I have over the years visited Norway many times, in the process making a number of good colleagues and friends. February 2026 is no exception. Invited by Aksel Tjora to give a plenary presentation at a two-day conference on the topic of community, Annette and I travelled to Trondheim via Bergen for a bout of socialising around the conference. We were greeted by a thick carpet of snow, an expected chill, fading sunlight and a delightful tapas evening meal with Aksel and one of his Ph.D students, Marius. More of this later.
The topic I chose to speak on was entitled ‘Belonging, Solidarity and the Fragmentation of the Public Sphere’. I began, perhaps predictably enough, with a mention of Habermas’s notion of the ‘colonisation’ of the lifeworld (comprising private and public spheres) by the system (comprising the economy and the state). Differently expressed, the steering media of the system – namely, money on the part of the economy, and power on the part of the state – have increasingly penetrated and distorted the steering media of the system – namely, commitment on the part of the private sphere, and influence on the part of the public sphere. For the purposes of my talk, this suggests that the public sphere in which ‘the people’ come together to deliberate and exert an influence over decision-making that bears on their lives and prospects has been undermined by economic capital and state power. Hence my postulation of a reinvigorated ‘class/command dynamic’ in post-1970s financialised or rentier capitalism. It is a shift most apparent in the USA, followed by the UK.
Habermas was well aware that the public sphere in the earlier phases of capitalism was always ‘classed, gendered and racialised’, but he lamented its more recent ‘refeudalisation’ (a strange term to use admittedly). His thesis embraced and called for support for a reconstructed version of the (classed, gendered and racialised) European Enlightenment project.
In 2023 Habermas updated his thesis, arguing that while the new media emergent with digital platforms initially promised to empower users, this has subsequently been undermined by their algorithm-steered platform structure that promotes self-enclosed information ‘bubbles’ and discursive ‘echo chambers’ in which users split into a plurality of ‘pseudo-publics’ that are largely closed off from one another.
So, a preliminary framework of sorts. To develop this theme I drew on the theory of Archer. Her theory of contemporary ‘morphogenesis’ (referring to accelerating social change) stresses the structural supremacy of a ‘situational logic of competition’ in what she calls ‘late modernity’ and I call rentier capitalism. Culture too for her is experiencing rapid social change. She writes in this connection of a ‘ situational logic of opportunity’ arising out of the new tendency for ‘variety to give rise to further variety’. Agency is impacted by both structure and culture but also fuels and responds to them. There is a constant interplay between structure, culture and agency each of which possesses causal efficacy.
She goes on to distinguish four types of reflexivity, arguing that one type tends to be dominant in any individual. The types give rise to:
- Community reflexives, who need confirmation from others before taking decisions and take their cue from ‘similars and familiars’ (they are reducing in numbers in rentier capitalism);
- Autonomous reflexives, who make their own decisions individually, strategically and with self-confidence (they are in their element in rentier capitalism);
- Meta-reflexives, who are value-oriented and in pursuit of better ways of living (they are coming into their own in rentier capitalism);
- Fractured reflexives, who are disorientated or lost and fall back on defensive non-committal behaviour – ‘disconnected fatalism’ (they are expanding in rentier capitalism.
In relation to structure, I have long argued in favour of what I call a class/command dynamic, which asserts that the most significant socio-structural shift in rentier capitalism has been a reinvigoration and extension of the influence of a tiny minority of global, nomadic ‘capital monopolists’ (major shareholders, financiers, bankers, asset-managers, CEOs etc) have over social, tax, employment, welfare, health policies introduced by national political elites representing the polity. This can be interpreted as an extension of Archer’s situational logic of competition int all spheres, and is most forcefully apparent in the expansion of rent into non-productive asset management.
Turning to culture, I have often used Lyotard’s distinction between ‘grand’ and ‘petit’ narratives to characterise the transition from welfare state to rentier capitalism. Archer’s analysis in terms of ‘variety upon variety’ may indeed open the door to a situational logic of opportunity, but:
- Contemporary culture can also be seen as a ‘cultural relativisation’, whereby longstanding European Enlightenment grand narratives around ‘progress’, for example through the development and refinement of capitalism or through socialism, have been displaced by a mosaic comprised of multitude of different, competing postmodern petit narratives.
- This has given rise to a new politics of identity, belonging and performativity anchored in – ‘different, competing’ – petit narratives. Postmodernism, I suggest, has not proved emancipatory, but is in some ways comparable to the disinhibition caused by an excess intake of alcohol.
- This shift to cultural relativisation and identitarian politics may not have direct structural origins, but it is highly functional for capital monopolists, the power elite of the state and their allies. This is because it makes rationally compelling challenges to the status quo and support for alternative ways of doing things difficult to promote (neoliberalism might be described as ‘the grand narrative at the end of grand narratives’).
These structural and cultural changes have impacted on the public sphere of the lifeworld and the exercise of its steering media, influence. In this context, Aeron Davis’ discourse on ‘hybridity’ and ‘hybrid political actors’ is illuminating. Davis refers to a ‘fourth age of communication’, emphasising that the public sphere has been ‘digitally disrupted’ and is currently characterised by hybridity. Previous hierarchical structures, boundaries and gatekeeping have been displaced by four types of ‘hybrid political actor’:
- ‘Politician-publishers (self-promoting individuals who embrace both roles simultaneously and operate independently of party structures).
- ‘Political pseudo news sites (online partisan and parasitic ‘news’ sites).
- ‘Celebrity politicians’ (people with a large social media following and ‘free-floating mega-brands’, but especially ‘business celebrity-politicians like Trump, Musk, Bezos etc).
- ‘Political flexions’ (people able to cross ‘flex net’ boundaries, like those ex-politicos with podcasts and in think tanks).
It is relevant here to also mention ‘astroterfing’, which has now entered political usage. This denotes the ‘deceptive’ practice of presenting an orchestrated marketing or public relations campaign in the ‘guise’ of unsolicited comments from members of the public. A recent and prominent example in the UK was Morgan McSweeney’s campaign under the aegis of (illegally funded) ‘Labour Together’ to get Jeremy Corbyn replaced by Keir Starmer as leader of the Labour Party (and later Prime Minister).
What this means for democracy, Davis contends, is that existing systems are converging towards hybridity, and that this represents a growing challenge to Western-style parliamentary democracies, not least via the reconstitution of the public sphere (from Habermas’ ‘refeudalisation’ to a form of ‘fragmentation’ advantageous to Archer’s situational logic of competition.
The issues I raised for discussion were along the following lines:
- How accurate and helpful sociologically is it to describe the public sphere as more fragmented in rentier than it was in welfare state capitalism?
- Does the proposition that a limited range of historical grand narratives have been succeeded by multiple petit narratives hold water?
- To what extent is it possible or advisable to see the globally ubiquitous ideology of neoliberalism as the ‘invisible’ grand narrative at the end of grand narratives?
- In relation to the theme of fragmentation, is this made manifest in epistemic, moral and emotional segmentation, leading to: (i) in-group empathy, and (ii) out-group hostility, as illustrated by phenomena like cancelling and new offences like hate crime?