In recent years, there have been numerous attempts to interpret the derived social, political and cultural of the West from the social sciences. However, it has not been so frequent address this analysis from the production and the construction of the discourses of the great factories of meaning, which not only serve to legitimize the processes of deregulation, but also shape a subjectivity, adapted to a supposed new spirit of capitalism. New spirit that does not acknowledge any brake social for their business opportunities.
Advertising, marketing, political propaganda, the images, the fictions, the technological instruments, styles of life and forms of consumption, to name only a few areas of social life, have produced a huge stream of new discourses that give meaning to the practices of actors operating in a new mode of regulation or a new form of discipline, characterized, precisely, and paradoxically, by financial deregulation and the symbolic violence of the imposition of the codes of the total market.
This book certainly contributes to this reflection, not so frequent, enlightening the reader to the complex world of economics, business and politics of the West.
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Index
THANKS
FOREWORD. SPEECHES ON THE PRESENT: THE STORYTELLING OF THE SOCIAL IMAGINARY
1. ROLAND BARTHES AND THE DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
I. Introduction – II. The structural analysis of Barthes: objective, elements, levels, – III. The organization of the text. Categorization and classification, – IV. The plane mythological or access to a semantics of speech, – V. Limitations of the structural analysis: a critique, – VI. Conclusion.
2. THE IMAGINARY MANAGERIAL: THE DISCOURSE OF FLUIDITY IN THE ECONOMIC SOCIETY
I. Introduction – II. The capitalism thing: the fascination with the great pyramids stable – III. The transition to the future: shocks, waves and macro trends, – IV. Capitalism liquid: company, smooth and work (weak) network, – V. Conclusions.
3. THE SOCIAL INNOVATION AND THE NEW DISCOURSE OF MANAGEMENT: LIMITATIONS AND ALTERNATIVES
I. Introduction: innovation and society – II. Of the social reform discourse of the innovation, – III. Act, never to be resigned: the contemporary discourse on innovation, IV. Discussions and criticism, – V. Conclusions.
4. USES OF WORK AND FORMS OF GOVERNANCE: THE PRECARIOUSNESS AS A TOOL OF DISCIPLINARY
I. Introduction – II. The rediscovery of the discipline: the smooth control in the new biopolitics, – III. Casualization as a form evolved from the disciplinary society: safety as a social norm to insecurity as the dynamics of individualization, – IV. The precariousness that what liberates us? the limits of precarity as a new revolutionary subject, – V. Conclusions.
5. THE POST WARM OF MICHEL MAFFESOLI
I. Introduction – II. The coldness in modern societies: rationality, work and state, – III. The heat in the societies postmodern: the search for sociality, – IV. What a sociology without society?, – V. Conclusions.
6. CONSUMPTION AND MODERNITY: A REVIEW OF THE THEORY OF GILLES LIPOVETSKY
I. Introduction – II. In the era of vacuum to the times of hypermodernity, – III. The consumption in the work of Lipovetsky, – IV. Discussion: the society self-regulatory or the return of Tocqueville, – V. hypermodernity: a concept sociologically almost useless, – VI. Conclusion: liberalism and essays sociological.
7. CONSUMPTION AND LIQUID SOCIETY IN THE WORK OF ZYGMUNT BAUMAN: A SUMMARY CRITIQUE
I. Introduction: liquid society and consumption in the work of Bauman, – II. Post-modernity, individualization and consumerism, – III. Liquid society and identities at risk, – IV. What a sociology of postmodern consumption?, – V. Conclusion: consumerism and its limits in the era of the fluidity.
8. EPILOGUE: THE CONTEMPORARY INDIVIDUALISM AND THE SPACE OF THE SOCIAL
I. Introduction – II. The risk society as a framework of interpretation of the individualization current, – III. The utopias of abstract utopias concrete. Fragmentation and reorientation of collective action, – IV. The world promised to the society a reflexive, – V. New phenomena of collective action and networks of citizenship, – VI. Identity and otherness: the supersujeto to the specific actors involved, – VII. The challenge of solidarity: the politics of the concrete in front to nihilism, postmodern, – VIII. Conclusions.
REFERENCES
Chat conversation around the book “the speeches of The present”
Talk organized by FUHEM Ecosocial that took place on the 19th of march, 2014.
There are many stories and discourses that run through the society with the intention of interpreting it. However, in the midst of the recitation, it is not common to analyse how such discourses have been constructed and to what they respond. From the large factories of sense, arise from sentences that have no more purpose than to legitimise on-going processes and to model a subjectivity, adapted to a supposed new spirit of capitalism. Be aware of this, it is important to build social imaginary alternative.
How do you construct discourses that legitimise the current drift of social, political and cultural of the West? What is the role of advertising, images, political propaganda, the fictions, the technology and the styles of life and consumption?
Talked about these issues:
- Santiago Álvarez Cantalapiedra, director of FUHEM Ecosocial.
- Oscar Carpenter, a professor of Economics at the University of Valladolid.
And the authors:
- Luis Enrique Alonso, a professor of Sociology at the Autonomous University of Madrid.
- Carlos J. Fernández Rodríguez, professor of Sociology at the Autonomous University of Madrid.
Moderated:
– Olga Abásolo Pozas, a researcher of FUHEM Ecosocial.
Review about the authors
Luis Enrique Alonso
Luis Enrique Alonso Benito is a Graduate and Doctor in Economic Science from the Autonomous University of Madrid From 1984 until the present day professor within the Department of Sociology of the Faculty of CC. Economic of the Autonomous University of Madrid -where he has been a Professor of Sociology and today is a Professor-; has been asked to teach more than a dozen of subjects in the field of the Sociology of the Firm and of the Economy, within the undergraduate and graduate programmes of that Faculty.
Has exercised international teaching in the universities of Southbank in London, Paris IX (Dauphine) and Paris I (Laboratoire Georges Friedmann), Xalapa (Veracruz, Mexico) and The Republic of Uruguay, Specializing in Economic Sociology and the analysis and sociological research of the phenomena of collective action and social movements, has conducted research in the area of the European Union (the Comett, DG5), concerted action with the University of Cardiff (program, British Council/Ministry of Education) and competitive projects of the Dgicyt, among others. In the UAM coordinates the stable research group “Studies on work and citizenship” (SOC E-O30).
He has performed research stays in the Universities of Paris-Dauphine, New York (NYU), School of High Studies in Social Sciences of Paris, Free University of Brussels, Havana and Cardiff. Has offered lectures and courses at the International University Menéndez and Pelayo, the summer University of the universidad Complutense (el Escorial), The Fundación Argentaria, etc. he Has participated in numerous Congresses and Scientific Meetings in the field of the national sociology and international levels.
Publications
He has published fifty articles in specialized journals, either in the main scientific publications in the realm of academic Sociology (Revista Española de Investigaciones Sociológicas, Politics and Society, International Journal of Sociology, Sociology of Work, Agriculture and Society, etc), either in the professional field of the economy and the research of markets (Economists, Research and Marketing, Distribution, and Consumption, Studies on Consumption, etc); he has also collaborated frequently in journals in the interdisciplinary field in the social sciences and humanities (System, Magazine of the West, corporate Documentation, etc). He is the author, also, of thirty chapters in collective books, many of these books are works plants within the different specialities of Spanish sociology. Prominent examples of these contributions in books and major are those found in the volumes compiled by Faustino Miguélez and Carlos Prieto, Labor Relations in Spain, Madrid, Siglo XXI, 1991 – subsequently it has appeared a second part of this book: Faustino Miguélez and Carlos Prieto, Employment Relations in Spain, Madrid, Siglo XXI, 1999, in which there is also a new collaboration of this author-; in the book of J. Vidal Beneyto and Miguel Beltrán (Ed.), Spain to debate, Madrid, Tecnos, 1991 (2ºvol.), in the Report by Foessa, 1994; the book of Salustiano del Campo (Ed.), Social trends in Spain (1960-1990), Fundación BBV, 1993; and in the volume compiled by Pilar del Castillo (Ed.), Political behavior and electoral, Madrid, Centre for Sociological Research, 1994.
He is also a coauthor of books that address topics related to the Sociology of Consumption, Labour and the Social Movements, so we can highlight History of Consumption in Spain, Madrid, Debate, 2nd ed.1997 (with Fernando Conde); Does it Work for everyone? A necessary debate, Madrid, Meeting, 1996 (with Lourdes Pérez Ortiz); Proletarians of white collar. The Spanish Federation of Workers of Credit and Finance, Fundación Cultural Banesto, 1994 (with James Castle); Pierre Bourdieu, The tools of the sociologist, Madrid, Fundamentos, 2004 (with Jose Luis moreno Tab and Enrique Martín Criado); Employement Relations in a Changing Society, London, Palgrave/ Macmillan, 2006 (with Miguel Martinez Lucio, and The debate about the powers, Madrid, ANECA, 2009 (with Carlos J. Fernández Rodríguez and José María Nissen)
Their books signed on your own are: The look qualitative Sociology, Madrid, Fundamentos, 1998; Job and citizenship: studies on the crisis of the salaried society, Madrid, Trotta, 1999; Job and post-modernism. The weak employment, Madrid, Fundamentos, 2001; The era of consumption, Madrid, Siglo XXI, 2005, The crisis of citizenship, labor, Barcelona, Anthopos, 2007; and economic Practices and the economy of practices, Madrid, La Catarata, 2009.
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Carlos J. Fernández Rodríguez
Carlos Jesús Fernández Rodríguez (Madrid, 1974) is a Professor Contracted Doctor. She is a professor in the Department of Sociology of the UAM from September 2007. Accredited as a university professor by the ANECA. Doctor in Sociology from the Autonomous University of Madrid (2004), is Graduated both in economics from the UAM (speciality in Economic Sociology, 1997) and Sociology (UNED, 2002). Master of Business Administration (MBA) from the School of Industrial Organization (2000). Previously he has worked as a consultant in the private sector (2000-2002) and has been a fellow FPI-MEC of the Department of Sociology of the UAM (2003-2007). He has done research stays at the Universities of Essex, Bradford and Manchester (Uk), the Helsinki School of Economics and the University of Helsinki (Finland). His publications include the books The address of management: time and narrative (Madrid, CIS, 2007), to Monitor and Organize: an introduction to the Critical Management Studies (as editor, Madrid, Siglo XXI, 2007) and The debate about the powers (with Luis E. Alonso and José Mª Nyssen, Madrid, ANECA, 2009), and approximately thirty book chapters and articles in scientific journals as the International Journal of Sociology, Revista Española de Investigaciones Sociológicas, Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences or Economic and Industrial Democracy. He has participated in numerous national and international conferences. He is a member of the Research Group “Studies on Work and Citizenship” coordinated by Luis Enrique Alonso. Resume full can be viewed below.