The following discussion presents the ambivalent relationship between sociology and morality under the circumstances that sociology faces at present. At the beginning, we will begin by referring to the theoretical trend and will question the concept of society, like U. Beck did.
Thereafter, we will reconsider solidarity, as seen from the standpoints of “the crisis of the welfare state” and “risk society.” We will also investigate the history of modern society and sociology from the perspective of “governmentality, ” as originated by M. Foucault. According to F. Ewald, the concept of solidarity was a major premise of the welfare state.
We will simultaneously examine the difficulty of achieving moral integration in a “postmodern” age. N. Luhmann considered the abandonment of moral integration within the context of advanced functional differentiation. The theory of governmentality and the systems theory will be combined in order to understand the future of a society that evades morality and suffers a loss of solidarity.
To ask what society is means to ask what “the social” is, which, in turn, means to ask whether sociology was born in the context of modern society. The validity of the concept of “the social” will be the central and unavoidable theme for sociologists in this age of neoliberalism and globalization.