The social bond in a society is the relationship of interdependence, protection and recognition between the individuals that make it up (the “homo-sociologicus” according to Paugam). Its intensity constitutes the identity of a society. The analysis of societies allows us to assess the evolution of the social bond against the rise of individualism. In traditional societies, the social bond is materialized through an individual’s belonging to solidarity groups centered on the extended family, the driving force of social integration. In modern society, the recognition of this family based identity fades, giving way to a sum of individualized models of recognition, calling social integration into question.
Durkheim defines the individual by their social utility and their integration into the corresponding labor market system: cyclical employment and the capacity to work. For the past twenty years, economic precarity has stemmed from the instability of cyclical employment through the demographic competition brought on by globalization, while physical precarity has stemmed from the strain of work intensification through constant adaptation to automation. These forms of precarity, arising from the structural transformation of work organization, lead to economic vulnerability, restriction of social rights, hierarchical demotion of individual social utility and the erosion of the identity that preserves the social bond.
Some countries such as Denmark have shown that it is possible, through deliberate policy, to preserve the social fabric by reducing inequality, investing in continuing education, improving job quality and better protecting the unemployed. Solidarism observes that the growing autonomy of the individual results in an increase in their interdependence with other members of society, through a generalized system of social protection that fixes their utility through a reassuring complementarity for everyone.
The complementary individual, themselves an heir to this assistance, becomes, for Bourgeois, indebted to the next generation: contractualized solidarism. But this regulation of the social bond requires continuity between private and public rights, in an anti-liberal sense.