The New Social State?

Abstract

In this article an attempt is made to discuss some new strategies of the social state as an alternative to welfare-state management One example is the emergence of 'social networks' by means of which it is hoped to shrink the state apparatus, diminish costs, bring the social bureaucracies closer to the people, and produce ideologies of natural and national togetherness But a network society in which 'everyone becomes a social worker for everyone else' seems likely to universalize the repressive character of the therapeutic society.

The new social state is increasingly a critical manifestation of heroic socio- cultural practices The influence of social bureaucracies is not weakening but getting stronger The community rhetoric becomes a form that symbolizes and reinforces social life. Critical discussion on the social state easily becomes propagandistic. And the focus of the new discussion seems to be both on the simple order of everyday life and on the contradictions and complexities of modern society.