© Copyright – all rights reserved – Dietmar J. Wetzel (2020) 1 The competitive dispositive in the context of flexibilized capitalism – a comparative analysis 1 Dietmar J. Wetzel 1. Introduction – The “competitivization” of modern society In the spirit of a Foucauldian diagnosis of the present, a trend of social, economic, and political “competitivization” has taken shape around the flexibilized capitalism which structures modern society; over the past few years, the dominance and vehemence of this trend has tended to swell rather than fade (Stürner 2007). The field of sociology has long avoided explicitly engaging with the diverse topic of competition in society. Academia has primarily left the discussion of competition and rivalry to economics and the politically loaded rhetoric of the media, with the occasional sociologist stopping to comment on competition and rivalry in the context of another analysis. Noteworthy examples include the recent works of Pierre Bourdieu (2002), Frank Nullmeier (2000, 2002), Harmut Rosa (2006), Pascal Duret (2009), Raimund Hasse and Georg Krücken (2012), Thomas Kirchhoff (2015), and the “Special Issue: A Sociology of Competition” published by the journal “Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory” (2015). However, a more universal “sociology of competition/rivalry” had been lacking until recently (Wetzel 2013a). This is somewhat surprising in light of the fact that modern societies have justifiably been described as “rivalistic societies” (Lessenich/Nullmeier 2006: 20). To avoid any confusion in terminology, I propose the following distinction: whereas the notion of competition (Wettbewerb) will be used in connection with institutional (market) orders (cf. Fligstein 2011), the notion of rivalry (Konkurrenz) will be used to describe a socially comparative dynamic that involves attempts to gain the favour of some third party or their resources, building on the work by Simmel (Simmel 1995, cf. Kirchhoff 2015: 14). After these introductory remarks laying the groundwork for a diagnosis of the “competitivization” of modern society and the terms/concepts of competition and rivalry (Section 1), the next section presents the methodology of this article, and in particular the definition and function of dispositive (from the French term dispositif used by Foucault, often translated as apparatus) and discourse (Section 2). These concepts will allow us to differentiate 1 Based on the article: Wetzel, Dietmar J. (2017): Das Wettbewerbsdispositiv im flexibilisierten Kapitalismus – eine vergleichende Analyse, in: Diaz-Bone, Rainer und Ronald Hartz (Hg.), Dispositiv und Ökonomie, Wiesbaden: Springer VS 2017, 327-348.