Informational capital as a transnational resource

Abstract

"In his publication, Stefan Bernhard analyses the emergence of a European field of social policy. The social policy of the EU, which is viewed as weak in comparison to the economic and financial policy of the EU, has grown in significance over the last decades. The fact that this is often overlooked, according to Bernhard, is a result of the habitual perspective of a large section of EU research which only concentrates on the 'hard' governance regulations of classic political core areas which, in the area of social policy, still fall into the area of competence of the Member States. Bernhard makes the argument that, on account of this baseline situation, a European field of social policy has developed that exhibits both a distinct political style and some novel instruments. Here the European level takes on the role of an advisor of nation states, places its money on the production, accumulation and dissemination of knowledge about social problems and urges, by means of 'open coordination methods', that states gauge their policies in orientation on the other Member States in a self-reflexive manner and on the new European 'insights' of social policy. In this sense, European social policy is primarily a symbolical undertaking in whose centre stands the production of informal capital, a source of power which rest on officially sanctioned knowledge in the form of social indicators. With the treatment of Europe as a unified social area, for instance, by the European Commission, EUROSTAT, certain research networks and civil society, national monopolies over symbolic representation dissolved. Bernhard sketches the dynamics of the accumulation of this special form of symbolic capital over the last 30 years and shows how European actors increasingly improve their ability to become active on social policy matters by means of this source of power and new 'soft' governance instruments." (Text excerpt, IAB-Doku)

Cite article

Bernhard, S. (2012): Informationelles Kapital als transnationale Ressource. In: S. Bernhard & C. Schmidt-Wellenburg (Hrsg.) (2012): Feldanalyse als Forschungsprogramm : Bd. 2: Gegenstandsbezogene Theoriebildung, p. 195-216. DOI:10.1007/978-3-531-94263-6_8