La fragilité de la réalité. Entretien avec Luc Boltanski. Propos recueillis par Juliette Rennes et Simon Susen

Luc Boltanski, sociologue, est directeur d’études à l’École des hautes études en sciences sociales. Né en 1940, il est l’auteur d’une quinzaine d’ouvrages qui, tout en s’appuyant sur des terrains d’enquête variés – de la puériculture à l’engendrement et l’avortement, en passant par le monde professionnel des cadres, l’humanitaire ou le management — n’en sont pas moins liés par des questions transversales. L’analyse des dispositifs normatifs mobilisés par les acteurs pour faire "tenir" la réalité sociale ou la mettre en cause fait partie des fils conducteurs de sa sociologie. Si les outils d’analyse qu’il a contribué à forger pour mener ces enquêtes ont profondément marqué la sociologie de ces vingt dernières années, ces outils évoluent plus vite que ce que l’on retient généralement du "tournant pragmatique". Et c’est une trajectoire sociologique tissée de doutes, de remises en cause méthodologiques et de petits virages théoriques, que nous livre ici ce sociologue sensible aux bricolages et aux "incertitudes de la vie sociale

Die Zerbrechlichkeit der Realität – Luc Boltanski im Gespräch mit Juliette Rennes und Simon Susen

Luc Boltanski ist Soziologe und Directeur d’études am École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. Er ist 1940 geboren und hat 15 Bücher geschrieben, die auf diver-sen Feldstudien basieren und disziplinäre Grenzen überschreiten: Pflege, Reproduktion, Abtreibung, die Arbeitswelt der Führungskräfte [cadres], humanitäre Fragen und Management – um nur einige seiner Themen zu nennen. Seine Soziologie konzentriert sich auf die Analyse normativer Ordnungen und die Ressourcen, die menschliche Akteure mobilisieren, um gesellschaftliche Übereinkünfte aufrechtzuerhalten oder herauszufordern. Die Debatten, die sein pragmatischer Wandel ausgelösthat, haben einen tiefgreifenden Einfluss auf die gegenwärtige Soziologie – sowohl innerhalb als auch außerhalb Frankreichs. Seine intellektuelle Stoßrichtung ist geprägt von Zweifeln, methodologischen Korrekturen und theoretischen Verschiebungen. Sie zeigen, dass der Soziologe Luc Boltanski empfänglich für die Konstruktionsprozesse und Unsicherheiten des gesellschaftlichen Lebens ist

Knowledge, Food and Place: a way of producing a way of knowing

The article examines the dynamics of knowledge in the valorisation of local food, drawing on the results from the CORASON project (A cognitive approach to rural sustainable development: the dynamics of expert and lay knowledge), funded by the EU under its Framework Programme 6. It is based on the analysis of several in-depth case studies on food relocalisation carried out in 10 European countries

Towards a Critical Sociology of Dominant Ideologies: An Unexpected Reunion between Pierre Bourdieu and Luc Boltanski

This article aims to demonstrate the enduring relevance of Pierre Bourdieu and Luc Boltanski’s ‘La production de l’idéologie dominante’ [‘The production of the dominant ideology’], which was originally published in Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales in 1976. More than three decades later, in 2008, a re-edited version of this study was printed in book format as La production de l’idéologie dominante, which was accompanied by a detailed commentary, written by Luc Boltanski and entitled Rendre la réalité inacceptable. À propos de « La production de l’idéologie dominante » [Making Reality Unacceptable. Comments on ‘The production of the dominant ideology’]. In addition to containing revealing personal anecdotes and providing important sociological insights, this commentary offers an insider account of the genesis of one of the most seminal pieces Boltanski co-wrote with his intellectual father, Bourdieu. In the Anglophone literature on contemporary French sociology, however, the theoretical contributions made both in the original study and in Boltanski’s commentary have received little – if any – serious attention. This article aims to fill this gap in the literature, arguing that these two texts can be regarded not only as forceful reminders of the fact that the ‘dominant ideology thesis’ is far from obsolete but also as essential for understanding both the personal and the intellectual underpinnings of the tension-laden relationship between Bourdieu and Boltanski. Furthermore, this article offers a critical overview of the extent to which the unexpected, and partly posthumous, reunion between ‘the master’ (Bourdieu) and his ‘dissident disciple’ (Boltanski) equips us with powerful conceptual tools, which, whilst illustrating the continuing centrality of ‘ideology critique’, permit us to shed new light on key concerns in contemporary sociology and social theory. Finally, the article seeks to push the debate forward by reflecting upon several issues that are not given sufficient attention by Bourdieu and Boltanski in their otherwise original and insightful enquiry into the complexities characterizing the daily production of ideology

Meat Your Enemy: Animal Rights, Alignment, and Radical Change

Radical change can be conceived in terms of the reconceiving of ontological distinctions, such as those separating humans from animals. In building on insights from French pragmatism, we suggest that, while no doubt very difficult, radical change can potentially be achieved by creating “alignment” between multiple “economies of worth” or “common worlds” (e.g., the market world of money, the industrial world of efficiency). Using recent campaigns by animal rights organizations as our case, we show how the design of “tests” (e.g., tests of profitability, tests of efficiency) can help align multiple common worlds in support for radical change. Our analysis contributes to the broader management and organization studies literatures by conceiving radical change in terms of changing ontological categorizations (e.g., human/animals vs. sentient/ non-sentient), and by proposing that radical social change agents can be helpfully conceived as opportunistically using events to cumulatively justify the change they desire overtime

Human rights and ethical reasoning : capabilities, conventions and spheres of public action

This interdisciplinary article argues that human rights must be understood in terms of opportunities for social participation and that social and economic rights are integral to any discussion of the subject. We offer both a social constructionist and a normative framework for a sociology of human rights which reaches beyond liberal individualism, combining insights from the work of Amartya Sen and from French convention theory. Following Sen, we argue that human rights are founded on the promotion of human capabilities as ethical demands shaped by public reasoning. Using French convention theory, we show how the terms of such deliberation are shaped by different constructions of collectively held values and the compromises reached between them. We conclude by demonstrating how our approach offers a new perspective on spheres of public action and the role these should play in promoting social cohesion, individual capabilities and human rights

The most creative organization in the world? The BBC, 'creativity' and managerial style

The managerial styles of two BBC directors-general, John Birt and Greg Dyke, have often been contrasted but not so far analysed from the perspective of their different views of 'creative management'. This article first addresses the orthodox reading of 'Birtism'; second, it locates Dyke's 'creative' turn in the wider context of fashionable neo-management theory and UK government creative industries policy; third, it details Dyke's drive to change the BBC's culture; and finally, it concludes with some reflections on the uncertainties inherent in managing a creative organisation

Anti-Equivalence: Pragmatics of post-liberal dispute

In the early 21st century, liberal democracies have witnessed their foundational norms of critique and deliberation being disrupted by a combination of populist and technological forces. A distinctive style of dispute has appeared, in which a speaker denounces the unfairness of all liberal and institutional systems of equivalence, including the measures of law, economics and the various other ‘tests’ which convention scholars have deemed core to organisations. The article reviews how sociologists of critique have tended to treat critical capacities as oriented towards consensus, but then considers how technologies of real-time ‘control’ circumvent liberal critique altogether. In response, a different type of dispute emerges in the digital public sphere, which abandons equivalences in general, instead adopting a non-representational template of warfare. This style of post-liberal dispute is manifest in the rhetoric of populists, but does not originate there