Luc Boltanski

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate an unexploited conceptual pragmatic sociological framework for analyses of action strategies among social assistance recipients, who are affected by contemporary politics of retrenchment.
Design/methodology/approach – Noting that existing literature on resistance and coping is mostly concerned with either collective public resistance or sub-public individualised coping strategies, the paper turns to theoretical insights from newer French pragmatic sociologist Laurent Thévenot, enabling the researcher to dissolve the stark boundaries between private/public and coping/resistance. The use of the concepts is demonstrated through a case study analysis of the various actions of Danish social assistance recipients, who were recently affected by a harsh workfare initiative.
Findings – The empirical demonstration points to a plurality of individualised strategies of action, taken on by the affected social assistance recipients. Thereby it points to some advantages of the proposed framework, as it makes visible the versatility of the contemporary “welfare client”, as he or
she dynamically changes the scope of action and moves between the private and the public and
between coping and resistance.
Originality/value – The paper applies hitherto unexploited concepts from French pragmatic sociology to strategies of action among welfare recipients in times of welfare retrenchment.

The main purpose of this paper is to provide a critical analysis of Luc Boltanski’s account of the multifaceted relationship between mysteries, conspiracies, and inquiries in modern societies. It is striking that, although this important aspect of Boltanski’s oeuvre has been commented on by several scholars, his principal contributions to this area of investigation have been largely overlooked and received hardly any serious attention by researchers in the humanities and social sciences. This paper is an attempt to fill this noticeable gap in the literature. Thus, rather than covering the entire breadth and depth of Boltanski’s writings, the paper will focus on the valuable insights his work offers into the relationship between mysteries, conspiracies, and inquiries. To this end, the analysis is divided into two parts. The first part comprises an overview of Boltanski’s central theoretical contributions to our understanding of mysteries, conspiracies, and inquiries. The second part offers some critical reflections on important issues arising from Boltanski’s examination of the relationship between mysteries, conspiracies, and inquiries – especially with regard to its limitations and shortcomings.

La siguiente nota crítica pretende analizar críticamente la construcción teórico-metodológica del libro El nuevo espíritu del capitalismo, de los autores Luc Boltanski y Eve Chiapello, publicado por primera vez en francés en 1999, y luego traducido al español el año 2002. Antes de desensamblar los fundamentos centrales del libro señalado, describiré el argumento principal que subyace en sus páginas, a modo de prolegómeno, para posteriormente responder las interrogantes que guían nuestro informe de investigación.

War die Ehescheidung noch vor wenigen Jahrzehnten gesellschaftlich stark stigmatisiert und eher eine Ausnahmeerscheinung, gehört sie inzwischen für einen Großteil der einmal Verheirateten zur Normalbiografie. Erheblich gewandelt haben sich im 20. Jahrhundert auch die Vorstellungen davon, was eine Ehe normativ zu sein hat – und damit die als legitim erachteten und vor Gericht akzeptierten Gründe, sie aufzulösen. Thomas Mazzurana leistet einen Beitrag zu einer Soziologie der Ehescheidung, indem er in einer wissenssoziologischen Perspektive die subjektiven Begründungen und Bewertungen der Scheidung in mehreren institutionellen Feldern untersucht. Er macht in den Diskursen der Akteure die Rechtfertigungsmuster und damit die sozialen Repräsen­tationen von Ehe und ihrer institutionellen Auflösung in der Spätmoderne sichtbar.

In the preface to the oft. cited book On Justification Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot invite us to join their quest for a global theoretical framework that will be capable of treating symmetrically problems of justice among humans as well as problems of appropriateness and fit in technical and scientific questions.

This chapter examines the interactions between artistic critique on capitalism and the social change, focusing on the normative role of artists in the context of "network capitalism" and the imperative to creativity in the "Creative Age" (Florida). Drawing on recent debates about capitalism, critique, and crisis prompted by Boltanski and Chiapello's seminal work The New Spirit of Capitalism (2005) and other subsequent interventions, as well as on the notion of "critique" supported by Foucault, the author reconsiders artists' role in the normative change through artistic critique on capitalism. Thus are shown both its paradoxical consequences in terms of the emergence of new norms of excellence and creative lifestyles, adaptable, hyper-mobile and flexible, and artists' divergent contribution to redevelop a particular sense of self-realization and self-fulfilment.

Precarização do trabalho na perspectiva de Bourdieu e Boltanski: revisão sistemática da literatura Rodilon Teixeira RESUMO O presente estudo tem por objetivo compreender e examinar aspectos históricos e sociais relacionados à precarização nas relações do trabalho contemporâneo através da análise dos estudos desenvolvidos por Pierre Bourdieu e Luc Boltanski. Através de uma revisão sistemática de literatura realizou-se um estudo qualitativa que identificou existir no trabalho de Boltanski uma análise sociológica da precarização no trabalho, enquanto que em Bourdieu, apesar de ser reconhecido como o primeiro autor a utilizar o termo "precariedade", considerou-se que os textos analisados não apresentam uma análise sociológica da precarização, mas uma crítica política ao capitalismo, bem como às consequências que a precarização têm gerado nas vidas das pessoas, além disso, constatou-se que que diversos autores sugerem o uso do constructo teórico de habitus, (Bourdieu, 1972) como ferramenta analítica nos contextos da precarização, sendo essas as principais contribuição deste artigo para as áreas de Estudos Organizacionais e Relação de Trabalho. Palavras-chave: Boltanski; Bourdieu; precarização; carreira; revisão sistemática da literatura; INTRODUÇÃO Os estudos que abordam o campo das carreiras relacionadas ao trabalho na área das ciências sociais vêm demonstrando que nas duas últimas décadas as mudanças no contexto social e, em especial, a precarização do trabalho geraram impactos no mundo do trabalho (Antunes, 2012; Druck, 2013). Nesse sentido, a precariedade tende a ser uma característica definidora da vida econômica e social contemporânea (Bauman, 2001; Sennett, 1998; Standing, 2015). As reformas neoliberais, ocorridas a partir dos anos 1980, exigidas pelos mercados financeiros e implementadas nos países capitalistas começaram a destruir direitos históricos das classes trabalhadoras (Alves, 2013), como, por exemplo, as garantias de emprego em tempo integral, relacionando a precariedade à insegurança no emprego. Nesse sentido, foi com base no aumento do desemprego e a introdução de relações "flexíveis" nos empregos nos países europeus que instigaram Bourdieu (1998, p. 83) a declarar que a precariedade "agora está em toda parte". Os autores que seguiram a linha de pensamento de Bourdieu vêem a precariedade primariamente como uma condição de trabalho (Castel, 1998; Kalleberg, 2009). Com base nessa perspectiva, verifica-se que a precariedade está relacionada ao trabalho precário-caracterizado por insegurança no emprego, emprego temporário ou em meio período, falta de benefícios sociais e baixos salários (K. M. Millar, 2017). Atualmente, constata-se o crescimento desse fenômeno, sendo que diversos pesquisadores têm se dedicado a compreender e desvelar as causas e consequências da precarização no trabalho (Antunes, 2011, 2012; Bourdieu, 1998, 1999; Druck, 2013). Ao analisar-se uma vasta literatura sobre a precarização no trabalho acumulada nos últimos anos, conforme aponta Millar (2017), destacam-se três autores que foram consistentemente referenciados, estando entre eles: Pierre

Ce texte tente d’apporter un éclairage décalé quant à la réflexion sur les pensées critiques dans le domaine de l’éducation en s’efforçant de repérer quelques-uns des enjeux importants de la pensée critique aujourd’hui. Il le fait en situant ces enjeux par rapport à une double polarité : entre théorie critique et philosophie de l’émancipation comme entre sociologie critique et sociologie pragmatique. Trois auteurs principaux lui servent de fils conducteurs : le sociologue Pierre Bourdieu, le philosophe Jacques Rancière et le sociologue Luc Boltanski. Sa tonalité est principalement épistémologique et théorique. Quatre étapes sont parcourues dans cette perspective : 1) l’examen de la tension entre la sociologie critique de Pierre Bourdieu et la philosophie de l’émancipation de Jacques Rancière ; 2) le repérage de questionnements heuristiques et d’écueils de la pensée de Jacques Rancière sur le terrain éducatif ; 3) un panorama des apports et des limites de la sociologie pragmatique initiée par Luc Boltanski et Laurent Thévenot quant à la critique ; et 4) les pistes livrées récemment par Luc Boltanski quant à une théorie critique-pragmatique. Les pistes dégagées ne proposent pas une vision harmonieuse des relations entre critique et émancipation comme entre sociologie critique et sociologie pragmatique. Elles établissent plutôt des passages entre ces pôles impliquant aussi des tensions. Se dessine ainsi un espace épistémologique à l’écart de schémas d’inspiration hégélienne, en termes de « dépassement des contradictions » et de « synthèse », et dérivé du penseur anarchiste Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, accordant une primauté aux antinomies.

Em 2011, foi realizado um plebiscito no Estado do Pará para consultar a população acerca do interesse em dividir o Estado em três: Pará, Tapajós e Carajás. Tomando como ponto de partida os relatos de atores envolvidos na luta e no movimento pela criação do Estado do Tapajós, apresentarei uma etnografia sobre o processo de criação de uma unidade federativa, expondo as ações realizadas ao longo do tempo para possibilitar que o novo Estado fosse criado. A partir da descrição de eventos ocorridos durante a campanha para o plebiscito na cidade de Santarém/PA, apresentarei um recorte da disputa e as controvérsias existentes entre as expectativas sobre o que a concretização do projeto acarretaria, refletindo sobre quais elaborações, quais provas, quais repertórios argumentativos e justificações foram apresentados para produzir a crença de que a luta pela criação do Estado do Tapajós era uma “causa” em nome do bem comum de uma região particular.

This article examines music auditions in jazz education and the artistic valuation of music performances by gatekeepers working in two prestigious schools. Using the inherent insecurities of the entry-test situation as a site of ethnographic fieldwork, the article explores the whole chain of valuation needed in order to produce a hierarchical ordinal ranking of the candidates. By drawing attention to the distinction between what is being said and what is being done by the gatekeepers, a structural ambiguity is identified in the selection game: on the one hand, it is dependent on romantic notions of artistic uniqueness (originality, personality, authenticity) and on the other, it relies on the requirements of jurisdiction and equal assessment (numerical grading, standardized repertoire). The artistic doxa of jazz is constituted in opposition to two negative characters, either by framing the candidates as epigones – echoing the standard repertoire too closely – or framing them as heretics, considered as traitors to the local interpretation of the standard.

Cette thèse analyse les implications politiques et morales de la place prédominante accordée dans notre société à l’autonomie et à la responsabilité. Elle offre ainsi un traitement sociologique des questions centrales de la philosophie morale et politique.
Une approche historique présente les processus qui ont placé la figure d’un individu autonome et responsable au cœur de la régulation de la société, à la croisée des efforts d’émancipation, de justice et de protection.
Une approche théorique, s’inspirant d’une sociologie pragmatique, replace la responsabilité parmi différentes modalités du rapport à l’autre (sollicitude, solidarité) nécessaires à la composition d’une société juste et bonne.
Deux enquêtes empiriques - concernant le travail social de proximité et les squats genevois – révèlent les capacités nécessaires pour être responsable ainsi que l’importance et les limites de la responsabilité dans l’organisation du vivre ensemble. 
La thèse se conclut sur les rapports délicats entre le libéralisme et le pluralisme.

Este artículo intenta reflexionar a través de distintas versiones sociológicas sobre el componente moral que transporta cada actuación, para así poder concebir la acción social como resultado de la disputa entre diversas gramáticas morales (ciudades en la terminología de Boltanski) que, en situaciones dadas, intentan imprimirse en los individuos y en las cosas. Luego, tratamos de aplicar ese conocimiento acerca de la manera en que las personas orientan sus acciones en la vida cotidiana prestando atención a unas relaciones que mezclan la amistad y el sexo, denominándose a sí mismos como «follamigos» y que en la actualidad parecen extenderse cada vez más.

This article tries to think through different sociological theories on the moral component that carries every action, in order to conceive of social action as a result of the dispute between various moral grammar (cities in the terminology of Boltanski) that, in given situations, try to printing on people and things. Then try to apply that knowledge about the way people orient their actions in daily life with attention to relations that mix friendship and sex, called themselves as «fuckfriends» and which now seem to extend increasingly.

« Trouble de légitimité et montée en justification des politiques et actions publiques » tel est l’intitulé que porte la contribution de Jakob Fabien. Fort de la connaissance de diverses sources de la sociologie pragmatique, l’auteur livre une réflexion des plus pertinentes sur la légitimité des régimes d’actions dans le domaine des politiques publiques. Il pointe, ce faisant les problèmes de coordination et/ou conflits de reproduction à partir des travaux de Boltanski et Thévenot. Mobilisant à bon escient l’ouvrage « L’économie des grandeurs » et se focalisant sur le « sens ordinaire de la justice», Jakob Fabien tente de comprendre comment s’opère l’agrégation des forces antagonistes autour d’une conception partagée du bien commun. Il pose la question autour de la plus ou moins grande autonomie des acteurs (actants ?) politico-administratifs, qui semble infléchir davantage encore le mythe de la toute puissance publique.

Unpublished English version of my communication at the Ateliers Villa Vigoni, « Pourquoi le pragmatisme ? L’intérêt du pragmatisme pour les sciences humaines et sociales », Italie, 15-18 juillet 2012.
The communication tells the story of the encounter with American pragmatism by some scholars of the French pragmatic sociology.

En este libro colectivo intentamos hacer una lectura de las transformaciones del capitalismo de los últimos años y de los desplazamientos que produce para la teoría y la crítica social a partir de un análisis de la obra "El nuevo Espíritu del Capitalismo" de Luc Boltanski y Eve Chiapello.

Luc Boltanski is one of the most important contemporary social theorists. Whether and how his sociology matters for International Relations (IR) theory has, so far, not been explored. Boltanski’s work, as this article demonstrates, can greatly advance international political sociology by further developing a practice theoretical account which reconciles Bruno Latour’s Actor-Network Theory and Pierre Bourdieu’s praxeology. Boltanski’s pragmatic sociology is mainly inspired by pragmatism and ethnomethodology, but it is still concerned with sociology as a critical project of emancipation. He aims to renew critical sociology by focusing on the ‘critical capacities’ ordinary actors use in disputes and controversies of political life. Practices of justification and critique as triggers of conflicts and sources of agreements are consequently the subjects of analysis. This implies, furthermore, a strong notion of normativity in practice, which reveals a blind spot in current debates in IR. Justification becomes a social practice through which diverging legitimacy claims are tested under conditions of uncertainty. Such a view is conceptually and methodologically relevant for IR scholars interested in contested norms, moral ambiguity, and the fragile character of political reality. Considering Boltanski’s work broadens the empirical scope of practice theory and provides promising new directions for IR theory.

Il rinnovamento della critica sociale esposto nel Capitolo 6 del testo di Luc Boltanski e Ève Chiapello — "Il nuovo spirito del capitalismo" — adatta l'antico concetto di marxiano di "sfruttamento" ad una struttura sociale e produttiva radicalmente modificatasi dopo gli anni '70.

The main purpose of this paper is to provide a critical overview of the key contributions made by Luc Boltanski and Arnaud Esquerre in ‘Enrichissement. Une critique de la marchandise’ (Paris: Gallimard, 2017). With the exception of one journal article, entitled ‘The Economic Life of Things: Commodities, Collectibles, Assets’, their collaborative work has received little attention in Anglophone circles. This paper aims to demonstrate that Boltanski and Esquerre's Enrichissement contains valuable insights into the constitution of Western European capitalism in the early twenty-first century. In order to substantiate the validity of this claim, the subsequent inquiry focuses on central dimensions that, in Boltanski and Esquerre's view, need to be scrutinized to grasp the nature of major trends in contemporary society, notably those associated with the consolidation of the enrichment economy. In the final section, attention will be drawn to several noteworthy limitations of Boltanski and Esquerre's analysis.

Since the late 1980s, European welfare states and labour market regulation have gradually but radically been transformed into ways of underpinning a more “active society” where active usually entails paid work or activities, such as training and qualification, that aim towards work. The thesis investigates the transformation towards the ‘active society’ through the spectre of unemployment and how it is governed. Two puzzles in the transformations have motivated the inquiry: firstly, the co-existence of a plurality of different, and often contradictory, conceptions of who the unemployed are and why they are unemployed; and secondly, the co-existence of wills to emancipate the unemployed alongside the justification of using coercive measures towards them.
This thesis argues that if we want to understand the varieties within the transformations, the “what?” question, it is necessary to address the “how?”; i.e., how transformations are legitimised. Here, ideas and morality are pivotal. Inspired by French pragmatic sociology (Boltanski and Thévenot), the ideas are approached as cities of unemployment that are mobilised to justify and criticise policies related to the governing of unemployment. In these situations where the question of what is the best way to govern unemployment is put to the test, cities of unemployment enable actors to prepare and qualify the reality of the situation for critique and justification.
Each city of unemployment is founded on a principle with specific principles to try or test both those who govern and the subjects inhabiting each city, thus entailing a specific understanding of what emancipating the unemployed involves, i.e., what kind of moral subject the unemployed person is with what kind of needs and characteristics. The thesis thus asks which cities of unemployment are mobilised in contemporary reform processes of the governing of unemployment, how are the cities mobilised to justify and criticise, and how do the cities sediment into instruments and institutions governing the unemployed?
The questions are operationalised through an in-depth comparative study of four key contemporary reform processes: two in Denmark and two in France. The thesis is the first systematic investigation into the test situations that unfold in the public debates with a focus on the plurality of ideas that are mobilised to qualify and evaluate existing policies and justify changes.
The thesis shows how the governing of unemployment is the result of an ongoing sedimentation in the cities tied together in compromises. This makes the governing inherently composite and unstable. The thesis identifies and maps seven distinct cities of unemployment that are mobilised in all debates surrounding all four reforms: the cities of Demand, Redistribution, Insurance, Incentives, Mobility, Investment and the Paternal city. Regardless of differences between the four cases, all analyses show that reforms are particularly driven by justifications from the Paternal, Mobility, Investment and Incentives cities, which are all tied together in multiple ways. The other three cities do not vanish completely, but in the qualification of the unemployed they are increasingly put to the margins.
Finally, the thesis shows how the tensions between the cities that are mobilised for justificatory purposes are mitigated in categorisations and various institutionalised tests that continuously evaluate the behaviour of the unemployed. The tests, such as triage, screening, interviews and contracts, thus question and settle what kind of subject the unemployed person is, i.e., what city he lives in, how worthy he is, and what instruments will bring him closer to emancipation (i.e., the ‘active society’). In this way, the possibility of requalifying the unemployed is made permanent. A similar experimentalist dynamic is identifiable in the public debates concerning justification and critique. Here unemployment is increasingly seen as a multi-causal phenomenon that, in the end, is a matter of how to make the unemployed act in certain ways. The result is a constant uncertainty as to how to attach particular causes to particular categories of unemployment. Hence, the demand for targeting or “personalising” the governing in order to make the unemployed respond to it results in increasingly intimate and often coercive instruments.

S'il est commun de dire que le sanctuaire de Lourdes s'est bâti sur la renommée de ses miracles et l'enregistrement de nombreuses déclarations de guérison, cet article vise à montrer qu'il s'est également construit sur une exigence de vérité. Mobilisée dans différents domaines (concernant aussi bien le diagnostic médical des guérisons que le récit historique des événements), cette exigence de vérité s'est traduite dans la conduite de diverses formes d'enquêtes qu'il importe de mieux comprendre parce qu'elles font apparaître une ruse de l'institution religieuse qui, se tenant en retrait, laisse agir des formes spécifiques de rationalité afin de déjouer les critiques mais aussi de renforcer sa position et son discours. L'article examine par conséquent comment se manifeste cette volonté de vérité dans l'histoire des événements de Lourdes, quelle cible elle se donne, qui la réclame et surtout qui est jugé capable de l'établir.

Belief, Truth, and Tricks, Apparitions and Police Investigation at Lourdes : Although it is commonly said that the sanctuary of Lourdes was built on the fame of its miracles and numerous recorded declarations of healing, this article intends to show that it was also built on a requirement of truth. Deployed in a variety of domains (in the medical diagnoses of healing as much as historical accounts of specific events), this requirement of truth is manifest in investigations that take a variety of forms. A better understanding of these enquiries is important, because they reveal a trick of the religious institution that, while remaining in the background, lets certain specific forms of rationality play themselves out in order to foil critics as well as to strengthen its position and discourse. The article consequently examines how this desire for truth in the history of events at Lourdes manifests itself, what target it choses, who is calling for it, and above all, who is thought capable of establishing it.

Sulle barricate nel Sessantotto e manager qualche anno dopo, non è proprio una regola ma stando alle cronache non è nemmeno un’eccezione. Tradimento o logica conseguenza delle autentiche premesse teoriche e politiche del Sessantotto? Questa seconda interpretazione – l’idea secondo cui il Sessantotto, lungi dal segnare un momento di attacco al capitalismo e un tentativo di metterne in crisi i fondamenti, avrebbe segnato invece una svolta in avanti del capitalismo stesso – esprime il senso comune contro cui il presente articolo è orientato.
Al centro dell'analisi l’opera di Luc Boltanski ed Ève Chiapello: ""Il nuovo spirito del capitalismo",  spesso utilizzata (in modo superficiale) da letture che tra Sessantotto e nuovo capitalismo istituiscono un rapporto, se non di causa-effetto, almeno di sostanziale continuità.
L'articolo approfondisce i rapporti tra quest'opera e De la justification, il precedente più significativo nella riflessione teorica di Boltanski, e si chiude con un riferimento al caso italiano, distinto per alcuni aspetti non secondari dal modello delineato dagli autori e condiviso anche da molti dei loro critici.

El presente trabajo pretende analizar la construcción de los discursos neoliberales y sus coincidencias con las críticas anti-sistémicas que, fundamentalmente en las movilizaciones de mayo del 68, reivindicaron autonomía y libertad frente a las estructuras fordistas que dominaron los modos de organización social en Europa a partir de la Segunda Guerra Mundial.

This article provides a comparative analysis of the status of social and cultural forms in Europe and China. Specifically, it draws upon three main sources: the French sociologists Luc Boltanski and Ève Chiapello, the Italian philosopher and writer Mario Perniola, and the Chinese philosopher and aesthetician Wang Jianjiang.
I begin with Boltanski’s and Chiapello’s analysis of the transformations of capitalism which took place in Europe throughout the twentieth century. By developing their claims, I show in what terms aesthetics, art and culture have faced decisive changes which still need to be further understood and explored. I then explore Perniola’s perspective on the relationship between knowledge and power in the context of contemporary European societies. In the process, it will become apparent that Europe is entangled in a melancholic and populist syndrome which affects both the academy and culture more broadly. Finally, I investigate Wang’s notion of the “Bie-modern”, underlining the international debate it has given rise to among scholars. My aim is to show how Europe and China are currently following two divergent strategies concerning the role and the value of knowledge.

Le categorie teorico-morali sono quasi del tutto scomparse dal vocabolario teorico della sociologia. Né le percezioni di legittimità o di ingiustizia né gli argomenti morali né il consenso normativo giocano attualmente alcun ruolo nella spiegazione dell'ordine sociale. L'oggetto dell'indagine sociologica viene piuttosto inteso o in base allo schema di processi anonimi autorganizzativi oppure come il risultato della cooperazione tra attori strategicamente orientati; di conseguenza, il ruolo di modello disciplinare sono la biologia o l'economia, i cui modelli concettuali appaiono come maggiormente adatti a spiegare processi complessi quali la riproduzione delle società. Si potrebbe facilmente ricavarne l'impressione che la sociologia attuale aspiri a congedarsi definitivamente dalla generazione dei suoi padri fondatori: a partire da Weber e Durkheim fino a Talcott Parsons era infatti un dato acquisito il fatto che sarebbe stato possibile costruire una concezione adeguata del mondo sociale solamente facendo uso di concetti, i modelli o ipotesi tratti dalla teoria morale-la filosofia pratica costituiva, per così dire, il fondamento e la disciplina guida della sociologia classica. Dopo la Teoria dell'agire comunicativo-l'ultimo grande affresco di una teoria sociale complessiva basata sulle fonti della filosofia pratica-tutto ciò sembra esser stato dimenticato. In ogni caso, è solo fino a poco tempo fa che si sarebbe potuto pensare che con il libro di Habermas la tradizione di una sociologia orientata normativamente fosse giunta a termine. La novità si deve in gran parte agli sforzi di un piccolo gruppo di ricercatori francesi-raccolti intorno alle figure di Luc Boltanski e Laurent Thévenot-che continua a costituire una branca interna alla teoria sociale che fa ricorso alle risorse della filosofia morale. Partendo da una critica interna della sociologia di Pierre Bourdieu, i lavori di questo circolo particolarmente prolifico e che sonda sempre nuove direzioni, cerca di spiegare l'integrazione delle nostre società attraverso l'interazione tra diverse convinzioni morali 1. Il testo fondativo di questa scuola sociologica è lo studio De la justification, pubblicato originariamente nel 1991 2. Questo libro, che è stato nel frattempo pubblicato anche in Germania 3 , merita attenta 1 Hans Joas e Wolfgang Knöbl forniscono una buona panoramica della posizione e del ruolo di questo approccio nella sociologia contemporanea: Sozialtheorie. Zwanzig einf¨uhrende Vorlesungen (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp 2004), 739-744.; Vedi anche Peter Wagner, ‚Soziologie der kritischen Urteilskraft und der Rechtfertigung,‛ Stephan Moebius and Lothar Peter, eds., Franz¨osische Soziologie der Gegenwart (Konstanz: UVK 2004), 417-448; Mohammed Nodi, Introductionà la sociologie pragmatique (Paris: Armand Colin 2006). 2 Luc Boltanski e Laurent Thévenot, On Justification: Economies of Worth (Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press, 2006). 3 Boltanski e Thévenot, Uber die Rechtfertigung. Eine Soziologie der kritischen Urteilskraft (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition 2007).

After its proliferation as a primarily psychological term in the literature of the late 1960s, creativity has since advanced to a core notion also for sociology. The first part of the paper tackles "the creativity narrative" according to three paradigmatic readings brought forward by Luc Boltanski and Ève Chiapello, Maurizio Lazzarato, and most recently Andreas Reckwitz. Despite the insightful accounts that those readings provide concerning the entanglement of creativity to capitalist ways of production, the practical consequences they offer regarding how to contest this entanglement are debatable. Therefore, in the second part of the article a fourth understanding of creativity is invoked that was proposed by Cornelius Castoriadis. As argued, the radicality of this concept lies in defining creativity as a mode of production of the subject's psyche as a collective coexistence from which broader, necessarily collective practices can be derived.

Après sa prolifération en tant que notion psychologique dans la littérature des années 1960, la créativité est aussi devenue une notion fondamentale pour la sociologie. La première partie de l'article aborde le « récit de la créativité » à partir des trois lectures paradigmatiques proposées par Luc Boltanski et Ève Chiapello, Maurizio Lazzarato et, plus récemment, par Andreas Reckwitz. Malgré le fait qu'elles éclairent de manière significative l'enchevêtrement de la créativité aux modes capitalistes de production, les conséquences pratiques que ces lectures tirent sur les contestations possibles de cet enchevêtrement sont sujettes au débat. C'est pourquoi, dans la deuxième partie de ce texte, une quatrième compréhension de la créativité est proposée à partir de Cornelius Castoriadis. La radicalité de ce concept repose sur sa définition en tant que mode de production du psychisme du sujet compris en tant que coexistence collective, à partir de laquelle des pratiques plus larges et nécessairement collectives peuvent découler.

This article outlines three faces of capital: first, the description of Schumpeter and his theory of creative destruction; second, the diagnosis of Boltanski and Chiapello, where the regeneration of capitalism does not stand on the suppression of this outside
but on its domestication and resignification. Finally, the third shape, in which this outside is not envisaged as an ended reality but captured as a productivity or capital. Therefore,
this kind of capitalism fosters a production of subjectivity as the human capital, which not only pervades the different fields of existence but as well, under the figure of the prosumer, transforms consummation into production.

Neoanarchist politics have become increasingly hegemonic on the North American left. Tracing its emergence during the Seattle WTO demonstrations in 1999 to its recent incarnation in the Occupy Wall Street movement, this article argues that neoanarchism’s attempts to “change the world without taking power” pose serious theoretical and practical problems for emancipatory politics today. The text also examines recuperation as a factor in social movement decline, arguing that the incorporation of social movement themes is constructing a “new spirit of capitalism” that both addresses widespread demand for a more ethical world while simultaneously insulating itself from critique – a process facilitated by significant ideological resonance between neoanarchism and neoliberalism.

This thesis explores how a pragmatic theory of violence can be developed within Luc Boltanski’s sociology of regimes of action positioned in the overall framework of French pragmatic sociology. The thesis takes its outset in Boltanski’s approximate outline of a regime of violence presented in Love and Justice as Competences (2012) and points out a number of conceptual ambiguities in Boltanski’s regime of violence. The conceptual ambiguities are then discussed and clarified through an integration of Jan Philip Reemtsma’s phenomenological distinction between locative-, raptive-, and autotelic violence. This distinction denotes violence as a non-consensual, primarily, physical assault on another’s body (2012). Overall, the thesis combines French pragmatic sociology with German sociology of violence in order to emphasize our shared understandings and ways of evaluating forms, things and persons in violence. In this relation, the thesis introduces two basic human competences of violence: ‘the competence of evaluating force potentials’ and ‘the competence of evaluating vulnerability of the body’. Methodologically, the thesis mirrors elements of Boltanski’s methodological strategies used to develop the regime of justice and love in order to formalize the principles that can be said to structure a model of a regime of violence based on the distinction between locative-, raptive-, and autotelic violence. The thesis then centers on the important twilight between violence and justice by emphasizing an understanding of different forms, elements and zones of violence in relation to Boltanski’s theoretical model in On Justification and to the concept of the state monopoly on violence. Finally, the thesis presents four empirical case studies of violence as presented in different records of judgement from recent Danish trials, which are then “confronted” with the (extended) regime of violence, after which the “fitness” of the theory and the ambiguity of some of the concepts are discussed.

The normativity of practice remains one of the major research challenges in current debates on the practice turn, but also provides an excellent way to demonstrate the promise of international practice theory for a wider International Relations (IR) audience. Scholars of constructivist norm research, for instance, have begun to focus less on the effects of norms, and instead have turned their attention to processes, practices, and actions in international politics through which norms are negotiated, contested and embedded. This processual perspective aims to overcome simple explanations built on the agency-structure dichotomy, and resembles the research objectives of practice-oriented scholars. I argue, firstly, that a conversation between practice theorists and norm researchers is analytically fruitful thanks to their shared research concern with normativity; this includes the consideration of power and agency, a social understanding of learning and a relational notion of identity, and the contestation and multiplicity of normative orders. Secondly, I argue that practice approaches contribute to this conversation by providing innovative conceptual vocabulary and methodological tools. Thirdly, however, a difference remains between norm research and practice theory. For practice-oriented scholars (following Wittgenstein), it is ontologically not possible to distinguish practices from norms. This implies that theoretical primacy is reserved for practice, and analysis always starts with practice, not norms. I demonstrate the added value of such a practice-oriented perspective by presenting three different research examples in IR that study normativity from different angles: through power relations of structuring normative orders, ongoing learning processes through active participation in communities, and disputes on competing moral claims by political actors.

Η εργασία στο Νέο Πνεύμα του Καπιταλισμού - Μια παρουσίαση του έργου των Luc Boltanski και Eve Chiapello

Work in the New Spirit of Capitalism, presenting Luc Boltanski's and Eve Chiapello's study.

Ερευνητική Εργασία, Αριστοτέλειο Πανεπιστήμιο Θεσσαλονίκης, Τμήμα Αρχιτεκτόνων Μηχανικών, Φεβρουάριος 2019

Φοιτήτρια: Κατερίνα Βλάχμπεη
Επιβλέπουσα: Λία Γυιόκα

Este trabajo tiene como objetivo comprender la movilización estudiantil que surge en Chile desde el año 2011 y el tipo de crítica que ésta genera contra el modelo educativo, económico y político implementado desde la dictadura militar, entendiendo este movimiento como un proceso reivindicativo que apela a valores característicos de la era moderna, y que busca ampliar las posibilidades de decisión del colectivo y del individuo, frente a los efectos y la ideología que articula el “espíritu del capitalismo” en su versión neoliberal.

L’idea che esista uno stretto rapporto tra una data struttura economica – compresi anche i mutamenti che occorrono in seno a essa – e una forma letteraria, nello specifico quella del romanzo, non è nuova. Si tratta di una prospettiva che negli anni Sessanta, ad esempio, prese forma nei dibattiti sul rapporto tra letteratura e industria (da cui il titolo del quarto numero de Il Menabò, nel 1962), o nella tavola rotonda Requiem per il romanzo?, trascritta e pubblicata nel 1965 su «Paese Sera», in cui ci si interrogava sul destino del romanzo, in quanto espressione della società borghese, a seguito di un mutamento dell’asse strutturale economico; è un tema che ritroviamo ancora, qualche decennio dopo, nella celebre definizione del postmoderno come “logica culturale del tardo capitalismo” a opera di Fredric Jameson.
In questa ricerca, tuttavia, lo sguardo si sposta e restringe il suo campo analitico: cosa succede in Italia tra la metà degli anni Novanta e i primi anni Duemila, quando il capitalismo si mostra ancora più saldo e la cui struttura modella, in maniera ancor più pervasiva, la realtà sociale?
Cercare gli effetti dell’ordine socioeconomico contemporaneo all’interno dell’intelaiatura romanzesca non è un mero esercizio di stile. Riciclando un’espressione utilizzata prima da Daniele Giglioli e ripresa poi da Raffaele Donnarumma, l’obiettivo è quello di rintracciare i sintomi di una condizione esistenziale collettiva caratterizzata dalla pervasività del sistema capitalistico, la cui opera di livellamento e reificazione – lo diceva già alla fine dell’Ottocento Georg Simmel – non risparmia l’individuo in nessun ambito. L’espressione “sintomo” è significativa e va opposta all’idea di “documento”. La letteratura, soprattutto nella società occidentale contemporanea, già satura di testimonianze e interpretazioni di vario genere, non va letta tanto come scienza documentaria, intesa come «atto di coscienza» e in cui «la storia viene alla trasparenza nelle opere»; è qui che subentra l’idea del sintomo, che rimanda, invece, a «un’ermeneutica dell’inconscio», alludendo a «una produzione di senso verificabile, ma non pianificata dalla ragione progettuale, dispersa, a tratti inapparente».

La critica marxista e il materialismo storico hanno sempre posto la questione economica alla base dell’analisi letteraria; si tratta di un punto di vista che tiene insieme la necessità di un confronto diretto con il presente e con il ruolo dello scrittore in quanto intellettuale all’interno della società civile.
La premessa per cui la base strutturale dell’economia è centrale per comprendere i meccanismi che muovono la produzione culturale è qui condivisa, come si è detto, in quanto punto di partenza dell’analisi. Per rendere conto, tuttavia, della complessità del contesto storico da un lato, e della diversità che occorre tra le opere studiate dall’altro, si è ritenuto necessario tentare di circoscrivere il campo tenendo conto di alcune variabili ritenute significative.
Per riuscire a individuare dei “sintomi” che potessero essere coerentemente inseriti in un continuum nella maniera meno arbitraria possibile, si è costruito un corpus di testi secondo un preciso criterio di selezione, che verrà chiarito nel Capitolo II.
Alla base dei criteri vi era la volontà di distinguere tra un gruppo appartenente a un “polo di qualità” della letteratura, in cui sono stati inseriti quei romanzi che hanno destato maggiore interesse nella critica accademica e a cui si attribuisce un maggiore capitale di prestigio, e uno identificabile con un “polo di successo”, che rappresenta la produzione culturale che è stata meglio in grado di assorbire le richieste del pubblico e, pertanto, del mercato.
Al primo appartengono la trilogia de Il dio impossibile di Walter Siti, di cui fanno parte Scuola di nudo (1994), Un dolore normale (1999) e Troppi paradisi (2006), e i romanzi del Ciclo delle stelle, di Mauro Covacich, composto da A perdifiato (2003), Fiona (2005), Prima di sparire (2008) e A nome tuo (2011).
Al secondo gruppo appartengono, invece, Almost blue (1997), di Carlo Lucarelli, e Romanzo criminale (2002), di Giancarlo De Cataldo.
La distinzione tra i due poli non intende recare in sé un giudizio estetico o di qualità, operazione che, per altro, non è contemplata nell’analisi. Essa è utile, invece, a individuare delle tendenze interne al campo letterario, cercando eventuali punti di contatto o di separazione tra le diverse sfere della produzione culturale.
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Inoltre, si tenterà di instaurare un dialogo tra opere, autori e il contesto circostante, attraverso una ricostruzione delle dinamiche produttive di fine Novecento, delle conseguenze sociali che hanno trascinato, cercando di circoscrivere ancora di più lo sguardo individuando le peculiarità del contesto italiano.
L’attenzione ai diversi attori in campo deve molto alle teorie di Pierre Bourdieu, che ha sottolineato la necessità di analisi delle condizioni di produzione delle opere. In tal senso, il sistema economico è qui considerato come una struttura di partenza, all’interno della quale le stesse condizioni iniziali generano risultati differenti, per via del modo in cui i diversi sottocampi interagiscono tra loro.
Lo studio, pertanto, prevede un capitolo iniziale, dedicato ai principali contributi teorici nell’ambito del materialismo storico (da Marx ed Engels a Fortini), da cui verranno estrapolati diversi spunti di riflessione sul metodo utilizzato, fino ad arrivare all’approccio di Pierre Bourdieu. Un secondo capitolo, invece, prevede l’esposizione dei criteri scelti nella costruzione del corpus testuale; sarà analizzato, inoltre, il contesto economico e sociale di partenza, da cui verranno estratti alcuni spunti, utili all’interpretazione delle strutture narrative.
Gli ultimi due capitoli, infine, saranno dedicati all’analisi dei due gruppi romanzeschi individuati, quello del polo “di qualità” (Capitolo III) e quello del polo di “successo” (Capitolo IV).