"Humanity" and "society" have been extolled as supreme values since the 19th Century; however, the degree to which they have performatively realized the human and the social is far from certain. Various debates surrounding the concepts, values and rights of the two have been put forward; but we shall above all avoid treating "humanity" and "society" as a given reality. Instead the two should be reevaluated as effects of the associating of person, things, knowledge and the like. In this volume we shall consider the kinds of association through which the human and the social are generated or, on the contrary, disappear; and also the ways in which the space that implies such "internal" things as realm, structure and system is constructed.

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