Can We Live Together: Equality and Difference

by Alain Touraine

In this provocative and timely new book, Alain Touraine explores the question of how we might live together in a truly globalized world society. Rejecting the seductive metaphor of a global melting pot, Touraine mounts a powerful attack on the idea that we now live together as equals, sharing the same social and cultural values. If anything, he argues, our differences are being heightened, as communities increasingly define their identities against the encroaching forces of globalization.


Touraine argues that the twin processes of globalization and particularization are pushing us further and further apart. On the one hand, traditional values and forms of cultural expression are being eroded by homogenized mass culture. On the other, communities are becoming more introverted as they fight to defend themselves from outside influences. Even the cities where our global networks originate and are controlled are made up of communities which are foreign to one another, as they defend their identities from the tokens of mass culture.


How do we avoid a global conflict between those who control the international networks of information, and those who feel threatened by them? The first part of Touraine's book asserts that the only way to prevent the destruction of identity is for individuals to develop a personal life-project, which he calls the 'Subject'. To become a subject, the individual constructs itself as an actor, forming a stable point of reference in a world of permanent and uncontrollable change. In the second part of the book, Touraine examines how this apparently non-social principle might be used to reconstruct social life. The first step is to recognize that others are also subjects, striving for a sense of personal freedom. Touraine then argues for a replacement of the old idea of democracy, defined as participation in the general will, with the new idea of institutions that safeguard the freedom of the subject and permit communication between subjects. This is the only approach that will allow us to live together, equal and different.


This book will be of great interest to second- and third-year undergraduates and graduate students of sociology and politics.

Genres: Sociology, Nonfiction, 20th Century, Social Science

336 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Alain Touraine is a French sociologist. He is research director at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, where he founded the Centre d'étude des mouvements sociaux (see also Daniel Bertaux). He is best known for being the originator of the term "post-industrial society". His work is based on a "sociology of action," and believes that society shapes its future through structural mechanisms and its own social struggles. Touraine defined historicity as the capability of a society to take action upon itself, see The Self-Production of Society (1977).
His key interest for most of his career has been with social movements. He has studied and written extensively on workers' movements across the world, particularly in Latin America and more recently in Poland where he observed and aided the birth of Solidarnosc (Solidarity), see Solidarity: The Analysis of a Social Movement (1983). While in Poland, he developed the research method of "Sociological Intervention," which had been outlined in "The Voice and the Eye" (La Voix et le Regard) [1981].
Touraine has gained immense popularity in Latin America as well as in continental Europe. Yet he has failed to gain anywhere near the same recognition in the English-speaking world. Out of twenty or so books, only about half of them have been translated into English.
He participated in 1969 at MoMA's Universitas project organized by Argentine architect Emilio Ambasz. In 2010, he was jointly awarded, with Zygmunt Bauman, the Príncipe de Asturias Prize for Communication and the Humanities.

Reviews

[امیرمحمد · Rating 3 out of 5]

این کتابِ بی‌نظیر، به ترجمه‌ی آقای سلمان صادقی‌زاده، توسط نشر ثالث با عنوانِ «برابری و تفاوت: آیا می‌توانیم در کنار هم زندگی کنیم» به چاپ رسیده است. آلن تورن، جامعه‌شناسی‌ست که با پرداختن به ابعادِ دور از فکر بک مسئله، نهایتاً، کلیتی جامع را از موضوع اصلی برای مخاطب ایجاد می‌کند. این کتاب، حول محور زندگی اجتماعی ما، و در عین حال تلاش ما برای عقب‌نشینی به‌درون هویت فردی‌مان می‌چرخد.

[Francisco Gamboa · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best analysis on multiculturalism. Highly recommended.

[Steven · Rating 1 out of 5]

Why would anyone ever think to write something so strange as this book? It's like it's from another planet or something. Genuinely bizarre.

[arda]

Berbat bir çeviri okumak mümkün değil.

[Rosa]

Una muy interesante lectura sobre el sistema democratico