In this paper Robert van Krieken reflects on the concept Jurgen Habermas used to characterize the transformation of the publlic sphere by its commercialisation, ‘refeudalization’. The seminar will examine how this concept can be used to understand the nature of power and social inequality today, drawing on the work of the leading German sociologist, Sighard Neckel.

Neckel’s recent writing shows how the concept of refeudalization can be extened to a broader range of concerns beyond Habermas’s public sphere, but it is also useful to examine its limits - to what degree has any de-feudalization ever taken place (have we ever been modern?), and how are contemporary forms of feudal relations in the economy, politics and society quite distinct, perhaps suggesting a concept of ‘neo-feudalism’? The paper turns to Elias’s concept of court society as a particular structuring of social relations and a type of self-formation that has persisted to the present day, and uses its application to the sociology of celebrity, particularly the role of celebrity in business and management, as a useful exampleof how the concept ‘refeudalization’ might be taken in different directions.

The overall argument will be for a better understanding of a distinctive kind of economic dynamic, the ecoonomics of atention, as a key element of today’s structuring of social relations interms of an increasingly wealthy elite and an impoverished peasantry, with the bourgeoisie or middle class struggling to retain its distinctive role and voice in social order and social transformation.

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Robert van Krieken is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Socio-Legal Studies Program at the University of Sydney. His research interests include the sociology of law, criminology, sociology of childhood, processes of civilization and decivilization, cultural genocide, and more recently the sociological understanding of the operationof status, power and recognition in contemporary ‘celebrity society’, as well as contributing to the theoretical debates around the work of Elias, Foucault, Luhmann, and Latour.

Previous books include Norbert Elias (1998), Celebrity and the Law (2010, co-authored), and Sociology 4th edition (2009, co-authored). His most recent book, Celebrity Society, is published by Routledge in June 2012.

He has taught and researched, in addition to the University of Sydney, at University College Dublin, the University of Vienna, the University of Amsterdam, the Free University, Amsterdam, Wuppetal University, and the Free University Berlin.

President Obama has expressed his fear that America was becoming ‘a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by’. On the numbers, he’s right to be afraid.

Since 1973, US economic output has doubled in per-capita terms, yet wages have declined by 20% for the average 30-year-old. In contrast, high-income Americans have seen their incomes skyrocket and their taxes come down. Never in living memory has America been so unequal as it is today.

Republicans criticize the President for trying to divide America into ‘haves and have-nots’, calling for policies to ‘restore an America of hope and upward mobility’. The Republican message is that Americans shouldn’t worry about economic inequality; they should focus on economic opportunity.

In this presentation, Dr Babones will review the parties’ positions, assess them against the facts, and present his prognosis for the future of the US economy.

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Dr Babones is Senior Lecturer in Sociology & Social Policy at The University of Sydney, and an associate. fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC.

He is the author or editor of four books, including Global Social Change: Historical and Comparative Perspectives (with Christopher Chase-Dunn, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006) and the Routledge Handbook of World-Systems Analysis (with Christopher Chase-Dunn, Routledge, 2012) as well as more than a dozen academic articles.

His research focuses on income inequality, economic development, and statistical methods for comparative social science research.

He writes a weekly column for the inequality.org website, and contributes to progressive websites and newsletters across the United States.

His popular policy writing on the US economy is online at: http://salvatorebabones.com