Solidarity is a key concept in the European Union. However, the concept of solidarity lacks systematic theoretical examination to enable a sufficient understanding of its contextual meaning and to provide an operationalisable benchmark for analysis. To address this research gap, I propose an analytical framework for solidarity in the European Union that features four necessary conditions: particularity, instrumentality, reciprocity, and responsibility. I develop the framework through a transdisciplinary conceptual history approach, substantiated with a thorough document and legal analysis of European (...) integration and CJEU case law. I demonstrate the robustness and validity of the proposed framework by using EU asylum policy as a test case, a field where the question of solidarity is notoriously salient, which is exemplified by an area-specific expression of the concept: fair sharing of responsibility between the EU member states. Moreover, I show that the EU’s solidarity principle is necessary to maintain the bloc’s raison d’être. (shrink)

Resumen: El artículo propone contribuir al estudio sociológico de la "abstracción" como una clave para comprender las complejas relaciones entre lo conceptual y lo empírico. Nuestro argumento es que la "abstracción" constituye un tercer término que desafía el divorcio entre ambos dominios en la sociología e interroga su compleja mediación en la vida social. Para ello, exploramos las posibilidades de una sociología de la abstracción como un ejercicio de observación tendiente a: comprender la inmersión de las prácticas de abstracción de (...) la teoría social de un modo inmanente a las dinámicas de abstracción de la sociedad; descifrar el movimiento concreto de los conceptos que dan forma a la sociedad y permiten la durabilidad a las relaciones sociales. En otras palabras, sostenemos, el trabajo sociológico de la abstracción consiste en un inevitable repliegue reflexivo que moviliza los conceptos para alcanzar lo que está más allá de los conceptos.: This paper aims to contribute to the sociological study of "abstractions" as a key to comprehend the relations between the conceptual and the empirical. Our argument is that "abstraction" is a third term that challenges the customary divorce between these domains in sociology inasmuch as interrogates their complex mediation in social life. To do so, we explore the possibilities of a sociology of abstraction as an exercise of thinking and observation aimed at: comprehending the immersion of social theory's practices of abstraction as immanent to the dynamics of abstraction of society; and deciphering the concrete movement of concepts that give form to society and durability to social relations. Thus, we intend to show that the project of a sociology of abstractions consists in an unavoidable reflexive retreat that displays concepts in order to reach what is beyond concepts. (shrink)

This article presents a conceptual history of representation in the political debates of the Polish émigré community in the period 1832–1846/48. As I argue, while the concept was present in the output of all political environments of the Polish Great Emigration, there were more discrepancies than similarities about how to understand it. As a result of debates about what the Polish diaspora in exile actually was and who had the right to represent it, the concept became a part and parcel (...) of political frays. In this way, the right to use it—and consequently to represent the whole Polish community and Polish nation as well—occupied a central place in the evolution of the concept of representation. (shrink)

This article deals with the concepts, processes, and antagonisms that are associated with the notion of postsecularity. In light of this article’s expanded interpretation of José Casanova on the secular and secularization, as well as thoughts on James A. Beckford’s take on public religions, five rubrics on the postsecular derived from critical theory and an understanding of ‘reflexive secularization’ are presented. This term focuses on secularization processes and how these practices unleash complementary as well as antagonistic tendencies, a confrontation of (...) normativities and specific social-empirical challenges. From this basis it is argued that social-empirical analysis should focus on non-naturalistic relations between individuals occupying structurally equivalent positions in narrative networks. A plurality of normativities are seriously considered as ideas circulating through social relations where the critical competence of the participants of such communication processes are provoked to subvert anything – including any normative positionality – as taken for granted. Moves towards the decolonization of the secular/postsecular dyad are emphasized, with ramifications for thinking about the urban, which point to the universal and authentic foundations of the human condition that are brought into play. (shrink)

This article contends that an adequate investigation of the role and effects of race in the history of philosophy requires an elucidation of the ways in which the history of philosophy functions as a “territorial” structure. This argument is developed through an extensive cross-examination of Peter Park's Africa, Asia and the History of Philosophy: Racism in the Formation of the Philosophical Canon 1780–1830 and Catherine König-Pralong's La colonie philosophique. Écrire l'histoire de la philosophie aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles. I show (...) that although the two studies inquire into the fixation of the history of philosophy on Europe that took place in German and French philosophy at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, they do so via different explanatory frameworks, highlighting diverging critical strategies in the dismantling of Eurocentrism in the discipline. In the final part I contrast three broad critical strategies against the Eurocentric orientation of the historiography of philosophy based on opposite problematizations of the territoriality of the history of philosophy: the territory as jurisdiction, relational field, and space of address. (shrink)

In the literature of Media Studies, the word mediality has emerged as an expression of the concern about the specificity of media and their link to time, experience, technology and social change. However, mediality is not yet a concept, since the description of the function of media as mediation and transmission has become an obstacle to achieve further developments. In light of these remarks, this paper proposes a theoretical arrangement that gives meaning to mediality by connecting the word into a (...) network of concepts, such as social cognition, evolution, temporality, synchronization and double closure. In order to achieve this goal, the author designs a theoretical apparatus consisting of the self-referential coupling between N. Luhmann’s systems theory, H. von Foerster’s second order cybernetics, R. Harris’ integration linguistics, and A. Clark’s extended cognition. A consistent integration and interpretation of the sketched theory, allows us to draw the conclusion that in order to comprehend mediality, it is crucial to understand the relationship between information, double closure, social cognition and evolution, while questions regarding human cognition do not be to be involved; and if that should be the case, research should depart from the problem of the structural coupling between human and social cognition. (shrink)

Collective memory is thought to be something “more” than a conglomeration of personal memories which compose it. Yet, each of us, each individual in every society, remembers from a personal point of view. And if there is memory beyond personal experience through which collective identities are configured, in what “place” might one legitimately situate it? In addressing this question, this article examines the political significance of the distinction between two levels of what are often lumped together under the term of (...) “collective memory”: memories that are retained through the direct experience of groups or associations of a limited size and those that are rarely the object of direct experience constituting the events marking the identities of mass societies. (shrink)

The main goal of this paper is to offer a reading of Reinhart Koselleck’s work as an ally of critical theory. My contention is that, despite customary accusations of Koselleck being an anti-Enlightenment historian detrimental to social criticism and emancipatory politics, his investigations on the semantic fabric of modern society may actually expand our resources for the critique of domination. In order to make this argument plausible, I reconstruct some antinomies that are at the basis of Koselleck’s work (state/society, language/reality, (...) experience/expectation) and discuss their critical potential. This analysis shows that, rather than a rejection of the spirit of critique, Koselleck contributes to the temporalization of the practice of critique as such: namely, a clarification of the contradictions and potentials of a reflexive practice imbued in the struggle between the need to comprehend the world as it is and the right to experiment with other forms of life. (shrink)

El anacronismo, que implica la aplicación de conceptos o ideas de una época a otra, se suele considerar uno de los errores más graves en la narrativa histórica. La corriente historiográfica conocida como historia conceptual es una de las que reconoce y busca evitar este problema. Dentro de este contexto, Elias J. Palti ha defendido la idea de que el concepto de “lo político” se originó en la Era moderna. Según su argumento, utilizar este concepto para analizar sociedades anteriores podría (...) llevar a malentendidos y distorsiones en la comprensión de su funcionamiento. Sin embargo, el objetivo de este trabajo es desafiar esta perspectiva y proponer la posibilidad de aplicar el concepto de “lo político” al estudio de sociedades premodernas. En lugar de rechazar automáticamente la aplicación de conceptos modernos, se busca explorar cómo pueden enriquecer nuestro conocimiento de la historia, incluso en contextos temporales diferentes al suyo de origen. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 48, Issue 6, Page 882-903, July 2022. Indigenous conservation through patrimonialization is the product of political and legal decisions made by a non-indigenous agent: the liberal state, using the law to retain a form of bios. We propose that patrimonialization is the device by which liberal states have processed and integrated indigenous claims into a form of bios ultimately designed to safeguard state legal structures. We argue that, to uphold the rule of law in contexts (...) of struggle and resistance that challenge the very understanding of the law, states respond by wielding the law in the form of the rule by law, that is, pushing the law to the limit to give normative content to the criteria by which the state conducts its affairs, without straying from the individual rights framework. We hold that the rule by law is an operation that defines the patrimonialization of indigenous peoples. It increases their visibility while imposing limits on political action to keep them from becoming sui juris subjects capable of breaching the distinction between zoe and bios. In this article, we try to understand the political–ideological intent of these decisions, the intentions beyond the letter of the law of patrimonialized peoples. (shrink)