About the Project
Project Objectives
This research continues a previous national project, Precariedad laboral, cuerpo y vida dañada. Una investigación de filosofía social (PID2019-105803GB-I0/AEI/10.13039/501100011033), which ran from 2020 to 2024.
The project aims to contribute to knowledge production in the field of social philosophy—a line of research increasingly established both internationally and nationally [González Ricoy (2022, 2023, 2024), Jaeggi/Celikates (2023), López Calle (2020), Moreno Pestaña/Romero Cuevas (2022), Riesco/Ramírez et al. (2024), Sánchez Madrid (2021, 2023), and Serrano (2021)].
Its starting hypothesis uses an intersectional approach (attentive to class, gender, and race) to explore forms of domination in contemporary democratic societies (with a focus on Europe and Latin America). These forms manifest as anti-feminist cultural oppression, labour exploitation, and the weakening of the state as a coercive and normative force in social and economic life.
Engaging with contemporary studies on transformations in neoliberal rationality, we proceed from the idea that understanding the political and social frameworks of neoliberalism's current phase—whose threshold is commonly marked by the 2008 financial crisis—requires categories different from those used to analyse its emergence since the 1970s. Following the influential Foucauldian reading, concepts such as competition, autonomy, human capital, and entrepreneurial subjectivity have become common interpretive frameworks across many academic fields. Analyses of “authoritarian neoliberalism” (I. Bruff), “punitive neoliberalism” (W. Davies), or the nexus between neoliberalism, nihilism, and resentment (W. Brown) reveal the need to account for emergent phenomena that stem not from neoliberalism's original grammar, but from its social effects.
This project aims to reconstruct these phenomena by studying the rise of strongly anti-egalitarian discourses, the intensification of labour exploitation, and the complex transformations of the state institution. A distinctive standpoint of our approach is that understanding contemporary forms of domination requires thinking through these phenomena in their structural interrelation (as irreducible yet interconnected factors: gender, work, statehood) and from an interdisciplinary perspective, which situates philosophical debates within concrete scientific and socio-historical contexts.
This working hypothesis is supported by the prior national project led by the PIs and part of this project's team (PrecarityLab, 2020–2024), which explored recent transformations of work in correlation with bodily harm, modes of subjectivity, and the ideological invisibility of the material conditions for social reproduction. Building directly on that research, we now propose to shift the critical focus towards studying the discourses and practices that have, for decades, fostered a reactionary suspicion towards the feminist agenda, work as a cornerstone of a sustainable social economy, and the state's normative intervention to prevent injustice and protect the most vulnerable social sectors.
Starting from the axes of gender, work, and the state, we seek to deepen our understanding of the specific nature of contemporary domination and to identify the conceptual resources social philosophy must develop to reconstruct it. From this theoretical commitment, we will offer critical diagnoses on the genesis and spread of a "common sense" that naturalises forms of extractivism, exclusion, and exploitation characteristic of a capitalism that generates social negativity and pathology. This trend endangers 2030 Agenda objectives such as human development and the consolidation of a sustainable social economy within democratic cultural environments—an aspect we consider one of the project's innovative dimensions.
A further innovative aspect lies in combining critical approaches focused on European and Latin American societies through the noted intersectional variables. This enriches the exploration of contemporary forms of domination and their normative assessment with the challenges faced by post-colonial societies. Lastly, the project innovatively addresses contemporary exploitation not through an ideal but through a materialist analysis, drawing on feminist theory, the political philosophy of work, and state theory. It will also offer a critical revision of the social and political philosophy canon useful for reflecting on these three dimensions. This approach will also remain attentive to aspects such as corporeality and mental illness, areas in which the PIs and teams have research experience (Sánchez Madrid/Alegre 2023; Sánchez Madrid/Quintana 2023 and Sánchez Madrid/López Álvarez 2025).
Objective 1
To examine cultures of oppression as an anti-feminist device for social, epistemic, and libidinal control, through a transatlantic dialogue between Europe and Latin America. This objective combines:
(1) A primary critical-conceptual, intersectional, and historical perspective to map the configuration of "cultures of oppression" as a contemporary global phenomenon, focusing on their discursive and political implantation in Europe and Latin America.
(2) The intent to explain the genealogy, resistances, and perceptual frameworks of a vision of social reproduction rooted in exclusion, inequality, and exploitation as drivers of domination. Special attention will be paid to aggressive stances against women's equality.
Objective 2
To develop an intersectional map of contemporary labour exploitation through a transatlantic dialogue between Europe and Latin America, focusing on domestic work, the gig economy, and the logistics and agri-food sectors.
This objective addresses the philosophical and sociological analysis of work as a core axis in the constitution of contemporary subjectivity. It examines transformations in the productive system and their impact on basic social rights, the perception of natural resources as common goods, and the physical and mental health of workers in the aforementioned sectors.
Although often sidelined in philosophical approaches to power, work proves to be a privileged sphere for the material understanding of domination. This analysis will consider the role of factors such as the individualisation of labour, algorithmic management, and the privatisation of social reproduction.
This sphere is equally crucial for analysing the normalisation of social suffering, the mobilisation of guilt, and the legitimisation of domination through the rhetoric of freedom. In all cases, the analysis will actively foster an exchange of perspectives between Europe and Latin America.
Objective 3
To explore the deactivation of the State as a coercive agent in the economic sphere, alongside its authoritarian drift in the social and ethical spheres within select European and Latin American societies, examining the structural complexity of the "culture of legality" within neoliberal productivity models.
This objective proposes an analysis of the "culture of legality" (in connection with projects developed under this title within the Community of Madrid and an AEI Thematic Network) that has facilitated the State's abdication of its capacity to intervene as a normative agent in safeguarding constitutional social and labour rights. The globalisation of the economy has been accompanied by renewed forms of sovereignty and governance (Navarro), which entail a restriction of the States' normative capacity while simultaneously strengthening their role as a mechanism for social and moral control within the authoritarian societies of the project's geographical scope.
Adopting a relational and strategic perspective (Jessop, Wacquant), the goal is to conceptualise the contemporary nature of state power in relation to anti-egalitarian discourses and the legal reorganisation of labour regulatory frameworks from a legal-philosophical standpoint.
Objective 4
To provide a normative assessment of the forms of domination identified across the project's three core axes and their impact on the notion of state authority, informed by a transatlantic dialogue between Europe and Latin America. This assessment will focus on democratic culture regarding gender and diversity, labour productivity, and societal expectations of the State's role in the social and economic spheres.
This objective reflects the commitment of the Principal Investigators and teams to offer a nuanced normative response to the social pathologies manifested in the cultural-social, labour-related, and institutional forms of domination analysed in the previous three objectives. The aim is not only to develop a differentiated critical diagnosis but also to consider, from a dynamic and historical perspective, the ways in which demands associated with each of these spheres of social action are normatively articulated.
The politics of the body that unfolds at each of these levels enables the establishment of a coherent theoretical and practical connection between them.
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