Human beings are described by many spiritual traditions as ‘blind’ or ‘asleep’ or ‘in a dream.’ These terms refers to the limited attenuated state of consciousness of most human beings caught up in patterns of conditioned thought, feeling and perception, which prevent the development of our latent, higher spiritual possibilities. In the words of Idries Shah: “Man, like a sleepwalker who suddenly ‘comes to’ on some lonely road has in general no correct idea as to his origins or his destiny.” In some religious traditions, such as Christianity and Islam, the myth of the ‘Fall from the Garden of Eden’ symbolizes the loss of the primordial state through the veiling of higher consciousness. Other traditions use similar metaphors to describe the spiritual condition of humanity:

The Human Condition.

On the Genealogy of a Morality

Globalisation and the reform of European Social Models

Critique of Cynical Reason

Historical institutionalist theories of endogenous change have enhanced our understanding of institutional development by providing a theoretical vocabulary for analyzing how institutions may be renegotiated over the long run by social and political actors. In these theories, however, the causal impact of institutions themselves on political outcomes, including their own change and reform, is less developed―a significant problem for an institutional research program. This paper addresses this problem by proposing strategies that integrate historical institutionalism’s insights into endogenous institutional change with a systematic analysis of the institutional conditions under which “bottom-up” processes of gradual change are likely to be counteracted. In particular, the institutionalization of cultural categories and the allocation of power over the timing of reform within institutional and policy configurations are important variables for understanding how pre-existing institutions may enable institutional incumbents to channel, delay, or prevent institutional change.

When Do Institutions “Bite”? Historical Institutionalism and the Politics of Institutional Change

The close ties between modes of governing, subjectivities and critique in contemporary societies challenge the role of critical social research. The classical normative ethos of the unmasking researcher unravelling various oppressive structures of dominant vs. dominated groups in society is inadequate when it comes to understand de-politicizing mechanisms and the struggles they bring about. This article argues that only a non-normative position can stay attentive to the constant and complex evolution of modes of governing and the critical operations actors themselves engage in. The article outlines a non-normative but critical programme based on an ethos of re-politicizing contemporary pervasive modes of governing. The analytical advantages and limitations of such a programme are demonstrated by readings of both Foucauldian studies and the works of and debates regarding the French pragmatic sociology of Boltanski and Thevenot.

Non-normative critique Foucault and pragmatic sociology as tactical re-politicization

This paper examines the economic and social thought that has evolved around the Lisbon strategy, which aimed to turn the European Union into the world’s most competitive knowledge economy by 2010. It argues that a new regime of rationality has emerged in which economic and social objectives, which were previously thought to be at odds with one another, have become increasingly aligned. The supposed antinomy between economic efficiency and social security has been gradually replaced by a Rawlsian-inspired understanding of social justice in which the individual right to self-development and employment is seen to go hand-in-hand with economic innovation and competitiveness. This alignment, which is expressed through the worshipping of the Nordic welfare model in general and the notion of flexicurity in particular, seems to have a strong depoliticizing effect.

The Lisbon Strategy and the alignment of economic and social concerns

The following presents parts of an interview conducted with Maurizio Lazzarato discussing his 2012 book, The Making of the Indebted Man. In this interview, Lazzarato first elaborates on his theoretical inspirations. Drawing on the work of Deleuze and Guattari in order to connect Nietzsche and Marx, he develops a theory of debt suggesting that the power of credit, central to neoliberalism, requires the construction of an indebted subjectivity. Producing a responsible, guilty and thus hindered subject, this condition involves individuals and societies facing an infinite social debt. According to Lazzarato, post-Fordism should be understood through the ascending influence of neoliberalism, as the state has retroceded its power of money creation to private creditors. Through this process, the relation between capital and labour has been transcended by the creditor–debtor relationship. In the economy of indebtedness, the welfare state is transformed into an inverted Keynesian redistribution system that allows ...

Debt, Neoliberalism and Crisis: Interview with Maurizio Lazzarato on the Indebted Condition:

Activation policies which promote and enforce labour market participation continue to proliferate in Europe and constitute the reform blueprint from centre-left to centre-right, as well as for most international organizations. Through an in-depth study of four major reforms in Denmark and France, this book maps how co-existing ideas are mobilised to justify, criticise and reach activation compromises and how their morality sediments into the instruments governing the unemployed. By rethinking the role of ideas and morality in policy changes, this book illustrates how the moral economy of activation leads to a permanent behaviourist testing of the unemployed in public debate as well as in local jobcentres.

The Moral Economy of Activation: Ideas, Politics and Policies

In accounts of institutional change, discursive institutionalists point to the role of economic and political ideas in upending institutional stability and providing the raw material for the establishment of a new institutional setup. This approach has typically entailed a conceptualisation of ideas as coherent and monolithic and actors as almost automatically following the precepts of the ideas they hold and support. Recent theorising stresses how ideas are in fact composite and heterogeneous, and actors pragmatic and strategic in how they employ ideas in political struggles. However, this change of focus has, until recently, not included how foundational ideas of a polity, often referred to as ‘public philosophies’, are theorised to impact on institution‐building. Drawing on French Pragmatic Sociology, and taking as a starting point recent efforts within discursive institutionalism to conceptualise the dynamic nature of public philosophies, this article seeks to foreground moral justification in accounts of ideational and institutional change. It suggests that public philosophies are reflexively used by actors in continual processes of normative justification that may produce significant policy shifts over time. The empirical relevance of the argument is demonstrated through an analysis of gradual ideational and institutional change in French labour market policy, specifically the development from the state‐guaranteed minimum income scheme of 1988 to the neoliberal make‐work‐pay logic of the 2009 scheme, Revenu de solidarite active. The analysis shows that public and moral justifications have underpinned and gradually shaped these radical changes.

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Magnus Paulsen Hansen

Papers

Non-normative critique Foucault and pragmatic sociology as tactical re-politicization

The Lisbon Strategy and the alignment of economic and social concerns

Debt, Neoliberalism and Crisis: Interview with Maurizio Lazzarato on the Indebted Condition:

The Moral Economy of Activation: Ideas, Politics and Policies

Legitimation as justification: Foregrounding public philosophies in explanations of gradual ideational change