Over the past decade, genetically modified organisms have come to be viewed as problematic in Japan, as evidenced by a large number of newspaper articles covering questions ranging from the unknown ecological impact of GMOs to uncertainty about food safety, and by the fact that a number of consumers’ groups have organized activities including demonstrations at the experiment stations and the submission of petitions to the government. Against this backdrop, this article attempts to understand the changing interpretation of the perceived (...) rational social order in the context of the Japanese GMO controversies. Drawing on the French Theory of Conventions, the article will shed light on the conventions that serve as templates enabling actors to interpret what it means to introduce GMOs and what constitutes a rational decision concerning GMOs. The article will argue that rationality is best viewed as an emergent and interpretive process involving interpretation and negotiation by and among actors, and that conventions which may be taken for granted are nevertheless unstable and mutable. (shrink)

Over the last decade, scholars across the wide spectrum of the discipline of sociology have started to reengage with questions on morality and moral phenomena. The continued wave of research in this field, which has come to be known as the new sociology of morality, is a lively research program that has several common grounds with scholarship in the field of business ethics. The aim of this thematic symposium is to open constructive dialogues between these two areas of study. In (...) this introductory essay, we briefly present the project of the new sociology of morality and discuss its relevance for business ethics. We also review the contributions to this thematic symposium and identify four specific domains where future research can contribute to fruitful dialogues between the two fields. (shrink)

This article explores the elective affinities between Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and the sociology of critical capacities. It argues that these two research programmes can be understood as symmetrical twins. We show the extent to which the exchange between Bruno Latour and Luc Boltanski has influenced their respective theoretical developments. Three strong encounters between the twin research programmes may be distinguished. The first encounter concerns explanations for social change. The second encounter focuses on the status of objects and their relationship to (...) places. The third encounter is about the concept of critique. Drawing on their long-term mutual readings, we gain insight into how pleas for symmetrical analysis raised in response to Bourdieu’s theory of fields have evolved within both ANT and the sociology of critical capacity. We conclude by relating the development of the respective research programmes to the issue of disciplinary boundaries. (shrink)

This article stems from an awareness that the ‘European social model’ is marked – in the discourse that proposes it and in the policies that attempt to implement it – by an original combination of the dimensions of economic competitiveness and social cohesion. Today, this combination is in the midst of a crisis whose nature and outcome are variously interpreted, in politics as in social sciences. The current debate would have much to gain from the use of several classic analytical (...) categories, which, though well enough known, are rarely if ever applied in this context. After a schematic presentation of the characteristics that discussion of the European model has now assumed, an institutional approach to interpreting it will be proposed which revolves around the Weberian concept of ‘legitimate order’. Particular attention will be devoted to the organizational means whereby policies are formulated and pursued, and the territorial dimension of policies and their effects will be discussed. The concluding remarks will present policy implications and considerations concerning the present crisis and possible developments of the European model, elaborated on the basis of the proposed methodological approach. (shrink)

The idea of economic peace is a “counterpoint” to a warlike view of the economy. Viewing things in terms of economic peace makes it possible to develop a different economic anthropology. The idea of economic peace is used to think about a fundamental revision of the relationships to self and between actors. It sits at the intersection of peace studies, social and cognitive psychology, institutional conventionalist approaches, postmodernist philosophy and sinology. By employing the inchoate concept of economic peace, this article (...) explores the opportunity to extend and deepen the relationship between individual and collective responsibility. The article describes individual and collective practices or avenues which could be useful when reacting to complex situations. (shrink)

This paper reports on an experiment concerning the social construction of statistical definitions, where the first census of Higher Education Institutions in Europe has been developed. It conceptualizes the construction of indicators as a social process of definitions and boundaries’ negotiation, involving value judgments, social and political opinions, as well as practical interests and power strategies of actors. The paper exemplifies this process on three issues, namely the social demand for establishing a census, the controversy concerning the definition of a (...) perimeter as well as the selection of indicators, and the nature of comparability judgments. We first conclude that the socio-political dimension has to be explicitly taken into account when designing statistical systems; second, that social scientists involved in this process need to openly recognize the conflicts around the definition of indicators; third, that the objectified and taken for granted status of indicators makes them a powerful instrument to influence policy decisions and, that indicator designers need to make their own value judgments and interests fully transparent. (shrink)

Different notions of multiple rationalities have recently been applied to describe the phenomena of co-existence of competing rationalities in organizations. These include institutional pluralism, institutional logics, competing rationalities and pluralistic contexts. The French pragmatic sociologists Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot have contributed to this line of research with a sophisticated theoretical framework of orders of worth, which has been applied in an increasing number of empirical studies. This article explores how the order of worth framework has been applied to empirical (...) studies of organizations. First, I summarize the basic ideas of the framework, stressing the aspects of special relevance for studies of organizations. Second, I review the empirical studies focusing on the coexistence of competing orders of worth in organizations showing that the order of worth framework primarily has been related to three main themes in organizational research: non-profit and co-operative organizations, inter-organizational co-operation, and organizational change. Third, I discuss how the pragmatic, process-oriented aspect of the research program, focusing on the intertwining of values and action in various forms of ‘justification work’, has been translated into empirical studies. I argue that even if highly interesting empirical studies have begun to appear on the pragmatic aspects of the order of worth program, empirical studies of ‘justification work’ may be a potentially very promising focus for future empirical studies. (shrink)

Drawing on Butler’s theoretical background, research on the ethics of violence has focused on the importance of dominant society-wide schemes and norms in building individuals’ moral sense of violence. Studies explain how violence is normalized and made socially acceptable. In our analysis, we build on the pragmatic sociology of Boltanski and Thévenot that places particular importance on the fact that fairness must always be appreciated in situations and provide a “grammar” to describe competing normative approaches. Studying rugby, we show how (...) the different market players (consumers, broadcasters, journalists) justify the violence that occurs during rugby matches. We contribute to the literature on the ethics of violence by providing a pragmatic understanding of violence. We contribute to the economies of worth by investigating violence in a regime of justice and justification work in a reality test (in contrast to a test of worth). This understanding of violence enables us to offer some recommendations to encourage more responsible justification work about violence. (shrink)

First published in 2009, the collection of essays edited by François Vatin is now republished in a new edition, with two additional contributions: a final chapter entitled “What measuring means: disputes on quantification and valuation in sociology,” in which Pauline Barraud de Lagerie, Alexandra Bidet, and Etienne Nouguez discuss the main contributions of the book to the international debate on valuation ; and a chapter by the late Alain Desrosières—to whom the new edition of the book is dedicated—in which the (...) author, a pioneer of the French sociology of quantification , draws on his own intellectual biography to show how the making of public statistics has changed in the last 50 years.The study is divided into four sections. The first one collects three essays on the “practical construction of norms” in such diverse fields as the production of pressure-cookers , phone communication , and healthcare . The seco .. (shrink)