ABSTRACT
The changes in the practices of material allocation and of domination, which I portrayed in the two preceding chapters, showed some similar features, namely a movement towards solid forms of organization in which the principle of liberty of the individuals was factually reduced to limited kinds of permissible expression and action. The organization of practices was partly an elite project, partly the result of collective modernizations from below. In both cases it was mainly a reaction to critical results of earlier practices. In socially more neutral terms, that is, hiding the socially uneven participation in them, these responses can schematically be represented as follows: according to the prevailing imaginary signification of modernity, the autonomy of the individual was generally accepted. But it was recognized that the assumption that the interaction of individuals would automatically produce working economies and polities could not be upheld after the right to autonomy had been extended to all human beings inside a given order. Only certain kinds of organization of practices could guarantee such results. To achieve and stabilize such organized practices, individuals will recognize, not least by the experience of crises, that their right to autonomy needs to be restricted and their actions channelled along certain paths.
