A Bureaucratized Society

Abstract

Norms, rules, procedures, and formalities spread across the whole of “society, as such, in its fabric and its depth.”1 To some extent, they constitute the “new spirit” of neoliberalism.2 Before I unpick the logics and the political and social mainsprings of this bureaucratization, and investigate the philosophical principles that underlie this specific process, I would like briefly to indicate some everyday examples that bring out the way it is becoming both more general and more concrete. These examples—more or less trivial and in any case commonplace—do not provide us with an in-depth analysis of each of the fields I focus on, but they do show what, in everyday experience, this neoliberal bureaucratization is actually like.