Come cambiano la politica e la società in tempi di «pensiero unico» neoliberale

In the framework of international debate on the process of globalizations and its effects on society, the Giuseppe Di Palma’s book, Journey into modernities. Social risk and solidarity from absolutism to neoliberalism and beyond, takes into consideration an issue not adequately considered by the current sociological scientific literature on globalization. This is the relationship existing between State and society aimed at answering contemporary social uncertainty and re-establishing a better social cohesion as well as redistribution of wealth. Based on an analysis which ranges from absolutism to current neoliberalism, the author shows how contemporary States – under the influence of neoliberalist globalization – have transferred to the market some prerogatives belonging to public institutions such as taking care of poor and deprived populations. Since social risk and solidarity are reduced, according to neoliberalist thinking, to an individual dimension, people living at the margins of society are directly responsible for their own condition. However, the author’s proposal is to safeguard the binomial “solidarity and social risk” thanks to the re-appropriation into the public field of individual problems and re-establishing the priority for politics on capitalist market