Die Neuerfindung des Sozialen

The welfare state is undergoing a phase of sustainable upheaval. This has become common knowledge. However, there is far from clarity on how to define this change, or rather this crisis. The prevailing discourses about the dismantling or the neoliberal retreat of the welfare state are insufficient. This book proposes to understand the shift from a providing to an activating and investing welfare state as a fundamental shift in the relationship between the individual and society: as a reinvention of the social. It outlines the contours of an active society, where mobility, flexibility, and productivity devolve into political control formulas of individual self-coercion. The well-being of individual citizens is no longer the priority; instead, the welfare of the societal community takes precedence. This signifies nothing less than the abandonment of the fundamental promise of modernity: to lead a self-determined life.