Politics facing the market : Regulating labour flexibility in a society of individuals
(2006) Reconciling labour flexibility with social cohesion - Ideas for political action — ISBN: [92-871-6014-7], p. 179-201, published
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- Au-delà de ses usages techniques – sur lesquels nous ne reviendrons pas ici –, le terme un peu vague de « flexibilité » cristallise la nouvelle donne d’un marché ambigu, apparemment dépourvu de toute alternative. Mais il est aussi un puissant indicateur des transformations culturelles à l’œuvre dans des sociétés de plus en plus individualistes, qui se sont émancipées des pratiques Leaving aside its technical uses – which we shall not go into here – the some- what vague term “flexibility” encapsulates a new development: an ambiguous market to which there is apparently no alternative. But it is also a powerful indi- cator of the cultural changes at work in what are increasingly individualistic societies, which have cast off traditional political practices, be they bureaucratic or regulatory, and are affirming in no uncertain terms the crucial importance now afforded to the existence of a plurality of increasingly individualistic life- styles. Of course it is not the only one. 2 Like teleworking, however, which reflects a change in the spatial and temporal bearings of work, the generic term “flexi- bility” reflects not only the extent to which culture is part of the economy, the increasingly hazy boundaries between work and private life and the emergence of new opportunities, but also the decline in the various forms of protection, the emergence of new forms of supervision and the rifts that go hand in hand with the myth that behaviour and identities are eternally malleable. Accordingly, the term brings us to the crux of the matter, which is whether or not we are capable of forging a common destiny: a destiny that needs to be invented in societies made up of individuals, societies which have thrown the traditional form of poli- tics based on the state into disarray without coming up with anything to replace it. Yet this is a crucial issue: political togetherness was, from the outset, the very basis of democracy.
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de Nanteuil, M., & Taskin, L. (2006). Politics facing the market : Regulating labour flexibility in a society of individuals. In Council of Europe (ed.), Reconciling labour flexibility with social cohesion - Ideas for political action (p. p. 179-201). Council of Europe Publishing. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/197566