructured (Barbier, 2002:
308): a systematic preference is given to the engagement of welfare recipients on the
labour market (independent of the quality of the job and of its real effect in terms of
empowerment), according to the slogan work-first; the eligibility for welfare measures
is conditioned and subjected to (different degrees of) sanction (Gray, 2002).
The concept of employability is crucial as well, not only to the strategy of reformingEuropean labour market policy, but more in general to the effort of modernizing national
systems of welfare. It has clear links with a profound change in the meaning of indivi-
dualization that I will discuss later: its shift from the protection of labour to the promo-
tion of work (irrespective of any consideration about its quality and social effect; Salais,
2003; Van Berkel et al., 2002), is inscribed in a more comprehensive rebalancing of
individual and collective responsibility that asks employees to make themselves the
entrepreneurs of their becoming (Zimmerman, 2006: 468).
Even if we are now stressing a critical perspective,4 it must be said that strong argu-
ments can be developed for justifying these guidelines. In an extreme synthesis, active
participation of (social and labour) policy recipients in the designing and implementation
of personalized projects and practices in order to face their difficulties, can be motivated
in many legitimate ways: individualizing measures and policies, permitting welfare reci-
pients to avoid only passive roles, enabling a participative construction of policy
Borghi 323
at Fondation Nationale on February 1, 2013est.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/ -
8/12/2019 European Journal of Social Theory 2011 Borghi 321 41
5/22
projects, strengthening the effectiveness of the measures by mobilizing (also) recipients
resources, and so on. In fact, as we will also see below, the range of interpretation of
these guidelines (in the scientific and public debate, but also in the way national welfare
systems applied them) is rather large5
and the lines of tension raising from the differentinterpretations are multiple.
The normative bases of welfare capitalism and the
process of individualization
The centrality of the normative dimension (and its relationship with rationality) for the
understanding of social phenomena has always been stressed by the pragmatist analysis
of regimes of justification (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2005; Boltanski and Thevenot,
2006; Borghi, et al., 2008; Borghi and Vitale, 2007; Thevenot, 2007). More in particular,
activation and employability can be fruitfully approached keeping in mind the character-
istics of the most recent developments of network capitalism, as far as its normative
framework is concerned: the political-moral order of the cite par projets(Boltanski and
Chiapello, 2005).
The normative dimensions indeed play a crucial role, framing the different regimes of
social action in which actors are engaged and providing them with a socially legitimized
vocabulary to make sense of their own experience (social norms of fairness; beliefs about
appropriate ways of doing, organizing, exchanging; models of evaluation). In other
words, social action cannot be explained as a mere effect of self-interest or as a totally
forced form of behaviour: observing situated actions, where situations are always inneed of interpretation, we need to analyse the registers of justification and evaluation,
which are mobilized in the situation but transcend it (Wagner, 1999: 344; see also
Thevenot, 2007). As Boltanski and Chiapellos analysis of the new spirit of capitalism
(2005) pointed out, the reproduction of the capitalist regimes of action needs motiva-
tional resources that are not merely reducible to the capitalist practices in themselves.
Social actors actively interpret and make sense of situated contexts of action through
orders of justification, whose relative stability goes beyond the specific situation itself.
According to this perspective, the normative bond between individualization and the
capitalist economy has to be mentioned. In a very schematic way, we can summarize themodern conception of the relationship between individuals and society as a double pro-
cess of de-traditionalization (Heelas et al., 1996). On the one side, this departure from
tradition has been related to the passage from a holistic societal representation based
on the idea of a hierarchical conception of the social order in which the relationship
between man and man is emphasized mainly, to an individualistic and egalitarian socie-
tal representation, which mainly insists on the relationship between man and things
(Dumont, 1977). On the other side, this de-traditionalization is a result of a long histor-
ical process of construction of the concrete social bases of the individual citizen: the
anthropological passage from the holistic to the individualist conception of the socialworld requested, indeed, that the building of social property (social protection, educa-
tion, health, etc.) on which the realization of the project of the individuals active partic-
ipation in society is concretely based, extended to the entire society and not only to those
persons privileged by their inherited individual property (Castel, 2002; Castel and
324 European Journal of Social Theory 14(3)
at Fondation Nationale on February 1, 2013est.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/ -
8/12/2019 European Journal of Social Theory 2011 Borghi 321 41
6/22
Haroche, 2001). The project of the modern individual actor, the homo aequalis, no
longer submitted to the yoke of personal links and subordinated to social totality, has
been emerging as a project of emancipation to be pursued through the inscription of
individuals in collective systems of regulation mainly entered via participation in thelabour market6 that promoted and enlarged individual autonomy.
Reframing the idea of the social: the paradoxical
torsion of the individualization project
A fruitful way for inquiring into the social transformation underlying the activation and
employability devices consists in looking at the paradoxical contradictions our society
produces along the main normative axes of the welfare capitalist regimes of action.
A paradox is a specific form of contradiction, according to which the concrete social
pursuit of an (original) intention paradoxically diminishes the effective probability of
its realization: a contradiction is paradoxical when, precisely through the attempt to
realize such an intention, the probability of realizing it is decreased (Hartmann and
Honneth, 2006: 47).
The normative dimension I am focussing on is the project of individualization, in
which the devices of activation and employability claim to be rooted. As is well known,
individualization has many different meanings (Valkenburg, 2007). One of its meanings
is almost hegemonic in current interpretations of the active welfare states: it has to do
with a general shift of social responsibilities from the public to the private sphere (the
realm of individuals and their families) (Clarke 2004). As far as employability is con-cerned, in this framework and in line with the growing emphasis on individual respon-
sibility we can observe a transition from a definition of unemployment as a structural
effect of socioeconomic cycles and organization, to a definition of that condition as the
result of personal deficiencies of employability (Bonvin and Favarque 2003). In this
way, most of the responsibility of facing unemployment lies with the individual himself.
This also implies a fundamental metamorphosis, clearly reflected in activation policies,
of the concept of citizenship, according to which citizenship as a status (associated with
rights, safety nets and benefits, beyond duties and responsibilities) is transformed into
citizenship as a contract (the access to rights is conditional upon active participationin the labour market) (Handler 2003; Vitale 2005; White 2000).7
It is exactly in this context that, more in general, the concept of individualization
one of the normative pillars of modernity and of welfare capitalist regimes can
currently be seen as a terrain of (normative) tension, a space in which a paradoxical
contradiction (in the sense mentioned above) can be observed. While being more and
more explicitly emphasized in the realms of welfare (against the emphasis on the collec-
tive nature of that social property) and the labour market, individualization undergoes a
strong torsion of its (original) meaning: this is the process in which (according to
Honneth, 2004), a project of qualitative self-emancipation (the original meaning ofindividualization)has been twisted into a systemic prerequisite.
So, the point I wish to stress is the following. Individualization remains one of the key
features of the current welfare capitalist regime of action; but whereas in its origins it was
part of an emancipatory project of qualitative individual self-realization, it has now
Borghi 325
at Fondation Nationale on February 1, 2013est.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/ -
8/12/2019 European Journal of Social Theory 2011 Borghi 321 41
7/22
turned into a systemicprerequisite of individual performance, pushing people to search
for biographical solutions to structural problems (Beck, 1992) and producing rising
levels of mental and psycho-social suffering (with concrete, clinically observable,
effects; Dejours, 1998; Ehrenberg, 1999).8
With the institutional transformations Western capitalism has undergone in the past twenty
years, the ideal of a self-realization pursued throughout the course of a life has developed
into an ideology and productive force of an economic system that is being deregulated: the
expectations individuals had formed before they began to interpret their own lives as being
an experimental process of self-discovery now recoil on them as demands issuing from
without, so that they are explicitly or implicitly urged to keep their options regarding their
own decisions and goals open at all times. (Honneth, 2004: 474)
If what I am saying is true, activation devices have to be observed as parts of a bigger
picture. One of the most recurrent arguments in favour of active welfare states is, indeed,
that activation is the way to effectively respond to the rising requests to individualize
services and policies. In other words, individualization is invoked as one of the most
relevant historical pressures underlying the activation turn in social and labour market
services and welfare policies in general. This activation turn has to be interpreted and
analysed as part of a broader transformation process, affecting the individualization
project. Whereas the latter is not new in itself, what is really new is a structural conver-
gence of both public and private agencies and organizations in realizing a common aim:
to produce an individuality herself independently capable of action and driven by herinternal motivations (Ehrenberg, 1999: 31112). In this new social and governmental
landscape, the transformation I am emphasizing the paradoxical torsion of the indivi-
dualization principle is particularly evident when we look at the most relevant changes
affecting capitalist regimes of action: what has been called network capitalism.
The most important criterion for describing this new capitalism . . . is the readiness to self-
responsibly bring ones own abilities and emotional resources to bear in the services of indi-
vidualized projects. In this way, the worker becomes an entreployee or himself an entre-
preneur; no longer induced to participate in capitalist practices by external compulsion orincentives, he is in a sense self-motivated. (Hartmann and Honneth, 2006: 45)
So, we can say that the individualization process takes on a new social meaning, coherent
with the development of a new spirit of capitalism (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2005) and
with its anthropology of flexibility (Sennett, 1998; Strath, 2000; Wagner, 2000) and of
employability (Garsten and Jacobsson, 2004) .
What is more, it has to be noted that this change goes far beyond more recent cultural
political (neoliberal) trends and is an element of the general restructuring of social
relationships specifically marking the governing of advanced liberal democracies(Foucault, 2004). According to Rose (2006: 15960),
the ethicala priori of the active citizenship in an active society, this respecification of the
ethics of the personhood, is perhaps the most fundamental, and most generalizable,
326 European Journal of Social Theory 14(3)
at Fondation Nationale on February 1, 2013est.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/ -
8/12/2019 European Journal of Social Theory 2011 Borghi 321 41
8/22
characteristic of these new rationalities of government . . . , which underpins mentalities of
government from all parts of the political spectrum, and which justifies the designation of
all these new attempts to re-invent government as advanced liberal.
All these changes have strong consequences, as I already mentioned, in terms of govern-
mentality. The changed nature of the social from a univocal collective body inscribed
in national borders and its singular embodiment, the citizen, to the rising emphasis on the
responsible individual and on self-governing communities produced, among other
effects, the need ofnew regulatory technologies and norms, more centred on networks
and competitiveness than on hierarchy and procedural control. The emergence of New
Public Management techniques and of other instruments aiming at introducing
market-oriented modes of social propertys governance, for instance, can be properly
understood in the light of these changes. In this regard, I will try to point out in the fol-
lowing some major consequences I see concerning the publicness of what was abovedescribed as social property.
Social property and its publicness: the metamorphosis of a
relationship
Before going in more detail into the relationship between social property and public-
ness, some attention should be paid to the meaning of these concepts. Social property
(Castel, 2002) has been the specific terrain of action of an institutional program (Dubet,
2003), according to which the object of realizing an autonomous individual has alwaysbeen constitutively pursued through his socialization. The transformation of many rele-
vant aspects the project of individualization, as we have seen; the nature of socializa-
tion, where the social itself is a historical product undergoing deep changes; social
property, which is experiencing a profound restructuring of its symbolic and material sta-
tus implies a consequent metamorphosis of the institutional programme itself. In other
words, the changes we have been observing in the last decades such as the blurring
boundaries between state and market and the development of a welfare mix, the prolif-
eration of quangos in public administration, the (horizontal and vertical) multiplication
of actors involved in the governance of welfare systems, together with the changes summarized above of the object itself (individualization), produced a profound rede-
sign (according to some observers, even the dismantlement) of that institutional pro-
gramme. Of course, these changes are not exclusively produced by the principles of
activation and employability: they are the result of many and different pressures. Nev-
ertheless, these policy devices are closely linked to them, as they are some of the prin-
cipal devices through which institutional, organizational and social shifts have been
introduced. In this light, the following object of discussion will be one of these shifts,
that is, the effects these pressures have on publicness.
Whereas the classical liberal vision of the public dimension usually identified it withthe states organizational space, the changes described here make such a straightforward
substantive definition of publicness impossible. I here assume that publicness depends
much more on the properties characterizing the actions of a plurality of (public and pri-
vate) agencies and on the qualities and the aims of their relationships than on thea priori
Borghi 327
at Fondation Nationale on February 1, 2013est.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/ -
8/12/2019 European Journal of Social Theory 2011 Borghi 321 41
9/22
supposed nature of the agencies in themselves (Bifulco and de Leonardis, 2005). This
perspective, in which publicness has to do with the process of treating a distinct matter
as public rather than with the nature of the actors involved, is rooted in a specific
conception of the public sphere, of the public good and of public social services. Thepublic sphere has, indeed, to be considered not only as a set of mechanisms linking soci-
ety to the political system, based on specific institutions (connected with law enforce-
ment, public opinion formation, public administration, etc.), but also as a general
socialhorizon of experience through which matters relevant for all members of society
take form and are integrated (Fraser, 1990; Krause, 2005; Negt and Kluge, 1993). The
public sphere has a structural power, being the site where the capacities of individuals
to participate in public life are produced and where the production of the publics horizon
of experience or the limits of the possible are produced (Davis, 2005: 137). In this
perspective, there is a strong relationship between the public sphere and the identifica-
tion of the public good. Far from being a specialists or experts matter, the public good
cannot be described as the mere aggregation of the private interests of many individuals.
Instead, it has to be conceived of as a social and culturalprojectof the public sphere,
produced in and through a public process and not ascertainable independently of it
(Calhoun, 1998: 32). In this perspective, the public sphere is not as it is often conceived
only a space in which information plays a relevant role and in which decisions are
taken. It is also an arena of reflexive modification of the people who enter it, of their
ideas, and of its own modes of discourse, in which our debate on the public good what
is good for us is always, as well, a discourse about our identity: who we want to be
(Calhoun, 1998: 33). In this frame, public institutions (e.g., providers of social services)have a specific, pivotal role, as they should consciously recognize9 themselves as a
formative context (Unger, 1987) and assume this nature of a formative context as an
explicit terrain of action: intervening in the social realm with the awareness that social
services are relationships that reproduce relationships, and identifying the specificity of
public institutions with the space where questions of technical efficacy (what works)
can be integrated with value questions and with the role among others of sometimes
taking on impossible tasks (Hoggett, 2006: 1314).
Schematically, we can say that publicness may arise when four properties are fulfilled
(Bifulco and De Leonardis, 2005; De Leonardis, 2006, 2008), properties already par-tially explored by the pragmatist approach to regimes of justification and to their public
nature (Boltanski and Thevenot, 2006). Being public has to do with the quality of
visibility, with a claim ofuniversalistic validity as a constitutive element of publicness,
with recognizing commons (what is in-common), and with a crucial role of regulative
(vertical) devices resulting in efforts ofinstitutional building.
Different regimes of justification in new welfare capitalism
Keeping what was discussed about social property and publicness in mind, it is nowpossible to sketch some alternative regimes of justification that can innervate the rela-
tionship between social property and publicness, including its possible features and
developments. In other words, the following scheme can be considered as a way of
summarizing the bigger picture (regimes of justification and modes of governmentality)
328 European Journal of Social Theory 14(3)
at Fondation Nationale on February 1, 2013est.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/ -
8/12/2019 European Journal of Social Theory 2011 Borghi 321 41
10/22
of which also specific devices of activation such as employability are part. It is rather
evident that currently a specific interpretation (individualization as individual, private
responsibility; publicness as a more and more weakening dimension) of these (and other)
instruments of governmentality is dominant, according to a vision associated with theparadoxical turn of the individualization project. But other interpretations are working
on the social stage, and the current situation is not an unavoidable fate or a monolithic
social reality. Alternative scenarios are always possible, and in some ways already oper-
ating in the social scene.
This is equally true for the development of the individualization project as such. The
new regime of the self does not have an intrinsically inscribed, one-sided, and univocal
fate. The project of individualization can be conceived itself as a terrain of conflict and
its possible future configuration is closely linked to an always open history of political,
social and cultural controversies and conflicts. The current regime of the self represents a
new stage in the historical process of individualization, in which old issues and conflict-
ing perspectives are reformulated and the relationship actorsociety is reconfigured into
a new social horizon: both ties and opportunities are reconfigured, and the results are not
fixed. So, it could be fruitful trying to reflect about possible alternative perspectives with
the help of an analytical framework (Table 1) regarding the regimes of justification
currently available or recurrent in European welfare capitalism, with particular attention
to the normative dimensions which ground institutional logics and practices.
This typology is derived from a distinction of three ideal-typical conventions of the
state, which focuses on the ways the state interprets the common good in responding
to both social and economic actors: (1) the technocratic external state (common goodas collective interests pursued mainly through expert solutions imposed on passive cit-
izens); (2) the absent state (the common good is the result of pursuing selfish individual
goals in a context of minimal collective regulation); and (3) the facilitative situated
state, in which the common good is interpreted as a situation in which actors have
autonomy to develop whatever world they find compatible with their frameworks of
action (Salais and Storper, 1997: 212). At the same time, the scheme has empirical bases
in the different (in terms of time and space) organizational logics that have been and are
dominant in the public action.
Evidently, Boltanski and Thevenots work about regimes of justification has been acrucial for inspiration in terms of an understanding of social processes ranging from
governmentality devices such as activation and employability to the coordination of
social actions. Of course, the inspiration is not an exegetical one: the focus here is not
on the coordination of individual courses of action and the repertoires of normative
frames, but on the institutional level. In this regard, the analysis ofinstitutional regimes
of justificationcan be considered a pragmatist approach to the orders of worth at work
in the symbolic artefacts (Douglas, 1986) and formative contexts (Unger, 1987) which
make up institutions.
Column 1 clearly refers to the cognitive and practical framework of the welfare state,as a set of devices centred on a powerful national state, and which has been undergoing
deep and complex processes of transformation, with different dimensions (related to the
oil shock in the 1970s, a growing financial crisis of the state, experiences of mass
unemployment; but also growing social complexity, the increasing differentiation and
Borghi 329
at Fondation Nationale on February 1, 2013est.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/ -
8/12/2019 European Journal of Social Theory 2011 Borghi 321 41
11/22
Table 1. Institutional regimes of justification in EU welfare capitalism
Institutional regimes of justification
1 Traditionalbureaucratic regimeof justification
2 Managerial post-bureaucratic regimeof justification
3 Participative regimeof justification
Premises Top-down definedneeds
Individual preferences Thick needs and politicsof needsinterpretation
Objectives Conformist reproduc-tion of social divi-sion of labour
Enhancing human capitaland employability;work-first approach towelfare to work
Promoting capabilities;life-first approach towork to welfare
Role of the state External absent; incentive givingstate
Capability state; ethicallife promoting state
Role of privateactors (compa-nies or non-profit serviceproviders)
Residual Sources of legitimatedinstitutional logics
Autonomous links(among others) of anetwork
Form ofresponsibility ofPublicAdministration(PA)
Direct Indirect By process
Organizationalregulation
Hierarchy; army-likeregulation; based onappropriateness (ascompliance withrules)
New Public Management;based on pro-market,non market organisa-tional delivery andefficiency
Participative anddeliberative formsof governance
PA /relationshipwith citizen
Dual (PA-citizen);coerciveness anddelegation
Triangular (PA, servicesprovider, citizen);marketization ofcitizenship
Network and promotingborder-lands
Idea of the social Resulting fromadministrativecategories
The sum of individuals(and of theirpreferences)
Shaping /resulting fromthe exercise ofindividual capabilities
Public Statist Spaces and devices forpromoting the owner-ship society (instead ofsocial property)
Spaces and modes ofproducing the personalinterest to participateto the collective ela-boration of socialproblems
(continued)
330 European Journal of Social Theory 14(3)
at Fondation Nationale on February 1, 2013est.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/ -
8/12/2019 European Journal of Social Theory 2011 Borghi 321 41
12/22
restructuring of life cycles and relationships among educationworksocial life, etc.;
combined with the emergence of critique, such as of bureaucratic excesses, paternalism,
etc.). This resulted in what has been summarized by means of the formula of theenabling (welfare) state (with which an emphasis on the key concepts of activation and
employability is associated). Columns (2) and (3) can be conceived as different interpre-
tations, as different grammars of institutional justification stemming from that turn, of
course with relevant differences in terms of strength and social spread, the second col-
umn being the currently hegemonic and the third column a minority grammar. Whereas
the empirical representation of the second column is rooted in the managerial approaches
inspired by NPM, as well as in EU communications and programmes insisting on con-
cepts such as flexicurity, employability, and human capital (Serranno and Crespo
Suarez, 2007), column (3) does not correspond to an already existing, coherent institu-tional architecture and methodology; but different examples indicate that the concepts of
recipients participation in the realization of policy measures, citizens voice in introdu-
cing institutional innovations and in empowering their capacity to aspire can be con-
cretely pursued and experimented (in urban regeneration projects, in innovating public
administration, in managing public institutions and in experiences in the varying fields
of social policy (see Appadurai, 2004; Bifulco and Vitale, 2006; Bobbio, 2000; Fung,
2003; Sclavi et al. 2002; Vitale, 2010). Of course, Boltanski and Chiapello have
brilliantly shown the difficulty of any form of critique in times in which network capit-
alism has been successfully absorbing the main motives of the most pertinent forms ofcritique (see also Boltanski, 2009). But this does not mean that we have to renounce the
chance to organize the pessimism (as, Didi-Huberman, 2009, reminds us, Walter
Benjamin wrote in times certainly not better than our ones) and to look forpossible
worldsthat can feed our critique (Borghi, 2010).
Table 1 (continued)
Institutional regimes of justification
1 Traditionalbureaucratic regimeof justification
2 Managerial post-bureaucratic regimeof justification
3 Participative regimeof justification
Individualization Standardized cate-gories; citizens assubjects and voters
Citizen as client andcustomer; individuali-zation as a systemicpre-requisite and as ameans
Citizens as validatedpartners (beyond pro-fessionals, experts,bureaucrats, etc.);individualization as aself-reflexive (endless)process
Participation From passive to problem-solving participation From problem-solving toproblem-settingparticipation
Source: Based on our elaboration of different sources:Baines (2004); Bifulco and Vitale (2006); Bonvin and Farvaque (2003); Bonvin and Thelen (2003); Clarke (2004);Dean et al. (2005); Denhardt and Denhardt, (2000); Farvaque and Raveaud (2004); Fraser (1990, 1997);Freedland (2001); Giaque (2003); Honneth (1995); Salais and Storper (1997).
Borghi 331
at Fondation Nationale on February 1, 2013est.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/ -
8/12/2019 European Journal of Social Theory 2011 Borghi 321 41
13/22
Of course, the motives stemming from columns (2) and (3) are often combined and
confused in social and institutional daily life. This ambiguity is not only present at the
level of social and institutional practices, but also in the scientific debate: the capability
approach, for instance, can, on the one hand, be interpreted as a perspective fully coher-ent with column (3), stressing the idea of capability for voice (Bonvin and Thelen,
2003), while on the other, it entails a much more orthodox vision, indeed a distraction
from and weakening element of the set of principles and concepts represented in the third
column (Dean, 2009). The aim of the scheme is indeed to build a sort of vocabulary of
grammars currently deployed in institutional practices.
In the three types of institutional regimes of justification schematically designed, the
participativeone clearly represents a largely counterfactual perspective. Here the role of
the state (centrally and locally) consists of promoting processes through which institu-
tions mediate rather than prescribe, and in which jobseekers whether individually
or by means of collective forums formulate, argue for and realize their life plans (Dean
et al., 2005: 11), in building the conditions for pursuing what Honneth (1995) has called
the ethical life and in realizing a politics of needs interpretation (Fraser, 1997) that
fully feeds a rich and lively public sphere. The welfare subject may achieve autonomy
through a collective politics of capability and in which the welfare subjects capacity for
voice is central for the determination of provision of resources and interpretation of
outcomes (Fraser, 2005: 11) Here the cultural dimension plays a crucial role, interpreted
as capacity to aspire (Appadurai, 2004), that is the capacity of (also) the most excluded
individuals to exercise voice, to debate, contest, and oppose vital directions for
collective social life as they wish and to reframe ones own range of possibilities foraction, escaping the fate that his/her social condition seems to condemn him/her to, and
without accepting externally imposed moral or political orders. The organisational
regulation (Giaque, 2003) of public administration and services, in this perspective,
is characterized by a problem-setting and problem-solving participative approach, based
on the introduction of deliberative arenas and practices (Barnes et al. 2003; Bonvin and
Thelen 2003; Fisher 2003), and on an involvement of private companies conceived as
oneactor among others in a network through which the common good is concretely pur-
sued by the capability state.10 According to this perspective, centred on a pattern of
shared administration (Bifulco and Vitale, 2006), PAs responsibility is about the coor-dination of the whole process through which citizens are sustained in their capacity for
voice and in the realization of their capabilities.
Thetraditional bureaucratic regime coincides with Storper and Salais technocratic
state, in which problems and issues are treated with a minimal involvement of citizens,
and in which private companies and organizations have a residual role. Finally, the man-
agerialregime, largely influenced by the New Public Management philosophy, is mainly
inspired by the absent and incentive giving state or what Bifulco and Vitale (2006) have
called a company administration pattern. Here, corporations strongly influence social
policy and have a direct form of influence (Farnsworth, 2004: 6), thereby sustaining theirinterests and ends through individual and collective lobbying; institutional participation
in committees and in services providers management; sponsorship and funding of
political and cultural entities and welfare institutions; direct social provision of different
welfare benefits for corporate employees and other citizens. They can have an indirect
332 European Journal of Social Theory 14(3)
at Fondation Nationale on February 1, 2013est.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/ -
8/12/2019 European Journal of Social Theory 2011 Borghi 321 41
14/22
influence as well, imposing themselves as a socially legitimated source of institutional
logics: a typical example of mimetic isomorphism, according to which, in a context of
growing uncertainties generated by different societal transformation processes, an insti-
tutional and organizational imitation dynamic is encouraged in which the adoption ofexternal, socially successful and culturally and politically hegemonic, models, often con-
stitutes a practically viable and economically advantageous path (DiMaggio and Powell,
1991).
So, the main differences concerning the topics of my discussion here individualiza-
tion, publicness between the second and the third columns in our scheme are not based
on the publicprivate divide in itself as I stated, publicness should be conceived as a
property of the process, rather than of the actors but on the different institutional
regimes of justification and respective modes of governmentality enacted. In fact, differ-
ent institutional regimes of justification mean different institutional key ideas (Beland,
2005; Eder, 1997) and different institutional conceptions as formative contexts (Unger,
1997) in which the concrete institutional performances are shaped.11 In a company-like
ruled public administration (Bifulco and Vitale, 2006), the concept of individualization
is almost completely conflated with the economistic and reductive idea of human capital,
that is, it is treated as a means to increase employability and individual competitiveness
(Bonvin and Farvaque, 2003; Dean et al., 2005); moreover, NPM-like approaches show
little inclination to develop participative citizenship beyond its reductive consumerist
interpretation (promoting citizens power ofexit, and discouraging their power ofvoice;
Vigoda-Gadot and Cohen, 2004). On the contrary, in the third approach, public institu-
tions do take into account (and are responsible for) the whole process in which, throughfully participative and deliberative practices involving public and private entities, indi-
vidualization is pursued as a (virtually endless) project, driven by a life-first and capa-
bility approach to welfare and activation.
Another distinction between the regimes of justification, affecting some of the
properties of publicness I introduced first and foremost visibility and universalism con-
cerns the relationship between Public Administration and citizenship. The managerialist
regime emphasizes contractualization, both at the level of reconfiguring purchaser
provider relationships in the process of producing and delivering social services, and
of redefining relationships between servicesconsumers, i.e., between institutions andcitizens. Justified by the intentions to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of services
and to empower citizens by giving them a right to choose, it can very often diminish the
visibility of the process (e.g., due to the increasing role of private organizations in the
production of welfare provisions, or to the dilution of the responsibility for the quality
of services along the purchaserproviderconsumer chain; Crouch, 2004; Farnsworth,
2004; Freedland, 2001). Due to the triangular setting of the relationship between citizens,
public institutions and intermediate public-server provider (IPSP) that particular
approach adopts, the responsibility of public administration in effectively building an
institutional setting of citizenship is weak and indirect:
By rendering the relationship between the citizen (as customer of the IPSP) and the govern-
ment (which operates through the IPSP) an indirect and incidental one, these remodelling
exercises downgrade the citizens voice in government, both by denying the directedness
Borghi 333
at Fondation Nationale on February 1, 2013est.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/ -
8/12/2019 European Journal of Social Theory 2011 Borghi 321 41
15/22
of that voice and by commercializing the subject-matter of the discussion between citizen
and government. (Freedland, 2001: 91)
In this regard, the regime sketched in the third column insists on an idea of public insti-tutions, in which the latter do not limit themselves to taking the individual capacity to
express choices as data, but also have precise responsibilities in the building of that
capacity that is the capacity to aspire (Farnsworth, 2004) and in qualifying and
enlarging it.
More in general, the introduction of the devices discussed above activation,
employability is often linked to the crisis of the old, allegedly paternalist, welfare
system. This crisis is interpreted as (also) a crisis of its organizational paradigm,
based on a top-down, engineering and mechanical planning rationality. The emer-
gent regime of justification is asking for innovative organizational approaches,
inspired by the network systems mode of relationship (the term governance is often
a way of ideologically taking for granted these changes): a more interactive relation-
ship among different actors and different levels involved in the production, delivery
and use of welfare and administrative services. In other words, new organizational
practices and devices tend to be less centred on respecting formal procedures and
more on realizing specified objectives. This implies a shift of paradigm or, more
realistically, a combination of paradigms which opens a new range of possible
concrete scenarios, which may range from democratic experimentalism (Sabel,
2001), participative and deliberative approaches insisting on the importance of
intensifying the capability for voice of welfare recipients and of citizens in general,to a stronger capitalist synchronization (Sheuerman, 2004), insisting on a manage-
rialist, elitist, post-democratic12 conception of the relationship between institutions
and citizens and of the idea of the social, and moving far away from the project
of the inclusive individualization of the social property towards the exclusive indi-
vidualization of the ownership society (Harrington, 2007) and of a privatist con-
ception of the public sphere (de Leonardis, 1997).
ConclusionThe article has been focussing on the metamorphoses of the idea of the social in the
European context, mainly through the analysis of the activation turn in the social
policies area and its relationship with some main processes characterizing the new
spirit of the capitalism. In particular, two aspects have been emphasized: (1) the trans-
formation of the qualitative project of individualization, undergoing a paradoxical
torsion which turns its meaning upside down; and (2) the growing shifting and weaken-
ing of the meaning of publicness that, in the frame of network capitalism, is increasingly
substituted by devices and models of social regulation based on a direct (that is, beyond
any institutional mediation), horizontal interaction among individuals (according to thenetwork mode of coordination), at great risk of asymmetrical and de-politicized
disequilibrium.
The pragmatic sociology approach results are particularly helpful, both in order to
grasp the regimes of justification which are working in such a context, andfor realizing
334 European Journal of Social Theory 14(3)
at Fondation Nationale on February 1, 2013est.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/ -
8/12/2019 European Journal of Social Theory 2011 Borghi 321 41
16/22
this analysis without considering the figure of the observer (in this case, the sociologist),
the unique source of a critical posture about the social world. One of the most relevant
elements of the pragmatic sociological approach lies indeed in its passage from the
posture of a critical sociology to that one of a sociology of the critical capabilities. Thearticle is an attempt to apply this analytic perspective to a specific level of the regimes of
justification, the institutional level, in which an over-individual social logic is working.
The analysis showed the degree of penetration that the network capitalism expressed at
that level, as well as the critical and counterfactual enacting potentialities that level is
anyway presenting.
Notes
1. This part of the article, developing some of the points already introduced in Borghi and van
Berkel (2007a; 2007b), is based on a long-term collaboration with Rik van Berkel (Borghi and
van Berkel 2007a; 2007b; 2007c, and also van Berkel and Valkenburg, 2007): without the con-
tinuous exchanges with him it simply would not have been possible for me to elaborate the
ideas presented in the following pages; of course, the responsibility for what is written here
is completely mine.
2. More precisely, we should always consider formal and paid work as only one part of the
comprehensive and gendered total social organization of labour (Glucksmann, 1995, 2005).
3. One of the features of the regime of action emerging in the new spirit of welfare capitalism is
that all social rights tend to be reinterpreted in that direction: from issues of social justice to
means for labour market policies; Lewis (2006) noted the same process in the EU context:
work/family policies have moved from being a part of equal opportunities policies to being
a part of the European Employment Strategy.
4. Due to what seems to be, in my view, the prevalent trend in the institutionalization of
these guidelines.
5. The literature about the movement towards active welfare states is now enormous; as pos-
sible starting points one could take Barbier and Ludwig-Mayerhofer (2004); van Berkel and
Hornemann Mooller (2002) and van Berkel and Valkenburg (2007). We presented a clear
example of the different social and institutional effects of the same guidelines, comparing the
Italian and the Dutch cases (Borghi and van Berkel, 2007c).6. Here we encounter the ambiguous nature of this project as far as its gendered nature is con-
cerned: this distinct project of emancipation, indeed, has clear limits due to the historically
predominant male participation in the formal labour market, leaving all the social work needed
for reproducing the social bases of that labour market in the dark.
7. A rather ambiguous contract, it should be added, as it involves partners that are far from equal
(in terms of competencies, information, abilities, etc.) (Geldof 1999: 19).
8. Even if it is always risky trying to associate social phenomena directly with individual con-
crete cases, it was difficult for me to avoid doing so, sometime ago, when reading of the cases
of frequent suicides at the French plant of Renault in Gouyancourt (four suicides between2006 and 2007) or the frequent cases of cocaine addiction among blue-collar workers (as a
recent media inquiry showed in Italy: see the newspaper Il Manifesto, 2008, 14, 16, 23 and
27 May). Anyway, about the social and individual pathologies caused by recent transformations
of work there is significant convergence, despite variegating theoretical and methodological
Borghi 335
at Fondation Nationale on February 1, 2013est.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/ -
8/12/2019 European Journal of Social Theory 2011 Borghi 321 41
17/22
approaches, between many scholars; see, for instance, Castel (1995); Delanty (2008); Hartmann
and Honneth (2006); Sennett (1998).
9. The conditional mode here stresses that such a recognition is an eventual result of a social
process, as I mentioned, rather than an intrinsic attribute of the involved actors.10. Dean (2009) has convincingly pointed out some relevant limits inside the capability
approach, as it neglects the constitutive nature of human interdependency, it ignores the
problematic nature of the public realm and does not consider the exploitative nature of (work
conditions under) capitalism; but in my view, whereas his critique can be rightly addressed to
the more liberal or mainstream version of Sens perspective, the clarification of a more
radical interpretation is an important step in developing a more promising interpretation of
the capability approach itself.
11. Even if these constitute only part of institutional life, and the street-level bureaucracy (Lipsky,
1980) and its active role in the implementation of policy designs also always play a crucial
role.
12. The post-democratic paradigm is based on a combination of different sources: elitist political
theories; reductionist (atomistic, economicist) social approaches; everyday political prag-
matics inspired by the famous slogan Society doesnt exist, etc. (Crouch, 2004; Mastropaolo,
2001).
References
Appadurai A (2004) The capacity to aspire: culture and the terms of recognition. In
R Vijayendra and M Walton (eds) Culture and Public Action. Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press.
Baines D (2004) Pro-market, non-market: the dual nature of organizational change in social
services delivery. Critical Social Policy 24(1): 529.
Barbier J C (2002) Peut-on parler dactivation de la protection sociale en Europe? Revue
francaise de sociologie43(2): 30732.
Barbier J C and Ludwig-Mayerhofer W (2004) Introduction: the many worlds of activation.
European Societies6(4): 42336.
Barnes M, Newman J, Knops A and Sullivan H (2003) Constituting the public in public partic-
ipation.Public Administration 81(2): 37999.Beck U (1992) Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: Sage.
Beland D (2005) Ideas and social policy: an institutionalist perspective. Social Policy and
Administration 39(1): 118.
Bifulco L and de Leonardis O (2005) Sulle tracce dellazione pubblica. In L Bifulco, (ed.) Le
politiche sociali. Rome: Carocci.
Bifulco L and Vitale T (2006) Contracting for welfare services in Italy. Journal of Social Policy
35(3): 119.
Bobbio L (ed.) (2000) A piu voci. Rome: Esi.
Boltanski L and Chiapello E (2005) The New Spirit of Capitalism. London: Verso.Boltanski L and Thevenot L (2006)On Justification. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Bonvin J-M and Farvaque N (2007) A capability approach to individualised and tailor-made
activation. In R. van Berkel and B. Valkenburg (eds) Making it Personal: Individualising
Activation Services in the EU. Bristol: Policy Press.
336 European Journal of Social Theory 14(3)
at Fondation Nationale on February 1, 2013est.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/ -
8/12/2019 European Journal of Social Theory 2011 Borghi 321 41
18/22
Bonvin J-M and Thelen L (2003) Deliberative democracy and capabilities. The impact and
significance of capability for voice. Paper presented at the 3rd Conference on the Capability
Approach, 79 November, Pavia.
Borghi V (2010) (Re)locating northern modernity: lines of tension of the network society model,looking at possible modernities. International Sociological Association e-bulletin 16: 3264.
Borghi V, Chicchi F, and La Rosa M (eds) (2008) Le grammatiche sociali della mobilita. Una
ricerca sulle convenzioni del lavoro nella provincia di Bologna. Milano: Franco Angeli.
Borghi V and Van Berkel R (2007a) Contextualising new modes of governance in activation
policies. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy 27 (9/10): 35364.
Borghi V and Van Berkel R (2007b) Individualised service provision in an era of activation and
new governance. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy 27(9/10): 41324.
Borghi V and Van Berkel R (2007c) New modes of governance in Italy and the Netherlands: the
case of activation policies. Public Administration 85(1): 83101.
Borghi V and Vitale T (eds) (2007) Le convenzioni del lavoro, il lavoro delle convenzioni . Milano.
Calhoun C (1998) The public good as a social and cultural project. In W W Powell and E S Clem-
ens (eds) Private Action and the Public Good. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Cassano F (2009) Tre modi di vedere il Sud. In M Petrusewicz, J Schneider and P Schneider (eds)
I Sud. Conoscere, capire, cambiare. Bologna: Il Mulino.
Castel R (1995) La me tamorphose de la question sociale. Paris: Fayard.
Castel R (2002) Emergence and transformations of social property. Constellations 9(3): 31834.
Castel R and Haroche C (2001)Proprie te prive e, proprie te sociale, proprie te de soi. Paris: Fayard.
Clarke J (2004) Dissolving the public realm? The logics and the limits of neo-liberalism. Journal
of Social Policy 33(1): 2748.
Connell R (2006) Northern theory, the political geography of general social theory. Theory and
Society35: 23764.
Crouch C (2004) Post Democracy (Themes for the 21st Century). Cambridge: Polity Press.
Daly M (2007) Whither EU social policy? An account and assessment of development in the
Lisbon social inclusion process.Journal of Social Policy (37)1: 119.
Davis M (2005) The public spheres of unprotected workers. Global Society 19(2): 13154.
Dean H (2009) Critiquing capabilities: the distractions of a beguiling concept. Critical Social
Policy29(2): 26178.
Dean H, Bonvin J-M, Vielle P and Farvaque N (2005) Developing capabilities and rights inwelfare-to-work policies.European Societies 7(1): 326.
Dean M (1999) Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society. London: Sage.
Dejours C (1998)La souffrance en France. Paris: Seuil.
de Leonardis O (1997) Declino della sfera pubblica e privatismo. Rassegna italiana di sociologia
38(2): 16993.
de Leonardis O (2006) Londa lunga della soggettivazione: una sfida per il welfare pubblico.
Rivista delle Politiche Sociali2: 1338.
de Leonardis O (2008) Nuovi conflitti a Flatlandia. In G. Grossi (ed.) Conflitti contemporanei.
Torino: Utet.Denhardt R B and Denhardt J V (2000) The new public service: serving rather than steering.Public
Administration Review60(6): 54959.
Delanty G (2006) Work and the precarisation of existence. European Journal of Social Theory
11(4): 44363.
Borghi 337
at Fondation Nationale on February 1, 2013est.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/ -
8/12/2019 European Journal of Social Theory 2011 Borghi 321 41
19/22
Didi-Huberman G (2009) Survivances des lucioles. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit.
Dingeldey I (2007) Between workfare and enablement the different paths to transformation
of the welfare state: A comparative analysis of activating labour market policies. European
Journal of Political Research46: 82351.Douglas M (1986) How Institutions Think. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press.
Dubet F (2003) Le de clin de linstitution. Paris: Seuil.
Dumont L (1977) Homo aequalis. Genese et e panouissment de lide ologie e conomique. Paris :
Gallimard.
Eder K (1997), Institution. In C Wulf (ed.) Handbuch historische Anthropologie. Weinheim: Vom
Menschen.
Ehrenberg E (1998)La fatigue de tre soi. Paris: Edile Jacob.
Farnsworth K (2004) Corporate Power and Social Policy in a Global Economy. Bristol: Policy
Press.
Farvaque N and Raveaud G (2004) Responsibility and employment policies: a conventionalist
view, Document de travail Institutions et dynamique historiques de leconomie, n. 0412.
Fisher F (2003)Reframing Public Policy: Discursive Politics and Deliberative Practices. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Foucault M (1991) Governmentality. In G Burchell, C Gordon and P Miller (eds) The Foucault
Effect: Studies in Governmentality. Hemel Hemstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
Foucault M (2004)Naissance de la biopolitique. Corse au College de France, 19781979. Paris:
Seuil/Gallimard.
Fraser N (1990) Talking about needs: interpretive contexts as political conflicts in welfare-states
societies. In C Sustein (ed.) Feminism and Political Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Fraser N (1997) Justice Interruptus. New York: Routledge.
Freedland M (2001) The marketization of public services. In C Crouch, K Eder and D Tambini
(eds)Citizenship, Markets, and the State. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fung A and Olin Wright E (2003)Deepening Democracy: Institutional Innovations in Empowered
Participatory Governance. London: Verso.
Garsten C and Jacobsson K (eds) (2004) Learning to Be Employable. London: Palgrave.
Geldof D (1999) New activation policies: promises and risks. In M Heikkila (ed.) Linking Welfare
and Work. Dublin: European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and WorkingConditions.
Giaque D (2003) New public management and organizational regulation: the liberal bureaucracy.
International Review of Administrative Sciences69: 56792.
Glucksmann M (1995) Why work? Gender and the total social organization of labour.Gender,
Work and Organization 2(2): 6375.
Glucksmann M (2005) Shifting boundaries and interconnections: extending the total social
organization of labour. Sociological Review 53(2): 1936.
Gray A (2002) European perspectives on welfare reform. European Societies 4: 35980.
Handler J (2004) Social Citizenship and Workfare in the United States and Western Europe: TheParadox of Inclusion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Harrington B (2007) Pop Finance: Investment Clubs and the New Investor Populism. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press.
Hartmann M and Honneth A (2006) Paradoxes of capitalism. Constellations 13(1): 4158.
338 European Journal of Social Theory 14(3)
at Fondation Nationale on February 1, 2013est.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/ -
8/12/2019 European Journal of Social Theory 2011 Borghi 321 41
20/22
Heelas P, Lash S and Morris P (1996) Detraditionalization: Critical Reflections on Authority and
Identity. Oxford: Blackwell.
Hirst P (2000) Democracy and governance. In J Pierre (ed.)Debating Governance. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.Hoggett P (2006) Conflict, ambivalence, and the contested purpose of public organizations.
Human Relations59(2): 17594.
Honneth A (1995)The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts. Cam-
bridge: Polity Press.
Honneth A (2004) Organized self-realization: some paradoxes of individualization. European
Journal of Social Theory7(4): 46378.
Innerarity D (2008) Il nuovo spazio pubblico. Rome: Meltemi.
Janet N (2007) The double dynamics of activation: institutions, citizens and the remaking of
welfare governance. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy 27(9/10): 36475.
Krause M (2005) The production of counter-publics and counter-publics of production: an inter-
view with Oskar Negt.European Journal of Social Theory 9(1): 11928.
Lascoumes P and Le Gales P (2009)Gli strumenti per governare. Milano: Bruno Mondadori.
Lewis J (2006) Review essay: men, women, work, care and policies. Journal of European Social
Policy16(4): 38792.
Marquand D (2004) Decline of the Public. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Martinelli A (1998) La modernizzazione. Rome: Laterza.
Mastropaolo A (2001) Democrazia, neodemocrazia, postdemocrazia: tre paradigmi a confronto.
Diritto pubblico comparato ed europeo4: 161235.
Negt O and Kluge A (1993)Public Sphere and Experience: Toward an Analysis of the Bourgeois
and Proletarian Public Sphere. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Peck J and Theodore N (2007) Variegated capitalism. Progress in Human Geography 31(6):
73172.
Powell W and DiMaggio P (eds) (1991) The Neo-Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Rose N (2006) Governing advanced liberal democracies. In A Sharma and A Gupta, (eds) The
Anthropology of the State. London: Blackwell.
Sabel C (2001) A quiet revolution of democratic governance: towards democratic experimental-
ism. In OECD,Governance in the 21st Century. Paris: OECD.Salais R (2003) Work and welfare: toward capability approach. In J Zeitlin and D Trubeck (eds)
Governing Work and Welfare in a New Economy: European and American Experiments.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Salais R and Storper R (1997) Worlds of Production: The Action Frameworks of the Economy .
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Sclavi M et al. (2002) Avventure urbane. Milano: Eleuthera.
Sennett R (1998) The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the
New Capitalism. New York: Norton.
Serrano Pascual A and Crespo Suarez E (2007) The government of activation policies by EUinstitutions. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy 27(9/10): 37686.
Sheuerman W (2004) Democratic experimentalism or capitalist synchronization? Critical
reflexions on directly-deliberative polyarchy.The Canadian Journal of Law & Jurisprudence
17(1): 10127.
Borghi 339
at Fondation Nationale on February 1, 2013est.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/ -
8/12/2019 European Journal of Social Theory 2011 Borghi 321 41
21/22
Strath B (2000) After full employment and the breakdown of conventions of social responsibility.
In B Strath (ed.) After Full Employment: European Discourses on Work and Flexibility.
Bruxelles: P.I.E-Peter Lang.
Taylor C (1992) Modernity and the rise of the public sphere, The Tanner Lectures on HumanValues (delivered at Stanford University, February 25, 1992). www.tannerlectures.utah.edu/
lectures/documents/Taylor93.pdf.
Thevenot L (2007) The plurality of cognitive formats and engagements: moving between the
familiar and the public. European Journal of Social Theory 10(3): 40923.
Unger R M (1987) False Necessity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Valkenburg B (2007) Individualising activation services: thrashing out an ambiguous concept. In
R van Berkel and B Valkenburg (eds)Making it Personal: Individualising Activation Services
in the EU. Bristol: Policy Press.
van Berkel R and Valkenburg B (eds) (2007) Making it Personal: Individualising Activation
Services in the EU. Bristol: Policy Press.
van Berkel R and Hornemann Mller I (eds) (2002) Active Social Policies in the EU: Inclusion
through Participation?Bristol: Policy Press.
van Berkel R, Hornemann Mller I and Williams C (2002) The concept of exclusion/inclusion
and the concept of work. In R Van Berkel and I Hornemann Mller (eds)Active Social Policies
in the EU: Inclusion through Participation?Bristol: Policy Press.
Vigoda-Gadot E and Cohen A (eds) (2004)Citizenship and Management in Public Administration.
Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Vitale T (2010) How do you build a shared interest? A case of social innovation between strategy
and organizational learning. In F Moulaert, E Swyngedouw, F Martinelli, and S Gonzalez (eds)
Can Neighbourhoods Save the City? Community Development and Social Innovation . London:
Routledge.
Vitale T (2005) Contrattualizzazione sociale. La Rivista delle Politiche Sociali 1: 291324.
Wagner P (1999) After justification: registers of evaluation and the sociology of modernity.
European Journal of Social Theory2(3): 34157.
Wagner P (2000) The exit from organised modernity: flexibility in social thought and in histor-
ical perspective. In B Strath (ed.) After Full Employment: European Discourses on Work and
Flexibility. Bruxelles: P.I.E-Peter Lang.
Wagner P (2001) Modernity, capitalism and critique. Thesis Eleven66: 131.Wagner P (2009) Modernity as experience and as interpretation: towards something like a cultural
turn in the sociology of modern society. In P Hedstrom and B Wittrock (eds) Frontiers of
Sociology. Leiden: Brill.
White S (2000) Social rights and the social contract: political theory and the new welfare politics.
British Journal of Political Sciences30: 50732.
Zimmerman B (2006) Pragmatism and the capability approach: challenges in social theory and
empirical research.European Journal of Social Theory 9(4): 46784.
About the author
Vando Borghiis Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology, University of Bologna. He
teaches Sociology of development and Labour Policies at the Faculty of Political Sciences. His
current research interests are the regimes of justification in the network capitalism and the
340 European Journal of Social Theory 14(3)
at Fondation Nationale on February 1, 2013est.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/ -
8/12/2019 European Journal of Social Theory 2011 Borghi 321 41
22/22
informational basis of policies, mainly explored in the fields of the transformations of labour, the
labour movements, the relationship between labour and welfare, the institutional public action. On
these topics he has publishedLe grammatiche sociali della mobilita [Social grammars of mobility]
(with M. La Rosa and F. Chicchi, Eds., Milano, 2008) and edited (with T. Vitale) an Italian intro-
duction to the sociology of conventions: Le convenzioni del lavoro, il lavoro delle convenzioni
[The conventions of labour, the labour of conventions], monographic issue of Sociologia del
lavoro, 104, 2006. He has published articles in Public Administration,Social Policy and Society,
International Journal of SociologyandSocial Policyand other Italian journals. Address: Univer-
sity of Bologna, Italy. [email: [email protected]]
Borghi 341