State of Crisis (PDF)

Today we hear much talk of crisis and comparisons are often made
with the Great Depression of the 1930s, but there is a crucial
difference that sets our current malaise apart from the 1930s:
today we no longer trust in the capacity of the state to resolve
the crisis and to chart a new way forward. In our increasingly
globalized world, states have been stripped of much of their power
to shape the course of events. Many of our problems are globally
produced but the volume of power at the disposal of individual
nation-states is simply not sufficient to cope with the problems
they face. This divorce between power and politics produces a new
kind of paralysis. It undermines the political agency that is
needed to tackle the crisis and it saps citizens' belief that
governments can deliver on their promises. The impotence of
governments goes hand in hand with the growing cynicism and
distrust of citizens. Hence the current crisis is at once a crisis
of agency, a crisis of representative democracy and a crisis of the
sovereignty of the state.

In this book the world-renowned sociologist Zygmunt Bauman and
fellow traveller Carlo Bordoni explore the social and political
dimensions of the current crisis. While this crisis has been
greatly exacerbated by the turmoil following the financial crisis
of 2007-8, Bauman and Bordoni argue that the crisis facing Western
societies is rooted in a much more profound series of
transformations that stretch back further in time and are producing
long-lasting effects.

This highly original analysis of our current predicament by two of
the world's leading social thinkers will be of interest to a
wide readership.