The death of the social? Re-figuring the territory of government

Abstract

The social, as a plane of thought and action, has been central to political thought and political programmes since the mid-nineteenth century. This paper argues that, while themes of society and concerns with social cohesion and social justice are still significant in political argument, the social is no longer a key zone, traget and objective of strategies of government. The rise of the language of globalization indicates that economic relations are no longer easily understood as organized across a single bounded national economy. Community has become a new spatialization of government: heterogeneous, plural, linking individuals, families and others into contesting cultrual assemblies of identities and allegiances. Divisions among the subjects of government are coded in new ways; neither included nor excluded are governed as social citizens. Non-political strategies are deployed for the management of expert authority. Anti-political motifs such as associationism and communitarianism which do not seek to govern through society, are on the rise in political thought. The paper suggests some ways of diagnosing and analysing these novel territorializations of political thought and action.