ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the temporal and normative aspects of uncertainty, the ambivalence between the capacity for autonomy and the demand for protection, the withdrawal of the state from its role as economic and social operator and the redrawing of the boundaries of its action as manager of risks. It shows how from this principle of uncertainty stems an inevitable conflict between solidarity and diversity in a multicultural, multiconfessional and multiracial society. The chapter explores the two directions through an analysis of the mutations seen in contemporary France. The first is legible in the tension between fragmentation and globalisation: this analysis offers a framework for looking at this difficulty in thinking about society, and at the same time it expresses what is at stake in "remaking society". The second line of analysis can be grasped by examining social forms of uncertainty: this constitutes a rich vein for the interpretation of the major directions of social and cultural transformation.
