What makes us modern? This is a classic question in philosophy as well as in political science. However it is often raised without including science and technology in its definition. The argument of this book is that we are modern as long as we split our political process in two - between politics proper, and science and technology. This division allows the formidable expansion of the Western empires. However it has become more and more difficult to maintain this distance between science and politics. Hence the postmodern predicament - the feeling that the modern stance is no longer acceptable but that there is no alternative. The solution, advances one of France's leading sociologists of science, is to realize that we have never been modern to begin with. The comparative anthropology this text provides reintroduces science to the fabric of daily life and aims to make us compatible both with our past and with other cultures wrongly called pre-modern.

We Have Never Been Modern

This paper outlines a new approach to the study of power, that of the sociology of translation. Starting from three principles, those of agnosticism (impartiality between actors engaged in controversy), generalised symmetry (the commitment to explain conflicting viewpoints in the same terms) and free association (the abandonment of all a priori distinctions between the natural and the social), the paper describes a scientific and economic controversy about the causes for the decline in the population of scallops in St. Brieuc Bay and the attempts by three marine biologists to develop a conservation strategy for that population. Four ‘moments’ of translation are discerned in the attempts by these researchers to impose themselves and their definition of the situation on others: (a) problematisation: the researchers sought to become indispensable to other actors in the drama by denning the nature and the problems of the latter and then suggesting that these would be resolved if the actors negotiated the ‘obl...

Some elements of a sociology of translation: domestication of the scallops and the fishermen of St Brieuc Bay

This paper outlines a new approach to the study of power, that of the sociology of translation. Starting from three principles, those of agnosticism (impartiality between actors engaged in controversy), generalised symmetry (the commitment to explain conflicting viewpoints in the same terms) and free association (the abandonment of all a priori distinctions between the natural and the social), the paper describes a scientific and economic controversy about the causes for the decline in the population of scallops in St. Brieuc Bay and the attempts by three marine biologists to develop a conservation strategy for that population. Four ‘moments’ of translation are discerned in the attempts by these researchers to impose themselves and their definition of the situation on others: (a) problematisation: the researchers sought to become indispensable to other actors in the drama by defining the nature and the problems of the latter and then suggesting that these would be resolved if the actors negotiated the ‘obligatory passage point’ of the researchers’ programme of investigation; (b) interessement: a series of processes by which the researchers sought to lock the other actors into the roles that had been proposed for them in that programme; (c) enrolment: a set of strategies in which the researchers sought to define and interrelate the various roles they had allocated to others; (d) mobilisation: a set of methods used by the researchers to ensure that supposed spokesmen for various relevant collectivities were properly able to represent those collectivities and not betrayed by the latter. In conclusion it is noted that translation is a process, never a completed accomplishment, and it may (as in the empirical case considered) fail.

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What do a seventeenth-century mortality table (whose causes of death include "fainted in a bath," "frighted," and "itch"); the identification of South Africans during apartheid as European, Asian, colored, or black; and the separation of machine- from hand-washables have in common? All are examples of classification -- the scaffolding of information infrastructures. In Sorting Things Out, Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star explore the role of categories and standards in shaping the modern world. In a clear and lively style, they investigate a variety of classification systems, including the International Classification of Diseases, the Nursing Interventions Classification, race classification under apartheid in South Africa, and the classification of viruses and of tuberculosis. The authors emphasize the role of invisibility in the process by which classification orders human interaction. They examine how categories are made and kept invisible, and how people can change this invisibility when necessary. They also explore systems of classification as part of the built information environment. Much as an urban historian would review highway permits and zoning decisions to tell a city's story, the authors review archives of classification design to understand how decisions have been made. Sorting Things Out has a moral agenda, for each standard and category valorizes some point of view and silences another. Standards and classifications produce advantage or suffering. Jobs are made and lost; some regions benefit at the expense of others. How these choices are made and how we think about that process are at the moral and political core of this work. The book is an important empirical source for understanding the building of information infrastructures.

https://www.reciis.icict.fiocruz.br/index.php/reciis/article/download/794/1436

Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences

This paper sets out an approach to the analysis of political power in terms of problematics of government. It argues against an overvaluation of the 'problem of the State' in political debate and social theory. A number of conceptual tools are suggested for the analysis of the many and varied alliances between political and other authorities that seek to govern economic activity, social life and individual conduct. Modern political rationalities and governmental technologies are shown to be intrinsically linked to developments in knowledge and to the powers of expertise. The characteristics of liberal problematics of government are investigated, and it is argued that they are dependent upon technologies for 'governing at a distance', seeking to create locales, entities and persons able to operate a regulated autonomy. The analysis is exemplified through an investigation of welfarism as a mode of 'social' government. The paper concludes with a brief consideration of neo-liberalism which demonstrates that the analytical language structured by the philosophical opposition of state and civil society is unable to comprehend contemporary transformations in modes of exercise of political power.(1).

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Political power beyond the State: problematics of government

»Geschichtswissenschaftliche Perspektiven auf Konventionen, Macht, Kritik und Engagement«. Reconsidering previous exchanges between the économie des conventions (EC) and historical research, the article puts right different prejudices against EC and shows grounds for going deeper into cooperation. The first part is dedicated to the genesis and dynamics of conventions, in an open perspective on the ways value is placed on forms coordinating with others, the environment and oneself. Rather than looking for abstracts values, the article suggests to find the basis for repertoires of evaluation in empowering dependencies between human beings and their environment. This approach is favorable to a dialogue with historians on the domain of work identity, occupations and products or services. The second part deals with the politics of convention in a long-term perspective on power, authority and protest. Considering powers issuing from coordinative forms, it is claimed that this view helps to situate in a comparative and historical perspective nation-states among a variety of authorities which govern – possibly transnationally – through re-

Convening the company of historians to go into conventions, powers, critiques and engagements

In parallel with the chapter of this book in which Veronique Champeil-Desplats introduces the conceptual shifts that took place in the ways law grasps a variety of modes of normativity, this chapter outlines the sociology of justifications, conventions, and engagements that has, for its part, renewed the approach of normativity and contributed to a lasting cooperation with jurists, which produced this book among other publications. Clashes between these two disciplines often result from attem...

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What engages ? The sociology of justifications, conventions, and engagements, meeting norms

Die Umfragen Formation et Qualification Professionnelle ; untersuchen in umfassender Form den Werdegang der befragten Person und bilden die verschiedenen Etappen ihrer Geschichte nach. Sie geben Antworten auf sehr unterschiedliche Fragestellungen zur Gesellschaft und ihrer Wirtschaft. Sie wurden in einem Zeitraum von vierzig Jahren sechs Mal durchgefuhrt und bieten dadurch Daten uber die Entwicklung wahrend eines relativ langen Zeitraums. Allerdings haben sich auch die Fragestellungen zur Gesellschaft und die Forschungsproblematiken innerhalb einer solchen Periode verandert. Dieser Artikel behandelt nacheinander die funf grosen Themenbereiche, die in der Biographie der befragten Personen vorkommen: soziale ; Herkunft, Schulweg, Weiterbildung, berufliche Mobilitat, Migrationshintergrund. Fur jeden dieser Themenbereiche nennen wir die pragenden Entwicklungen und versuchen einen Schritt weiterzugehen und die Grunde und den Kontext dieser Anderungen zu beleuchten. Vier stark kontrastierende Problematiken haben sich im Verlauf der ; Analyse herauskristallisiert: die soziale Ungerechtigkeit; der Bedarf an Qualifikation im Produktionssystem; das Humankapital; die Diskriminierungen. Die verschiedenen ; Problematiken unterscheiden sich nicht nur beim Stellenwert in der offentlichen Politik, die Abweichungen sind im theoretischen Rahmen oder den mobilisierten Disziplinen zu erkennen, auch in der Methodik der Verarbeitung dieser Daten und schlussendlich sogar ; in der Definition dessen, was als statistische Tatsache ; angesehen wird.

Les questionnements sur la société française pendant quarante ans d’enquêtes Formation et Qualification Professionnelle

This special issue on Politics of Engagement in an Age of Differing Voices is the result of a joint effort by the 16 authors whose texts create this selection, the authors of this introduction, and...

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/23254823.2018.1458432

Laurent Thévenot

Papers

Convening the company of historians to go into conventions, powers, critiques and engagements

What engages ? The sociology of justifications, conventions, and engagements, meeting norms

Les questionnements sur la société française pendant quarante ans d’enquêtes Formation et Qualification Professionnelle

Politics of engagement in an age of differing voices

1. Des contrats incitatifs aux conventions légitimes. Une alternative aux politiques néolibérales