26 January
15:00 - 16:00
|
Room F102
Newman Building
University College Dublin |
SSRC Lecture
'THE REFEUDALIZATION OF SOCIETY? ON THE NEW ARISTOCRACY AND CELEBRITY SOCIETY – FROM HABERMAS TO ELIAS'
Professor Robert van Krieken
In this lecture, Professor Robert van Krieken reflected on the concept Jurgen Habermas used to characterize the transformation of the public sphere by its commercialisation, ‘refeudalization’, and examined how it can be used to understand the nature of power and social inequality today, drawing on the work of the German sociologist, Sighard Neckel. His work shows how the concept of refeudalization can be extended to a broader range of concerns beyond Habermas’s public sphere, but it is also useful to examine its limits - to what degree has any de-feudalization ever taken place, and how are contemporary forms of feudal relations in the economy, politics and society quite distinct, perhaps suggesting a concept of ‘neo-feudalism’? Professor van Krieken turned to Elias’s analysis of court society as a particular structuring of social relations and a type of self-formation that has persisted to the present day, and use its application to the sociology of celebrity, particularly the role of celebrity in business and management, as a useful example of how the concept of refeudalization might be taken in different directions. The overall argument was for a better understanding of a distinctive kind of economic dynamic, the economics of attention, as a key element of today’s structuring of social relations in terms of an increasingly wealthy elite and an impoverished peasantry, with the bourgeoisie or middle class struggling to retain its distinctive role and voice in social order and social transformation.
Download Lecture Poster |
