Abstract
This chapter deals with economization dynamics in contemporary Western societies. An interpretation of the manifestations, origins, and consequences of current economization dynamics is given with the help of sociological theories of functional differentiation. Economization is an inherent feature of functionally differentiated capitalist modernity. Today’s experiences of economization pressure, as a regime of competition with society-wide, massive effects, draw attention to the possibility of a creeping erosion of functional differentiation, which seems to have already started in some countries and societal spheres.
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Notes
- 1.
One can argue about whether neoliberalism may not be the best term for what has happened, but it is widely used now. For an overview of what it means, as an alternative set of ideas about a good society, see only Mudge (2008). Evans and Sewell (2013) give a brief but concise synopsis of how neoliberalism changed contemporary Western societies.
- 2.
Accordingly, this is still a hot topic of public debates as well as a subject of many empirical studies. Besides economization and neoliberalism, some other familiar keywords are liberalization, deregulation, privatization, managerialism, new public management, entrepreneurialism, or marketization. These terms do not all have the same meaning, but there are considerable overlaps.
- 3.
The following argument is based on the more extensive elaboration in Schimank and Volkmann (2017).
- 4.
- 5.
This very brief exposition inevitably sounds like a functionalist deduction, which is not far from a functionalist fallacy. What, for lack of space, cannot be reconstructed here is the gradual and stumbling evolutionary emergence of some fit between the services produced and the underlying needs (see Abrutyn 2016 for more details).
- 6.
Or of compulsory insurances established by the state, such as the German unemployment or health care insurance.
- 7.
In some cases, the state still subsidizes service provision, to a certain extent, in order to compensate for the users who are unable to pay.
- 8.
In such moments of trouble, state authorities can have an unexpected comeback as trouble-shooters called for by the public. Unfortunately, they are quite often unprepared and helpless in this role.
- 9.
This colloquial phrase is adopted from Parsons (1970, 438 f.). He used it in the 1950s to describe patients who show no loyalty to their medical doctors but permanently look out for potential, better alternatives––a normatively disapproved behaviour at that time.
- 10.
To be sure, in many respects organized modernity was definitely no paradise for hierarchically subordinated organizational members; but when management was dissatisfied with an organizational unit its redesign, instead of outsourcing, was the usual reaction.
- 11.
A similar diagnosis is made by Robert Castel (2003) in his account of the rise and fall of what he calls the wage labour society.
- 12.
Of course, some opportunities of resistance against economizing remain in most cases. See, for example, Anderson’s (2008) observations of micro-resistance at universities and Volkmann (2019) for a systematic theoretical exploration. However, often this resistance remains an act of individuals taking a stand against outrageous working conditions which serves their personal identity maintenance but is unable to defend standards of good service provision.
- 13.
A good overview of these effects with numerous examples is given by Binswanger (2012).
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Schimank, U., Volkmann, U. (2021). Economization: How Neo-Liberalism Took Over Society. In: Maurer, A. (eds) Handbook of Economic Sociology for the 21st Century. Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61619-9_8
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