Løsarbeidersamfunnet [Society of the casual worker]

Abstract

strength of structural coupling that exists between the economic system on one hand and the legal and political systems on the other, at both the EU and the global levels.Given the rhetoric that exists within the EU in relation to the social dimension (without, of course, forgetting the undoubted historical successes in this sphere), these findings make for uncomfortable reading. But they are the persuasive outcome of what we might call the thoroughgoing second-order observation that characterises Hartzén's work; that is, the concern to focus the attention of the research on observing how other systems observe. There is no claim of a privileged access to reality, no denial of the inevitable division of the unmarked space according to the binary code of the research project. But there is the production of a different and, this reviewer would contend, a more adequately complex map of the landscape, which reveals different features as being more important than might otherwise have been appreciated.At various points in this book, it is clear that Hartzén situates her work squarely in a post-financial crisis world, with all that that extraordinary event appeared to imply for the economic and the social in the still-new century. In the relatively short period since the book was published, it is surely fair to say that the financial crisis as an overarching concern has given way to a new set of worries (some, of course, no doubt generated by or further enhanced by it). Not least in Europe we now worry, with good cause, about fracture, the crisis of traditional politics and the re-emergence of populism. In this setting, far from being overtaken by events, Hartzén's book has only become even more relevant. If the European project is to survive, it is surely going to have to demonstrate its relevance to every citizen more clearly than it has heretofore managed to do. In this regard, a counterbalance to the economic imperatives in the shape of a functioning social institution would play an important role.The European Social Dialogue in Perspective does not, of course, have all the answers, but it is an important and richly argued contribution to the wider and now urgent conversation. If all the participants in that effort display the rigour, insight and balance of Hartzén, then there is every reason to be hopeful.