Relational Goods and Their Subjects: The Ferment of a New Civil Society and Civil Democracy

From some years now, the social sciences have been highlighting the existence of a type of goods that are neither material things, nor ideas, nor functional performances but consist, instead, of social relations and, for this reason, are called relational goods. This contribution proposes to clarify this concept from the viewpoint of relational sociology, which avoids both methodological individualism and holism. Subsequently, it argues that such goods can be produced only by specific social subjects, which the author calls "relational subjects". Relying upon many theoretical and empirical researches, the paper explains in which sense and in which way relational subjects, and the goods they generate, can contribute to making civil society more robust: that is, no longer the typically capitalist society of the market, but an "associational" society able to sustain a mature democracy.