摘要：This special volume investigates the fate of the social contract in the contexts of the postnationalorder. Since at least the turn of the century, we have been witness to a profoundde- and re-composition of the modern social bonds between the individual, the state andsociety. To name but the three most obvious patterns of change: first, the modern socialcontract depended on the idea of stable state territories and homogenous ethno-culturalcommunities; second, social bonds were nurtured through institutes of citizenship,membership and belonging, whereas rationalization of cultural heritage through processesof (re)traditionalization and collective memory production assured a socially cohesiveunderstanding of public culture; third, the idea of the nation and nation-state formed afirm ground to elaborate and educate modern patriotic commitments, in particular the ideaof the homeland. Since the 1970s, these three arrangements have been rapidly, and oftensilently, replaced by the “postmodern”, “neoliberal”, and “postnational” models of thesocial contract. State, regional and global re-bordering, changing of the paths and classesof migrations, and the collapse of the welfare state, have created conditions of permanentinstability, fluidity and proliferation of contradictions in the relationship between thecitizen and the state. This includes the fracturing of the democratic public sphere andvalue politics due to meaning contestation of key modern principles of solidarity, justice,and welfare, as well as a growing incommensurability between the post-humanitarianethics of neoliberal consumer society and the rational choice agency ideal of the modernEnlightenment subject.
