Distinktion

This paper develops a Spinozist social theory of anti-migrant affect by interpreting contemporary hostility toward immigration through the concept of invidia (envy). Drawing on recent empirical research on 'superiority-seeking', whereby individuals derive status utility from excluding others, the paper interprets invidia as an affective hatred of equality. For Spinoza, envy is caused not by actual material loss but from the imagination that misconceives shared goods as exclusive possessions. This social theory of invidia inverts readings that locate envy in migrants themselves, instead arguing that, in Spinoza's Political Treatise, the democratic multitude harbours invidia against migrants when they are perceived as potential rivals of equal status. This helps explain why extending rights to migrants can provoke hostility even in the absence of real material or economic loss. Finally, the paper explores whether a non-rivalrous conception of political membership can mitigate these dynamics while still satisfying Spinoza's account of the human striving for recognition. The paper concludes that overcoming anti-migrant hatred requires re-conceiving citizenship in terms of common ratios of living that may be shared collectively as expressions of the same infinite substance and power of Nature of which we are all a part.

This article claims that contemporary decolonial thought, by equating universality and coloniality as such exclusively with the history of European modernity, risks collapsing into a metatheoretical Eurocentrism. This conflation not only renders decolonial critique vulnerable to cultural relativism but also enables the co-optation of decolonial discourse by authoritarian nationalist states. The article argues that these pitfalls stem from an uncritical reliance on substance-based metaphysics and a failure to recognize the structural nature of coloniality: a dynamic where asymmetrical relations of hegemonic power universalize their own particularity across diverse historical contexts. To resolve this impasse, the article draws on Nishida Kitar & omacr;'s non-substantialist ontology to reclaim universality as a relational, self-negating horizon. Building on this framework, it introduces 'ever-co-provincialization' as a sustained onto-ethical praxis. By continuously 'de-substantializing' hegemonic normative claims to universality - regardless of their geopolitical origin - this praxis preserves the universal as an open site of mutual interaction and critique accessible to all. Finally, the article distinguishes this approach from 'pluriversality,' arguing that while the latter risks collapsing into a metaphysics of separation, ever-co-provincialization secures the grounds for critique by positioning diverse epistemes as distinct-yet-equal manifestations of a shared relational universality.

This article offers a cultural sociological analysis of the ongoing transformation of authority in Silicon Valley capitalism. Building on a cultural reading of Max Weber's work on authority, I argue that Silicon Valley culture is shifting from an emphasis on charismatic leadership in business towards more traditionalist forms of authority. I theorize this process as resulting from a legitimacy crisis of the charismatic ideal, which leads to a cultural devaluation of charisma in tech capitalism. I illustrate this through the case of the 'Founder Mode', a management strategy described by Paul Graham and Brian Chesky, which seeks to stabilize the role of a charismatic leader in a growing company without the help of professional managers or bureaucrats. This article contributes to the interdisciplinary debate on the transformation of capitalism into techno-feudalism by specifying the ideational components of the 'feudal' imagery. It highlights a shift in legitimate authority scripts towards entitlement-like, paternalist, and prerogative-based domination.

Machines were at work in two of the authorships that defined the postclassical episteme: for Deleuze, the baroque tractional machines of Leibniz and Huygens; for Luhman, the non-trivial machines of von Foerster. These machines were kin. Tractional motion machines evolved into the Differential Engine of Vannevar Bush, which cued up the emergence of servomechanisms, cybernetics and what was colloquially called 'automation'. What happens when machines born of this tradition of mathesis, namely algorithmic apparatuses, begin to produce a sociality that cannot be comprehended in terms of figures drawn from earlier periods of that tradition? In particular, what happens to the sociopoietic processes of control and communication that were so vital to the postclassical episteme? Here, drawing on the example of platformized music, I suggest that the figures of control and communication have been overtaken by a mode of sociopoiesis that might provisionally be called pre-emption. 'Provisionally', because we still do not have an adequate language for datafication, and perhaps 'we' never will.

This article develops a social-theoretical critique of commensuration by treating it as a moral image of thought that organizes liberal modernity. Commensuration is not merely a technique for comparison (measurement, pricing, ranking); it functions as a governing imperative: unequals must be rendered comparable in order to become legible, administrable, and exchangeable. I reconstruct commensuration as an equivalence machine operating across money, time, and value: qualitative heterogeneity is translated into standardized units, those units are ranked and priced, and rankings are converted into decisions, allocations, and sanctions. In so doing, commensuration installs equivalence as a condition of legitimacy - difference is admitted only insofar as it can be converted into a common measure. Finance provides the privileged case because derivative pricing and risk governance do not simply represent uncertainty; they format uncertainty into commensurable exposures and present this calculus as objective necessity. The article closes by arguing that commensuration generates characteristic pathologies - responsibilization, anxiety, and impotence - by compelling subjects to optimize within evaluative architectures whose terms they did not choose, and by converting conflicts over ends into technical disputes over metrics and calibration.

Contemporary approaches to right-wing 'populism' commonly focus upon charismatic demagogues and radical right ideology which act to mobilize popular political support through deceit, manipulation, enmity and scapegoating. This article however takes a different approach. Focusing upon the production of radical right ideology, I examine how intellectuals of the radical right have come to understand and portray the institutions of liberal and social democracy as fundamentally deceptive. Developing an original reading of the American paleoconservatives and the French New Right I show how they rely upon a very specific concept of deception. I argue that via Pareto, Burnham, Machiavelli, the counter-revolutionary thought of Burke, and right-wing interpretations of Nietzsche, the legacy of the French NR and American paleoconservatives involves the development of a dogmatic account of deception. The French NR and American paleoconservatives, thus, through a limited reading of Gramsci's concept of cultural hegemony, develop a grand historical narrative and a political sociology in which deception is tied to only specific ideas and agents in history. The result is the construction of an ideological standpoint in which any political opponent or institution linked to ideas of 'universal' equality and human rights are framed as fundamentally deceptive.

Amazon, which might be said to emblematize the Silicon Valley ethos of mobilizing massive capital to 'disrupt' capitalist industries and everyday life, is today among the world's largest employers, retailers and providers of cloud computing services. But the firm was in no small part built through science and speculative fiction, not only as a genre of entertainment it sells, but as a set of ideas, narratives, tropes and ideologies that have facilitated its internal and external relations. The firm promises to be a benevolent usher of a consumer utopia, but its success at the expense of its workers, many of whom toil in dystopian conditions. The Worker as Futurist project aimed to support rank-and-file Amazon workers to write and publish short, speculative fiction about 'the world after Amazon'. This paper provides a brief account of that project, framed by the question of how workers can reclaim the power to imagine and shape the future from Silicon Valley and the form of capitalism it represents. It argues that collective creative and speculative writing practices can be an important part of building workers' power in the twenty-first century. This is especially important as Amazon and other firms are rapidly aligning themselves with a form of twenty-first century fascistic politics.

In recent years, the Danish sociologist Nikolaj Schultz has emerged as one of the most influential voices of his generation in social theory and ecological thought. In this interview, Schultz reflects on conceptual propositions and insights from his first two widely translated and highly influential books, discusses how they intersect and diverge, and considers how certain key questions within modern social theory need to be reposed in our new ecological era. In the first part of the interview, Schultz describes how the Anthropocene calls for a retheorized 'geo-social class struggle', and in the second part, he forwards the hypothesis that the existential conditions of humans have changed in the Anthropocene. The interview ends with Schultz describing his work as an investigation into the many divisions and cleavages - sociologically as well as existentially, collectively and individually - that marks our new ecological era.

In the context of our ecological predicament, this article seeks to reconnect Critical Theory to the contemporary debates on society's relation to nature in the Anthropocene. It focuses on Theodor W. Adorno and Hartmut Rosa, both of whom assign a greater role to nature than most other critical theorists. In light of Rosa's recent work on resonance, the article assesses its capacity to provide an alternative to Adorno's negative dialectics, specifically in its attempt to resist the collapse of nature's Otherness into societal processes in a world shaped by the Anthropocene. After reconstructing their positions, I situate Adorno closer to contemporary dualism and Rosa closer to monism. This is followed by a comparative analysis arguing that Rosa's idiosyncratic monist position, which attempts to accommodate dualist elements, is marked by vulnerabilities that inadvertently undermine its own effort to secure nature's Otherness in the Anthropocene. By contrast, Adorno's concepts of 'nonidentity' and 'constellation' provide richer resources for resisting the dissolution of nature.

This article advances a renewed materialist framework through the development of positional sociology, an approach that reconnects macro-structural transformations with the subjective experiences through which individuals navigate contemporary capitalism. Building on historical materialism while engaging critically with post-structuralism, subaltern studies and Bourdieusian field theory, the paper argues that position constitutes the key analytical bridge linking structure, history and subjectivity. While positional sociology first emerged within an Italian network of scholars, the Rete di Sociologia di Posizione, which has also initiated an editorial series dedicated to this agenda, this article seeks to extend the debate to an international audience by articulating the theoretical foundations of the approach in dialogue with global discussions on neoliberalization, social decomposition and the micro, macro divide. The article shows how positional sociology reframes experiences of precarity, fragmentation and dispossession as materially grounded phenomena, not individual contingencies. By integrating historical analysis, structural dynamics and lived subjectivities, positional sociology offers a coherent lens for understanding the forms of domination and agency that define the neoliberal conjuncture and for rethinking the materialist tradition in contemporary social theory.

With the rise of authoritarian figures such as Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, Marine Le Pen and Viktor Orban, several scholars have examined the linkages between neoliberalism and contemporary fascism. While some argue that fascism's emergence must necessarily mean the revolutionary break from (neo)liberal ideals, others have excavated ideological overlaps between the two projects. We utilize insights from the Black Radical tradition, which highlight continuities between liberal racial capitalism and classical fascism; insights from Social Reproduction Theory, which concern the reproduction of variegated racial and gender capital relations; and a Gramscian understanding of neoliberalism and fascism as forms of hegemony to demonstrate their internal continuities. Such continuities are not mere ideological overlaps between two distinct forms of capitalist hegemony, but also essential material elements of their productive regimes. Neoliberalism re-accumulates gendered divisions of labour and naturalizes patriarchal dominance while utilizing carceral border regimes to organize racialized labour hierarchies. These material divisions reflexively interact with ideologies of nationhood, whiteness, and patriarchy to create fertile terrain in which new fascisms can arise. This implies that anti-fascist action must not aim to reestablish (neo)liberal ideals, but offer a fundamental break with the system from which fascism is emerging.

This article presents an evaluation of Byung-Chul Han's critique of neoliberal subjectivation with respect to his general purpose, which is to provoke his readers towards a passionate confrontation with their life and being under neoliberalism and for them to subvert it. Through the application of his Buddhist-inspired fundamental ontology of friendliness, Han delineates an alternative form of life against neoliberalism, over which he develops and grounds a politics of cosmopolitanism. Whilst the article does not object to Han's use of fundamental ontology, which shall be framed as non-essentialist, it argues that the actualization of the ontological possibility of friendliness, through which Han envisions the subversion of neoliberalism, becomes obstructed when we take ontic conditions into consideration, especially those which pertain to material needs and their satisfaction, whose significance is not fully registered under fundamental ontology alone. The article ends not with a dismissal of Han, but rather a call for a confrontation with these conditions.

This paper analyses some political and epistemological implications of the encounter between philosophy and anarchism. It sets out from Catherine Malabou's observation that Reiner Sch & uuml;rmann's philosophy of anarchy both lacks a clear political articulation and reproduces a questionable ethnocentric perspective. To assess those points of critique, the paper first compares Sch & uuml;rmann's notion of 'ontological anarchy' to the homonymous concept at the centre of a recent debate in anthropology between Eduardo Viveiros de Castro and David Graeber. It is argued that Sch & uuml;rmann's philosophy provides a viewpoint that can help situate both sides of the discussion within what he calls 'our historical site', in which the end of the world plays out as an ongoing and open-ended sequence of disintegration. The paper then turns to debates in standpoint theory, indicating that Sch & uuml;rmann's topology of broken hegemonies can also offer a fresh approach to the dispute between particularist standpoints and universalist claims. Against the backdrop of these analyses, the paper argues that Sch & uuml;rmann's philosophy of anarchy can contribute to the reconceptualization of an anarchist universalism.

In the context of rising anti-environmentalism and accelerating ecological crisis, this article imagines four kinds of resurgent environmentalism or 'ecological upswing', rooted in the political traditions of the far left, left, right and far right. Building on work by pragmatic sociology to apprehend ecological worth, I conceptualize ecological upswing as a diagonal departure away from hegemonic market worth and ever-deeper individualism. In contrast to previous approaches distinguishing a 'green' common good as a novel order of worth that stands apart from more conventional common goods, I explore two forms of ecological upswing that slowly emerge from within conventional common goods as well as two forms that pose a more 'serious readjustment' to the whole model. Taking examples from Canada, my analysis of each ecological upswing includes speculative scenarios in which society shifts away from neoliberal individualism towards the common good via tipping points of nonlinear, cascading transformation into less anthropocentric imaginaries of moral worth. Drawing on the metaphor of a knight's move in chess, or a creative detour that challenges linear, modern ideas about progress, this article charts four different ways in which ascendant forms of ecological worth could swing a wealthy western society like Canada towards multispecies flourishing.

This article revisits Niklas Luhmann's systems theory to address what is identified as a persistent conceptual deficit in the sociology of technology, particularly in relation to digitalization, artificial intelligence (AI), and the contemporary post-truth condition. After analysing constructivist and technological determinist approaches, it advances the concept of technology as functional simplification: a systemic mechanism that reduces complexity and enables new forms of communication without relying on semantic understanding or human intentionality. On the basis of Luhmann's writings and contemporary discussions on algorithmic systems, autopoietic epistemology, and systems-theoretical approaches to AI, the article reconstructs the theoretical foundations for a sociology of technology that is non-anthropocentric yet attentive to the systemic integration of technical operations. The analytical potential of this approach is demonstrated through the case of large language models, examined as technologies that restructure communicative meaning and truth-production under conditions of structural opacity. In doing so, the article reframes current debates on misinformation and AI, shifting the focus from artefacts and agency to the systemic conditions that make technological functioning socially relevant. It concludes by emphasising the implications for social theory, especially the need to conceptualize technology as a constitutive element of social order in functionally differentiated societies.

'Making someone do something' or social causation, in our terminology, is an omnipresent phenomenon in the social world and implicitly a core notion of the social sciences. Yet, neither the philosophy of the social sciences nor social theory has paid sufficient attention to its definition and implications. Drawing on the manipulationist understanding of causation (Collingwood, Gasking, von Wright), this article offers both a theoretical framework and a fourfold typology of social causation (manipulation, power, manifest and latent forces). We suggest that social causation has important implications for how moral responsibility is studied in the sociology of morality, for how explanations work in the social sciences and for how social networks can be analysed. Theoretically, we suggest that social causation, rather than simple cause-effect causation, must be analysed as a relation with four relata instead of two, i.e. 'A makes B do Y by doing X.' Understood in this way, it may be a distinct element of social science explanations and social ontology.

In this essay I argue that the cultural formation of Silicon Valley with its cult of the CEO can be read as a 'financial science fiction.' As such, it can be analyzed as part of a larger cultural (trans)formation in which the properties of speculative finance and speculative fiction have become dialectically intertwined. In this sense, the quasi-occultic veil that covers both finance and the tech-CEO is comprised of and pierced by the genre protocols of science fiction. Turning to Alex Garland's Devs series (2020) to flesh this out, the essay interrogates how the cult of the CEO is directly linked to the processes of disruption, preemption, and enclosure that undergird datafication. What first appears as disruption, I argue, is really preemption: the opening of a space for the gathering of profit from financially speculative futures. This preemption, then, is ultimately an act of enclosure, a delimitation rather than an opening of the future as possibility. Within this model, the CEO dictates the circumstances for spinning and mastering the complex algorithms necessary to perform these functions of disruption, preemption, and enclosure. Exploring these this through the Devs series, this essay helps to expose the dialectical relationship undergirding speculative finance's turn to sf and sf's turn to speculative financial novums.