Touraine: After the crisis a more feminine world will develop

Based on values like solidarity, human rights and altruism – according to the French sociologist, money has separated economic life from the rest of society

The economic crisis over these last years has superimposed a profound political and social crisis in Europe and the entire western world in general. The “break-down” of collective subjects is, according to the French sociologist Alain Touraine, the phenomenon at the bottom of both. During his presence at the Sapienza in Rome, where Touraine presented his latest book “After the crisis. A new possible society,” the researcher analyzed the key events that lead up to the economic recession in parallel with the disintegration of traditional collective subjects of reference from the 900’s – political parties, syndicates and the church. As the title of the volume recites, a new society is possible according to the sociologist, and will be a society where individuals and consequently the people can have their own identity and this thanks only to these universal values and morals that were treated so badly in recent years. “The European world – affirms Touraine in one of his latest works – broke off from the research on stability and integration to address the opposite direction, working on the concentration of all the economic, political, military and scientific resources in the hands of the elite, created and legitimized through the domain used in all fields on population.”

This historical process was not immune to problems, in as much as “this type of society must be defined both by an exceptional capacity to concentrate resources and to create tension and conflicts always up to intolerable limits. It is the polarization of society that allowed the concentration of resources, that at its time was able to realize only through a method of domain and social exploitation which was maintained across many centuries.” In the current historical phase though, world domain is in the hands of elite bankers and this phenomenon is at the bottom of the process of “break-down” of all the other social and political actors included. “As such not only the financial economy [parts company editor’s note] from the real economy – says Touraine – but economic life as a whole parts company from the rest of society, which threatens to destroy institutions where rules and behavior of social negotiation are devised.”

This explains both the crisis of traditional parties – which doesn’t concern just Italy but the entire continent of Europe – and the involution in a bureaucratic meaning of the church and its progressive loss of faithful followers.

Alain Touraine, completely comfortable among students even though he is 88 years old, didn’t skimp on comments on the Italian political situation and on the resignation of Pope Ratzinger: “Ratzinger’s decision didn’t have anything to do with health problems, it is only a sign of the risk that the church runs – he said. A risk, that also falls on other traditional players and institutions to “evacuate” and the “break-down” of an organization “holding on, mainly by the vitality and by the spirit of initiative from the foundation.” For Touraine the deep-down problem in the case of the Catholic Church would be his outdated vision of the world which by now is in total contradiction to the path of modernity.

Regarding Beppe Grillo’s 5 Star Movement political climb in Italy, according to the French academic, it is the direct consequence of disintegration of traditional political and social subjects but could also have a positive historical role.

Finally, it is the male model of society that is in crisis, according to Touraine – a model based totally on competition and money.

The new after-crisis society– which he calls post-social –must inevitably recover other distinctively more feminine values, such as solidarity, altruism and human rights in order to survive.

Laura Gobbo