Conclusion

This concluding chapter discusses how the increasing socioeconomic inequality in the last twenty years has resulted in a negative redistribution of wealth from the bottom to the top. Along with the erosion of socioeconomic equality, political equality and reciprocal respect has also eroded. The fragmentation resulting from the rise of the new social media as well as the spread of some of the more insular forms of identity politics have done serious damage to the cultivation of enlarged mentality among the citizens and to their capacity and willingness to take the standpoint of the others. However, the chapter shows that such fragmentation is not wholly negative, in that it has also given rise to “counter-publics” by oppositional groups that had not enjoyed their own public voices and media.