Retfærdiggørelse, ideologi, kritik
TL;DR: Albertsen et al. as mentioned in this paper argued that critical sociology, which approaches social actors critically in search of hidden explanations behind their backs, should be replaced by sociology of critique, which investigates the critical competencies of the social actors themselves.
Abstract: Denne artikel har tre formal. For det forste er det hensigten at udrede forbindelserne mellem begreberne retfaerdiggorelse, ideologi og kritik, som de foreligger hos Luc Boltanski og Eve Chiapello i Le Nouvel Esprit du capitalisme (1999) (NEC i det folgende) og denne bogs forudsaetninger. For det andet skal forholdet mellem kritisk sociologi og kritiksociologi afklares. Boltanski markerer sig i 1980-90erne med en tese om, at sociologien om de sociale aktorers kritiske kompetencer bor erstatte en sociologi, som selv vil vaere kritisk. I NEC vender imidlertid en ide om kritisk sociologi tilbage. Her skal de to tilgange integreres, som det hedder i forordet til den engelske udgave af NEC (Boltanski & Chiapello 2005:xii). Hvordan haenger dette sammen? For det tredje skal Boltanski og Chiapellos (B&C i det folgende) begrebs- og teoridannelse praeciseres gennem konfrontation med dels en marxistisk forstaelse af ideologi og kritik, dels aktor-netvaerksteorien i Bruno Latours udgave, ifolge hvilken kritisk sociologi er noget af det vaerste og mest skadelige, der er haendt samfundsvidenskaben. Et kort blik pa den anerkendelsesteoretiske fornyelse af kritisk teori (Axel Honneth) bidrager til praeciseringen.
ENGELSK ABSTRACT:
Niels Albertsen: Justification, Ideology, Critique
The aim of this article is threefold. The first task is to explicate the connections between the concepts of justification, ideology and critique in Luc Boltanski’s and Eve Chiapello’s magnum opus, The New Spirit of Capitalism. The second is to elucidate the relationship between sociology of critique and critical sociology. In the1980-90s Boltanski argued that critical sociology, which approaches social actors critically in search of “hidden“ explanations “behind their backs“, should be replaced by sociology of critique, which investigates the critical competencies of the social actors themselves. In The New Spirit of Capitalism, however, critical sociology shows up again. How consistent is this move? The third aim is to clarify Boltanski’s and Chiapello’s theoretical position by confronting it with Marxist conceptions of ideology and critique (Karl Marx and Slavoj Žižek) and with actor-network theory (Bruno Latour). A quick look at Axel Honneth’s recognition-oriented renewal of critical theory further contributes to the clarification. The main conclusion is that sociology of critique has helped reformulate critical sociology as pragmatic critique, as critical sociology of critique that does not operate with deep, transcendent foundations.
Key words: Justification, ideology, critique, Boltanski, Latour, Žižek.
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01 Dec 2015
TL;DR: Within the globalised "network society" (Castells, 2001), demands for mobility and movement have become predominant aspects of contemporary social life (Bauman, 2007; Boltanski and Chiapello, 2005; Cresswell, 2006; Urry, 2007).
Abstract: Within the globalised ‘network society’ (Castells, 2001), demands for mobility and movement have become predominant aspects of contemporary social life (Bauman, 2007; Boltanski and Chiapello, 2005; Cresswell, 2006; Urry, 2007). Exerting an influence upon different social spheres, these demands have transformed the traditional relations of the realms of government and economy, the public and private, and work and life (Cohen et al., 2015; Donzelot and Gordon, 2008). In particular, present-day governmental programmes refer to and evoke discourses around free and unconstrained movements, forms of work and careers (Baerenholdt, 2013). These discourses promote the mobilisation and activation of working subjects and their human capital (Chertkovskaya et al., 2013; Costas, 2013; Foucault, 2008) as well as, more generally, the mobilisation of production, consumption, and communication in all sorts of social networks (Corbett, 2013; Elliott and Urry, 2010; Land and Taylor, 2010).
15 citations
Cites background from "Retfærdiggørelse, ideologi, kritik"
...Since such investments and efforts seemingly work towards a common good, it is not considered unjust for some people to have greater worth [grandeur] than others (Albertsen, 2008; Boltanski and Thévenot, 1991)....
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01 Jan 2019
10 citations
Cites background from "Retfærdiggørelse, ideologi, kritik"
...They seem to be heading in the direction of a “critical sociology of critique” (Albertsen 2008: 76), which includes both epistemological and normative reconstructions....
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...It is even unclear if Latour accepts the common point of departure that theory basically is to be understood as some kind of generalization (Albertsen 2008)....
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01 Jan 2015
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors apply the theoretical framework associated with Luc Boltanski's sociology of critique and argue that this framework offers a fruitful and important perspective in conceptualizing and understanding the forms of mobility that are becoming increasingly prevalent in today's knowledge work.
Abstract: This article examines the forms of mobility that characterize contemporary work life. In doing so, it applies the theoretical framework associated with Luc Boltanski’s sociology of critique (Boltanski, 2012 [1990]; Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006 [1991]) and argues that this framework offers a fruitful and important perspective in conceptualizing and understanding the forms of mobility that are becoming increasingly prevalent in today’s knowledge work. The sociology of critique allows one to chart the economic and historical conditions of mobility critically, while its sociology of morals also allows us to explore the distinctly normative side of new forms of mobility without succumbing to a celebratory picture of work-related mobility. More specifically and in the context of the ‘kinetic elite’, the article explores how Boltanski and Chiapello’s (2005) analysis of a ‘projective order of worth’ can help us understand the attractiveness of constantly being ‘on the move’. Qualitative data from three exemplars of this elite group of workers is used to illustrate how the ideal of being mobile is perceived as an often problematic imperative, but also as one which is nevertheless rewarding and worth living up to. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! * I would like to thank Directeur d’études Laurent Thévenot (EHESS) and the participants at the ‘The sociology of conventions and regimes of engagement’ workshop at Copenhagen Business School in May 2014 for taking the time to carefully comment on an earlier draft of this article. Furthermore, I must thank the two anonymous reviewers and ephemera editor Bernadette Loacker for suggesting numerous improvements to the present article. ephemera: theory & politics in organization 15(4): 725-753 726 | article Introduction In the Old Testament, two conflicting pictures of God’s relation to movement are presented: According to the first, the realm of God can be expanded by building temples that define the geographical and spiritual boundary of Judaism towards an immobile point, namely God’s permanent position. According to the second picture, however, the center of Judaism is not immobile; rather, God is taken to dwell directly in the Ark of Covenant. Each time the Jews move position, they move the Ark of Covenant and thereby the very presence of God. In the Exodus from Egypt, other slaves are left behind, but no territory is lost or gained; rather, the center of Judaism and divinity as such is moved. This is essentially what Deleuze (1977: 149) meant by paradoxically stating that nomads do not move: nomads seem to continually displace the center according to which their movement could be defined. This change in conception adopted in The Book of Exodus seems like a perfect fable for the conception of mobility in today’s tribe of urban nomads employed in creative or knowledge-intensive industries. As Bauman’s (1998, 2007) studies suggest, novel forms of mobility create both an elite (including e.g. the versatile consultant, banker or designer working on geographically dispersed projects) as well as a new class of poor (i.e., low-level workers servicing the mobile or immigrant workers forced into mobility). On a global scale, the new elite of successful urban nomads may thus be surrounded by immobile ‘slaves’ working under less favorable conditions, but they are themselves indifferent to location as they constantly shift from one project to the next without remaining bound to any center. Urban nomads therefore seem to inhabit a perhaps poorly defined, but nevertheless attractive state of constant movement (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2005). This nomadic figure in today’s capitalism has been discussed extensively by the ‘mobility turn’ within social theory (e.g. Adey, 2009; Büscher et al., 2010; Cresswell and Merriman, 2012; Urry, 2007) as well as by organizational studies debating work-related mobility (e.g. Costas, 2013; Garsten, 2008; Meerwarth et al., 2008; Muhr, 2012). Accordingly, it is now well-known how this nomadic figure relates to a number of changed ‘features’ of western working life: life-long employment is a rarity, working activities are no longer restricted to one place or specific hours, and work is increasingly being organized around short-term projects (e.g. Elliott and Urry, 2010; Sennett, 2006). In aiming to contribute to the growing literature on work-related mobility, I address what remains a hotly debated issue, namely, the moral and normative significance of changes pertaining to workand profession-related mobility. As Thomas Presskorn-Thygesen The ambiguous attractiveness of mobility article | 727 pointed out by a number of commentators (e.g. Bærenholdt, 2013; Kaplan, 1996; Sheller, 2011; Urry, 2000), research on novel forms of mobility tends to split into either celebratory accounts of mobility that privilege a nomadic or ‘cosmopolitan subjectivity’ (Beck, 2006), or pessimistic accounts that characterize mobility as ‘merely an ideological veil’ (Pellegrino, 2011: 2) that masks a renewed form of economic exploitation and various forms of inequality (Ohnmacht et al., 2009). As Ekman (2013: 294) along with Costas (2013) point out, the disagreement concerning the ‘moral content’ of mobility is also prevalent within organization studies: Has capitalism finally found a way of accommodating freedom of movement with efficient ways of organizing, as argued by optimistic strands within the management literature (e.g. Arthur and Rousseau, 1996; Kanter, 2003; Kotter, 2008)? Or are the changes rather, as argued by more critical voices, to be interpreted as a primarily economic expansion of profit maximization into the private life of employees (Smith, 2006; also cf. Grey, 1994; Thompson and Ackroyd, 1995)? In answering calls for approaches that broaden existing theoretical repertoires and go beyond one-sided conceptions of work-related mobility (Costas, 2013), this article explores the theoretical framework developed by Boltanski’s sociology of critique (Boltanski, 2012 [1990]; Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006 [1991]; Boltanski and Chiapello, 2005) and argues that this framework offers a fruitful perspective. Its focus on the evolution of capitalism allows one to chart the economic and material conditions of mobility critically, while its sociology of morals also allows us to see the distinctly normative side of current demands for mobility without succumbing to a celebratory idea of a new moral utopia. While the controversial overall diagnosis of The new spirit of capitalism (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2005) has received extensive attention in the literature, there is still, as argued by Boxenbaum (2014) and Pernkopf-Konhäusner (2014), something to be gained by looking more closely at its underlying theoretical framework, including the order of worth model developed in the earlier works of Boltanski and Thévenot (1989, 1999, 2006 [1991]). In the context of this article, I specifically focus on how this underlying framework implies going beyond the dichotomy between economic value and moral values in defining mobility while highlighting how the order of worth model bears on the investigation of the legitimacy and attractiveness of work-related mobility. In addition, I will address the attractiveness of mobility by applying the sociology of critique perspective to the context of the ‘kinetic elite’ (Costas, 2013; Cresswell, 2006). Following Cresswell (2006), the ‘kinetic elite’ designates a group of highly versatile and often well-paid and mobile project workers employed in knowledge-intensive industries, such as diplomacy, banking (Elliot and Urry, 2010), or consultancy (Costas, 2013). Given the ambivalence of forced forms of ephemera: theory & politics in organization 15(4): 725-753 728 | article mobility prevalent among immigrant workers (Bauman, 1998, 2007) and temporary workers (Garsten, 1999) in particular, one should refrain from asserting mobility as universally attractive. Nevertheless, Costas (2013: 1476), following Augé (1995), has rightly noted that mobility does possess a ‘power of attraction’ in the context of creative or knowledge-intensive work. Equally, Garsten (2008: 50) points out that mobility has indeed acquired a ‘prestigious and glamorous ring’. The question explored here is why this is the case: Why is a highly mobile and project-oriented working life attractive in the first place? In discussing this question, I add to the mainly theoretically driven re-interpretation of work-related mobility by referring to accounts given by three exemplars of the ‘kinetic elite’: (1) a successful entrepreneur and consultant, (2) an international UN diplomat and (3) an international private banker. This allows for an exemplary illustration of the mobility experienced by the elite group of highly mobile and well-paid workers who belong to what Boltanski and Chiapello (2005) call ‘projective capitalism’. My analysis does not reveal an experience of mobility as being free of tension and ambiguity. Even in this elite group, the ideal of being mobile is often perceived as a problematic imperative, yet nevertheless rewarding and worth living up to. The empirical exemplars thus illustrate how the attractiveness of a working life ‘on the move’ is articulated in distinctively normative terms. The article is structured as follows: First, I present the theoretical background to the sociology of critique and argue for the necessity of conceptualizing mobility beyond an opposition between economic value and moral values. Second, I lay out the conceptual architecture of Boltanski and Chiapello’s approach and contrast it with other positions in social theory to clarify its distinctive focus and ability to analyze mobility. In doing so, I focus on how mobility is implicated in Boltanski and Chiapello’s analysis of the emergence of a specific projective form of capitalism and ‘projective order of worth’ more generally. Third, I briefly introduce the method used in the
9 citations
Cites background from "Retfærdiggørelse, ideologi, kritik"
...Since such investments and efforts seemingly work towards a common good, it is not considered unjust for some people to have greater worth [grandeur] than others (Albertsen, 2008; Boltanski and Thévenot, 1991)....
[...]
TL;DR: The pragmatic sociology of critique developed by French sociologist Luc Boltanski in cooperation with such authors as Laurent Thevenot and Eve Chiapello has received increasing attention in recent years as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: In recent years, the pragmatic sociology of critique developed by French sociologist Luc Boltanski in cooperation with such authors as Laurent Thevenot and Eve Chiapello has received increasing att...
6 citations
Cites background from "Retfærdiggørelse, ideologi, kritik"
...…becomes clearer than any time before, and as we shall see so do his attempts to develop the pragmatic sociology of critique into a critical sociology (Albertsen 2008, 74–5; Fowler 2014, 78) Emergence of a ‘critical’ sociology of critique in The New Spirit of Capitalism In this new spirit of…...
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References
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01 Jan 2005
TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss the difficulty of being an ANT and the difficulties of tracing the social networks of a social network and how to re-trace the social network.
Abstract: Introduction: How to Resume the Task of Tracing Associations PART I: HOW TO DEPLOY CONTROVERSIES ABOUT THE SOCIAL WORLD 1 Learning to Feed from Controversies 2 First Source of Uncertainty: No Group, Only Group Formation 3 Second Source of Uncertainty: Action is Overtaken 4 Third Source of Uncertainty: Objects Too Have Agency 5 Fourth Source of Uncertainty: Matters of Fact vs Matters of Concern 6 Fifth Source of Uncertainty: Writing Down Risky Accounts 7 On the Difficulty of Being an ANT - An Interlude in Form of a Dialog PART II: HOW TO RENDER ASSOCIATIONS TRACEABLE AGAIN 8 Why is it So Difficult to Trace the Social? 9 How to Keep the Social Flat 10 First Move: Localizing the Global 11 Second Move: Redistributing the Local 12 Third Move: Connecting Sites 13 Conclusion: From Society to Collective - Can the Social be Reassembled?
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TL;DR: The critical spirit of the humanities has run out of steam as discussed by the authors and the critical spirit might not be aiming at the right target, which is a concern of ours as a whole.
Abstract: Wars. Somanywars.Wars outside andwars inside.Culturalwars, science wars, and wars against terrorism.Wars against poverty andwars against the poor. Wars against ignorance and wars out of ignorance. My question is simple: Should we be at war, too, we, the scholars, the intellectuals? Is it really our duty to add fresh ruins to fields of ruins? Is it really the task of the humanities to add deconstruction to destruction? More iconoclasm to iconoclasm?What has become of the critical spirit? Has it run out of steam? Quite simply, my worry is that it might not be aiming at the right target. To remain in the metaphorical atmosphere of the time, military experts constantly revise their strategic doctrines, their contingency plans, the size, direction, and technology of their projectiles, their smart bombs, theirmissiles; I wonder why we, we alone, would be saved from those sorts of revisions. It does not seem to me that we have been as quick, in academia, to prepare ourselves for new threats, new dangers, new tasks, new targets. Are wenot like thosemechanical toys that endlesslymake the samegesturewhen everything else has changed around them? Would it not be rather terrible if we were still training young kids—yes, young recruits, young cadets—for wars that are no longer possible, fighting enemies long gone, conquering territories that no longer exist, leaving them ill-equipped in the face of threats we had not anticipated, for whichwe are so thoroughlyunprepared? Generals have always been accused of being on the ready one war late— especially French generals, especially these days. Would it be so surprising,
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Book•
01 Jan 2005TL;DR: A century after the publication of Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the "Spirit" of Capitalism, a major new work examines network-based organization, employee autonomy and post-Fordist horizontal work structures.
Abstract: A century after the publication of Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the "Spirit" of Capitalism, a major new work examines network-based organization, employee autonomy and post-Fordist horizontal work structures.
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01 Jan 2004
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors show that by colonizing and interconnecting more areas of life ever more deeply, empire has actually created the possibility for a revolutionary kind of democracy, and that previously silent, oppressed masses' can form a multitude capable of bringing about radical steps in the liberation of humankind.
Abstract: By colonizing and interconnecting more areas of life ever more deeply, empire has actually created the possibility for a revolutionary kind of democracy. Now the previously silent, oppressed masses' can form a multitude capable of bringing about radical steps in the liberation of humankind. Exhilarating in its ambition, range and depth of insight, Multitude consolidates the stature of its authors as two of the world's most exciting and important political philosophers.
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TL;DR: In the meeting room of the Department of Sociology and Social Research of the University of Trento (Italy), nine people are sitting around a table, and all of them seem half asleep.
Abstract: Friday, 10.30 in the morning, in the meeting room of the Department of Sociology and Social Research of the University of Trento (Italy), nine people are sitting around a table, and all of them seem half asleep. Some of those present have degrees in sociology, others in psychology, yet others in political science or in communication science. Eight of them are now taking a PhD course in information systems and organization, while I have completed one in sociology and social research. We are here to discuss Latour’s most recent book. One reason for the discussion is that in a few days time the PhD students will be travelling to Paris on a study visit and will meet Mr Bruno Latour in person. I have other commitments and will not be going to Paris, but I want to be present at the discussion because I have to review the book and have yet to decide what to write. To be explicit:
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