Faultlines in post-industrial society

In the past national governments were expected to meet citizen’s material needs by providing physical and economic security, and the significant faultlines in society followed the divisions between rich and poor. Today people focus on past-material needs and we face a multitude of faultlines marked out by special interest groups and minority parties. But two major questions lie behind this multitude of faultlines. The first concerns community. Should we identify with the national community or with a number of different types of communities? The second concerns individualism and the growing politics of rights. Should we define democracy as a system of representation within a nation state or as a set of individual rights? If we are to maintain social cohesion we need to find ways of answering these questions. Copyright. Monash University and the author/s