Laurent Thévenot

Bio: Laurent Thévenot is an academic researcher from École Normale Supérieure. The author has contributed to research in topics: Sociology of culture & Economic sociology. The author has an hindex of 39, co-authored 101 publications receiving 9625 citations. Previous affiliations of Laurent Thévenot include INSEE & School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences.

Ce qui engage : la sociologie des justifications, conventions et engagements, à la rencontre de la norme

Abstract: Le mouvement sociologique dont cet article rend compte a favorise un genre de cooperation avec le droit qui rapproche les operations et categories fondamentales des deux disciplines. Il remonte a un deplacement conceptuel depuis la notion classique de norme sociale, conduisant a l'analyse de "conventions" qui gouvernent normativement la coordination incertaine des actions. Des "investissements de forme" sont necessaires a la mise en œuvre de ces conventions. Mis dans un format approprie, l’environnement soutient la convention normative de coordination pour laquelle il est "qualifie". Une extension ulterieure a reelabore la notion d'identite personnelle requise pour une coordination avec d'autres selon une normativite collective. Une identite personnelle dynamique est le resultat composite d'une pluralite d'engagements personnels qui se chevauchent, engagements qui ne coordonnent avec d'autres mais avec soi-meme. Chacun de ces regimes d'engagement assure un mode de continuite de la personne, d'un moment a l'autre, gagee par une relation avec l'environnement materiel. La normativite qui maintient la coordination avec d'autres repose sur des engagements personnels, ce qui suggere d'elargir la notion de normativite et ses modes. Penetrant dans le plus personnel de ce qui engage, le cadre d'analyse de la sociologie des conventions et engagements eclaire les transformations de ce qui preoccupe personnellement, jusqu'a la mise en commun et en differend de ces preoccupations, selon differentes grammaires.

Statistique et évaluation des politiques : quarante ans d'enquêtes « Formation et Qualification Professionnelle »

Abstract: Parce qu’elles portent sur des aspects très divers de l’itinéraire de mobilité des personnes interrogées, les enquêtes sur la Formation et la Qualification Professionnelle (FQP) ont été employées, depuis plus de 40 ans, à dresser des tableaux généraux de la société française, à porter des jugements sur son évolution et à nourrir des débats sur les politiques publiques. L’exploitation qui en est faite ici est quelque peu différente : on s’intéresse à la série longue des questionnaires et des études exploitant ces enquêtes selon diverses thématiques de recherche, afin d’y découvrir l’évolution des questionnements sur la société française et ses politiques. On identifie ainsi quatre problématiques relativement cohérentes au regard des politiques, des outils statistiques et des théories scientifiques qui s’y rapportent : inégalités sociales, besoins en qualifications, capital humain, discriminations.

Configurations creatives dans les humanites et figurations de l'humanite

Abstract: Comment est organisee la creativite dans les sciences humaines ? L'auteur considere une variete de configurations creatrices qu'il a connues en France dans les disciplines economique et sociologique : l'economie standard, l'ecole sociologique rattachee a Pierre Bourdieu, le reseau autour de Bruno Latour et Michel Callon et les affiliations avec la sociologie de Luc Boltanski et Laurent Thevenot. Il les differencie par un cadre analytique qui met en relief la pluralite de "regimes d'engagement" entre les gens et les choses. Il rattache chacune de ces configurations creatrices a la figuration de la societe qu'elle produit. L'article se termine en suggerant une comparaison entre certains de ces figurations et celles offertes par la litterature (avec des illustrations empruntant a Boris Paternak, Mikhail Boulgakov et Andrei Platonov).

Vous avez dit « capital » ?

Abstract: Le capital au XXIe siecle repose sur des choix dans la definition du capital, des inegalites de sa distribution et des politiques d’un Etat social a privilegier pour y remedier. Repondant a la proposition emise par l’auteur de favoriser un dialogue entre l’economie et les autres sciences sociales, l’article eclaire les implications de ces choix. Il retrace la genealogie politique du capital « humain » et « intellectuel » et le developpement ulterieur d’autres variables-capital utilisees pour mesurer des types differents d’inegalites et evaluer les politiques devant y faire face. Differenciant les modes d’investissement et de mise en valeur – non uniquement marchands – de ces divers capitaux, il precise les pouvoirs associes a chacun d’eux, leurs pretentions a la legitimite en depit des inegalites qu’ils causent, ainsi que les dominations qu’ils exercent. Vient en retour une interrogation sur la delimitation qu’a retenue Thomas Piketty d’un ensemble de biens-capitaux d’usages tres divers, et sur leur comprehension et leur evaluation sous la seule valorisation marchande.

We Have Never Been Modern

Abstract: 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.

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

Abstract: 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

Abstract: 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.

Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences

Abstract: 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.

Political power beyond the State: problematics of government

Abstract: 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).