Prekarisierung und soziale Entkopplung – transdisziplinäre Studien

The book aims at presenting an updated version of the basic and general human rights debates. While it is frequently suggested that Human Rights are universal and indivisible, it is an undeniable fact that this is far from being true. And if there was ever any justification for talking about an ending to history, that narrative has definitely lost all justification in the light of recent developments. In fact, we are now witnessing a new harsh round of global system competition, often at the edge of a global hot war, now not anymore in a bipolar world but in a multipolar setting.The book contributions include reflections on history and theory, the reinterpretation of rights in different national contexts and/or in relation to specific groups (e.g. women) and areas (e.g. digitization).The book is meant to be a food for thought, at the end arguing in favour of the need to redefine Human Rights, reflecting the changes since the inauguration of the UDHR.

In the pandemic, the state in Germany reacts in lockdown with restrictions within the private sphere of a shutdown of the leisure and cultural sphere, while the work contexts are only peripherally affected. Out of this crisis, new techniques of leadership are intensifying. Discipline and norms are no longer suitable enough to ensure productivity in today's world, which is why there is a shift towards self-directed processes and mechanisms such as flexibility, motivation and goal setting. The actors are therefore no longer assigned a fixed place in the sense of discipline, but are encouraged to surrender to the new control mechanisms and to adapt themselves again and again with a high degree of self-control. The realistic fear of contagion reinforces the actors' willingness to submit to these forms of mobilization.

This book questions the mainstream interpretation of the current political shifts as a move to ultra-conservative and even fascist politics, changing the polities of the Western democracies that can be overcome by “reclaiming democracy”. Instead of following this path, the present work analyses these developments as extreme consequence that emerged from the individualist and short-sighted understanding of rationality that coined the enlightenment and had been translated into an institutionalist take on democracy. Such view, while accepting the common interpretation of a dramatic and extremely dangerous development, goes further: it emphasises the need to question the pathway of modernisation: Looking at what is hidden by the eclipse of reason encourages also to look for a new societal model, asking for a real public, transcending current strives for publicity. As such, it is an important contribution to debates on precarity and a one-sided understanding of Human Rights. Scholars of political science and political philosophy will be interested in the work as it will be of interest for those who are engaging in oingoi8ng political debates.