ABSTRACT
The ‘social’, in a strange relation to its etymology has become a synonym for the ‘problems’ posed by the society, and induces, in consequence, practices reacting to the existing situation in the form of ‘aid’, ‘remedy’, ‘regulation’, or of ‘alternative’ behaviours. Certain expressions such as ‘social integration’ reveal the current shift of the word which, ceasing to signify the way of occupying a place in society via a happy relationship, expresses rather the difficulty of this relationship and the improbability of this place. The sickness is identified in the flaws of the social and the remedial power of the same, the factor x permitting to re-establish defective relations. The use of Real-Imaginary-Symbolic permits again to interrogate the ‘social’ by defining populations or services which, coming under it, are rendered inferior to those which come under the economic. Disembeddedness is presented as a hiatus between public organisation and the economic system.
