Social Life as Collective Struggle: Closure Theory and the Problem of Solidarity

Autor/innen

  • Jürgen Mackert University of Potsdam

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18753/2297-8224-174

Schlagworte:

social closure, struggle, solidarization, democracy

Abstract

In recent years, all over the globe we have seen intensifying economic exploitation, political disenfranchisement, social marginalization and cultural repression in all kinds of political regimes, from liberal democratic to authoritarian and dictatorial. Although the strategies vary with regard to regime and context, in all of them we observe that while a growing number of social groups are speaking out and rising against them, a presumably much higher number of groups do not. In this article, I argue that all these processes can be conceived as aspects of ongoing closure struggles in social life. However, in order to understand why some social groups are able to fight against closure strategies while others are not, closure theory in its current state of elaboration is not of any help. While it operates with the term solidarization, it does not offer any explanation of how such acting in solidarity may become possible in closure struggles. The article is a mainly theoretical contribution of how to solve this problem.

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Artikel

Ausgabe 1/2021

Rubrik

Thematic Section

Nummer

Article1.5

Sprache

English

Veröffentlicht

31.05.2021

Lizenz

Copyright (c) 2021 Jürgen Mackert
Creative-Commons-Lizenz
Dieses Werk steht unter der Lizenz Creative Commons Namensnennung 4.0 International.