Adaptation

Modernity was dominated by the belief that the world could be shaped and that progress would almost automatically ensure a better tomorrow. Global warming, the growth crisis and subjective overload have rattled this optimism. These days, our primary concern is mitigating the catastrophe. And even if we do this successfully, we will have to deal with the change that comes with it. In which case concerns of self-preservation override those of individual and collective self-realisation. Adaptation becomes the leitmotif of society.

The Corona pandemic has also shown that in the face of interdependence and ecological dangers, we can no longer worship boundless emancipation. Instead, according to Philipp Staab, the society of the future will be primarily concerned with stabilising an order that is becoming volatile. This, however, will result in a crisis of our relation to self and time, to which the left must also find an answer.

»[Philipp Staab] is up to speed with sociological history and scientific diagnoses (available in this field at long last) and close to the empirics of a social and cultural change ...« Claus Leggewie, Soziopolis

»With Adaptation, Philipp Staab probes a society at the turning point, which is helpful in preparing for the future – and the surprising occasional twists are a warning that a few large-scale concepts don’t mean that we have already understood what lies ahead.« Mathias Greffrath, Deutschlandfunk Kultur

»An important mile stone in the debate about the determination of the characteristics of a digital capitalism that provides – particularly as it calls for additional observations – many impulses for further research on the topic.« Alexander Ziegler, Wirtschafts- und sozialwissenschaftliches Institut on Digital Capitalism

»Philipp Staab has written a book no one who deals with the effects of digitalisation on society, the economy, consumerism and politics can pass by.« Herbert Klemisch, contraste on Digital Capitalism