Alain Touraine: sociological theory and cultural analysis

Alain Touraine discusses in his book "Beyond Neoliberalism" the issue of globalization as it is seen from the perspective of the French society. Although he argues that in fact the experiences the world is going through, more precisely the globalization process, are not new, there are several aspects that should be taken into consideration in order to underline the fact that his theory is not fully supported by today's reality.

First and foremost, Touraine argues in the beginning that little is in fact changed in the way society works. In this sense, he considers that "what we are living through is therefore not so much a change of society as a change in the mode of modernization. (...) to speak of industrial society or the information society is to speak of a type of society; when on the other hand we say that we are moving from a state controlled administered economy to a market economy, we are talking about a change in the mode of modernization" (9). He goes on to say that in his opinion "capitalism and socialism are modes of modernization and not types of society" (9). From this point-of-view it can be added the fact that Touraine supports the idea that at the moment the society is by no means experiencing something new or innovative. More precisely, he considers that the entire array of changes has taken place simply as a result of a change in the way markets and states control the economy and implicitly the political aspects.

Indeed, the fact that the society changed the way in which it conducts the economic affairs cannot stand merely for a change in the modernization process. More precisely, it can be said that the information society in which we live brought not only the economic benefits Touraine may consider to have existed before, but rather a change in the mentality of the society. In this sense, the globalization process we are currently experiencing is related to a different perception. The information has become the most important item of the communication process, of the economic mechanism, as well as of the political spectrum. This aspect of the process has not been seen before, regardless of the level of modernization of the society.

Secondly, the author argues that there is a sense of nationality which is present in today's society; this feeling of national identity which "condemns the Maastricht and Amsterdam treaties and demand the defense and reconstruction of the nation- state." More precisely it is the way in which society is conducted at the level of the economy that determines the actual transformation of the society. He gives the examples of Great Britain, whose rise to supremacy was given in fact by the invention of the telegraph (Touraine, 13). This comes to point out the fact that in his opinion, it is not the system that changed the world, but rather certain technological inventions, thus the current state of affairs has been seen before. Indeed, the passing from one society to another has been marked by technological impressions. However, this idea cannot be applied to the current situation of the global world because information represents the driving force of the world, regardless of the level of analysis one addresses. The information has led the world towards a communication strategy, a market change that has yet to be seen before at this intensity.

Thirdly, he argues that transnational commerce and corporations have been seen before, in the middle of the 20th century, "when catastrophic talk of globalization was almost unknown" (Touraine, 1998, 13). Surely the increase of trade is, as the author points out, a sign of the progress of modernity. Yet, the extent to which it developed crosses any predictions. Moreover, in the early days of capitalism, the agents of trade were the national states. Today, it can be clearly said that the true agents of trade are a type of organisms which do not belong to the national state which are the transnational corporations. This structure is indeed a new type of construction of the world.