Dis-embedding Forces and Associative Counter-movements: Capitalism, State Sovereignty and Associations as Political Subjects

The opposition between individual rights and state sovereignty, which continues to structure political and economic discussions today, is only in apparent contradiction, as they form the two poles of the dominant individual-state imaginary of social and political order. This is highlighted when contrasting it to the model of social order it has historically combatted, namely, the associative imaginary. The two display an antagonistic understanding of the role of intermediary bodies between the individual and the state: where the former empties the social and political space between the sovereign (nation-)state and the individual, the latter fills it with a plethora of associations. In reconstructing these two imaginaries and their continual conflict, we draw on Charles Taylor’s concept of modern social imaginaries and develops Karl Polanyi’s notion of the double movement to analyze the processes through which the individual has been dis-embedded and re-embedded in associative structures throughout modern history as well as in modern social theory and political thought.