Politics, recognition, and personality: Selfhood and social change in late modernity

Abstract

This essay reviews two recently published books that focus on a range of pressures faced by individuals in a time of rapid social transformation brought on by technological disruption, which is taking place against a backdrop of unresolved social conflicts in areas as diverse as multiculturalism and postsecularism. Key themes addressed by these volumes include, among other things, narcissism and capitalist consumer culture, with the concomitant influence that the intersection of these is having on democracy; and the theory of recognition and its relevance to the question of how individual freedom can be reconciled with commitments to community interests and the promotion of the public good in areas such as education, religion, and employment. This essay argues that these books will be helpful to researchers studying the many social challenges that both individuals and communities are currently experiencing in times of socioeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty. Furthermore, these books each contribute to the intellectual projects of authors such as Jürgen Habermas and Charles Taylor, who are concerned with analyzing the tensions between communitarian conceptions of the social world and modernity’s commitment to individualism and progress.