The social question mystified: Boundaries and tensions in the wage society “crisis”

Abstract

The aim of this text is to contribute to the contemporary discussions about the implications of the «social question» category. The polysemous nature of this category demands the strengthening of the debate about its meaning, often bringing face to face antagonic perspectives. The text is focused on the analysis of Castel and Rosanvallon’s contributions to social studies, trying to expose the limitations showed in their reasoning in order to apprehend the current social processes. Accepting the analytical differences the above mentioned authors present, this work aims at discussing their basis, mainly from the implications that wage relations have for them, as well as to show how the intent to recover the individual paths as the core of the social processes represents a strategy of the bourgeois thinking, which seeks to hide the durability and changes within the processes of capitalist exploitation.