From 'New Spirit' to New Steel-Hard Casing? Civil Society Actors, Capitalism, and Crisis: The Case of Attac in Europe

Abstract

In good time for the centenary of 'The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Le nouvel esprit du capitalisme' (1999-English translation 2005a) offered us an account of capitalism's putative new spirit. In many respects, the picture the authors draw of modern capitalism is a familiar one within contemporary social theory and sociology: one repeated by proponents and critics of neo-liberalism and globalization alike and popularized by Richard Sennett in his best selling 'The Corrosion of Character' (1998). But what is distinctive about Boltanski's and Chiapello's analysis is the prominence given to changes in the conduct of life associated with this new spirit. It is this, rather than the shared term 'spirit' alone, that invites a comparison between their analysis and that offered by Weber at the turn of an earlier 'fin de siècle'.