NEW TRENDS IN FRENCH SOCIAL SCIENCES

Laurent Thvenot

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The French social sciences have undergone a significant reorientation over the past ten years. I
will concentrate on some developments (for a review, see Dodier 1993b, Wagner 1994; in French:
Critique n529-530, 1991; Espace-Temps, n49-50, 1992; Rseaux, n62, 1993) which are less
familiar to American academic circles than the French production of the 60s and 70s which is
nowadays in the course of absorption.
Cultural studies frequently claim a cognitive orientation. [Footnote 1: A large amount of
French social research of the highest quality has been dedicated to culture as a specific research
domain which covers education, arts or, more broadly, cultural practices. This is linked with the
importance of the notion of cultiv in French society (Lamont 1992). Raymonde Moulin's
influential works in the sociology of arts are already well known in the US, as well as Bourdieu's
and Passeron's seminal pieces of research in the sociology of education and cultural practices,
which offered a new theoretical framework extending beyond this domain. Younger researchers in
this area are especially anxious to compare the usefulness of classical analytical tools, such as the
ones forged by the sociology of professions or by symbolic interactionism, to new modes of
analysis introduced from economics (Menger 1994), social studies of science and scientific
controversies (Hennion 1993), or the sociology of disputes and judgement (Heinich 1991, 1993a).]
The French sociological approach to cognition has build deeply on Durkheim and Mauss's analyses
of classification schemes. Bourdieu and Boltanski gave to the Durkheim-Mauss homology a
marxist twist, considering "classification struggles" as an expression of class struggles (Bourdieu et
Boltanski, 1974). [Footnote 2: This legacy from Durkheim and Mauss has been combined, in the
social construction synthesis (Berger et Luckman), with the phenomenological orientation
developped in the American ethnomethodological current. This can be characterized as a
composition of Hegel's collectivist and Husserl's individualistic conceptions of
phenomenology (Alexander 1988:226-245).] Later on, Boltanski adopted a different perspective
and examined the various activities which construct a social category, les cadres (Boltanski 1987),
and involve spokespersons as well as ordinary members of the group. In parallel, a research
program at INSEE (French National Bureau of Statistics and Economics) was dedicated to a
thorough examination of the whole process of social classification. This encompassed not only the
historical genesis of classifications but also the cognitive operation of different agents who are
involved in classifying, from the surveys' respondents to the professional representatives who
intervene in the reform of classification, and to the routine work of coding agents (Desrosires et
Thvenot 1988; Desrosires 1993). This research work was applied in the construction of the new
French socio-economic classifications used in census and statistical enquiries (Desrosires &
Thvenot 1983). [Footnote 3: These pieces of research were not only receptive to the previously
mentioned tradition but also benefited from Foucault's insights. However the Foucault most
influential in the US, the one who unveiled disciplinary processes was less significant in this
process thant the Foucault interested in episteme settings and cognitive operations such as 'making
similar' (The Order of Things).]
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Relating cognitive, objectal and moral issues
These studies were extended into a broader research program on the relation between cognitive
forms and environment of objects that together support judgement and coordination. They departed
from previous influences in three directions which specify three research orientations.
1) The first orientation focuses on investments of form which contribute to homogeneisation,
across contexts, in the treatment of people and things. Statistical categories, job evaluation scales,
occupational names build equivalences among human beings as well as norms of measurements,
standards or properties make things similar. An investment in forms is a costly operation involving
negotiation, but the cost of implementation can be related to "returns" gained from coordination,
depending on the generality of the form (in terms of the domain of acceptance) (Thvenot 1984).
We studied the processes through which such forms are established or renegotiated, considering the
whole chain of articulations and the use of both cognitive procedures and material instrument in
these processes, through case studies concerning the qualification of people (occupational or
educational qualities) or things (related to security standards, for instance: Thevenot 1993).
2) The second orientation is related to the support of objects and the different ways they are
engaged in the coordination of human activities. Objects and their arrangements prop up cognitive
operations and facilitate coordination through conventional qualifications (that is providing
information on quality in forms such as marketable goods, recognizable signs, efficient
implements). But they are also engaged in more specific and personal relations. Once we see the
involvement of things in the elementary forms of the social fabric it becomes necessary to upgrade
their place in social sciences. This implies a strong move from the exclusive focus on meaning in
comprehensive social sciences to the analysis of the different modes through which things are
practically treated, either in private or in public settings. For instance we follow the same object
(such as baby push chair or a piece of school furniture) from the situation of personal and familiar
usage in a domestic arena to the most public and macro treatment such as the one we observe in
European committees which are in charge of making of safety standards, through the methods and
implements of the laboratories that certify their properties.
3) The third orientation concerns the articulation between cognition and evaluation. The
making of equivalence (*1 above) operates through the intervention of objects (*2 above) and leads
to ordering and evaluating. This last orientation was first elaborated in experimental studies
concentrating on the way people select clues by means of which they build equivalences between
individuals on the basis of their occupation. When they are asked to categorize, people shift from
cognitive to moral and political issues and refer to hierarchies of worth (Boltanski et Thvenot
1983). Boltanski's analysis of the making of public cases and the process of denunciation through
letters to newspapers editors (1984 republished in Boltanski 1990) greatly contributed to the
characterisation of the generalisations which are judged as valid or invalid.
Orders of worth supporting criticism and justification
The next phase of this research program focuses on the requirements for legitimate forms of
evaluation and breaks sharply with the prevailing suspicion, in the social sciences, regarding
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legitimacy. While identifying a limited plurality of legitimate orders, Weber insisted upon the
possibilities for domination offered by the claim to legitimacy. Although rooted in different
debates, both the critique of values in Parsons' work and the critique of ideologies and false
consciousness in French social research converge. Indeed, the question of legitimacy turned out to
be illegitimate for most sociologists. While it is correct to identify the strategic and contingent uses
to which orders of legitimacy might be put, this should not impede sociological inquiry on the
requirements satisfied by these orders. They are most visible in justification and criticism when
actors face the necessity of relating private to public cases and aim at third party
evaluation (Meyers 1989, 1991).
The identification and analysis of the plurality of orders of worth which support
justifications (Boltanski and Thvenot 1991, on translation HUP) has been developed in parallel
with empirical research on the dynamics of everyday disputes or deliberations within which one
aim is to establish common grounds (Boltanski and Thvenot eds. 1989). Each order of evaluation
follows a different dynamics based on a distinct kind of qualification test and piece of evidence,
through: prices in market competition, technical efficiency, collective solidarity, reputational
trustworthyness, fame in the opinion, inspiration. Each order offers the basis to criticize and reduce
to contingency what is consider as general and worthy in the other. This analysis has been
documented by studying various arenas of action and judgement such as: the "modernization" of
public services and local administration which are torn between a civic public good grounded in the
vote of citizens, the technical efficiency voiced by experts, or the market qualification focusing on
customers (Corcuff and Lafaye 1989, Lafaye 1990); the confrontation of different types of
arguments and evidence in bank committees which grant loans (Wissler 1989); professional fault
on the workplace (Chateauraynaud 1991); the compromise between business orientation, solidarity
and reputation in Rotary clubs (Camus 1991); the principles of evaluation used for ranking students
and orienting decisions in schools (Derouet 1992); the tension raised by avant-garde artistic work
and the forms of contestation of its value (Heinich 1993b); environmental disputes, the qualification
of nature in terms of a public space, a site of ineffable beauty, a shared inheritance, a reserve of
resources, etc. and efforts to elaborate a new order of ecological or "green" worth (Lafaye and
Thvenot 1993). Each order of "worth" qualifies what is relevant for judging. However, all the
orders satisfy certain requirements that crosscut the differences among them. In all, for instance, the
evaluations of differential worth made within the particular order have to be reconciled with the
equal dignity of human agents. The requirement is clearly visible on the negative side, when
studying the two main sources of a sentiment of injustice: the stable attachment of a state of worth
to individuals, wich is considered as power abuse as long as it is not put to a test; the transfer of
qualification from an order to another which leads to the criticism of domination or, on the
opposite, of the accumulation of handicaps.
This research on the common exigencies satisfied by the different orders of justification has
opened to debates with political and moral theory, from classical constructions of common good to
contemporary theories of justice (especially Rawls' second principle: Thvenot 1992). There is a
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parallel between the way in which each order uses specific criteria of justification and the different
kind of standards found in distinctive social practices as described by the philosopher Alasdair
MacIntyre, or the different forms of the common good which are to be coped with in the
complexity of modern politics (Bellah and alii, Habits of the Heart). A quite constructive
comparison has been made with Walzer's pluralistic approach of a variety of social goods attached
to different spheres of distribution (see Ricoeur's comparison between Spheres of Justice and De la
justification hereafter called DJ: Ricoeur 1995). However, the communitarian emphasis on shared
values or understandings in social groups and institutions, contrasts with the accent, in DJ, on the
necessity for individuals to shift from one order of justification to the other, depending on their
adjustment to the situational arrangement. Approaches of public debate should also be included in
the comparaison, whether they insist upon different types of rhetoric (Jasper 1992), look for a
thorough identification of the underlying patterns of civil society and civility (Alexander and Smith
1993), or propose a complete analysis of the grounding of ideal communication (Habermas). One of
the specificities of the DJ research program, which focuses on the conditions which are practically
required to public justifications might reside in the close examination of the dynamics of criticism
and of the involvement of qualified objects in the process of judgement making. A fruitful dialogue
has also been opened with American cultural sociologists who study the symbolic repertoires that
people make use of to draw lines along which moral codes are internally organised and "worthy"
individuals distinguished from "less worthy" ones (DiMaggio 1987; Lamont 1992; Swidler 1986;
for a review see Lamont and Wuthnow 1990). [Footnote 4: A research program on "Symbolic
boundaries and modes of justification in comparative perspective" has been jointly proposed by
Michle Lamont and Laurent Thvenot and funded by the NSF and the CNRS (France). It will
develop for the next three years a collective agenda focusing on the forms of evaluation that are
used in France and the US to evaluate people, events, and situations. This project brings together
thirteen sociologists who examine the principles of evaluation mobilised in a wide range of spheres
of activity: environmentalism, journalism, contemporary art, the publishing industry, culture-
producing institutions, voluntary associations etc.]
From argumentational to organisational arrangements
American orientations to cultural research are more receptive to the dynamics of experience
than to the structural constraints of fixed codes. The pragmatist legacy is shared by the new French
approach sketched here which, in analysing the situated processes of justification, emphasises the
reality test to which arguments are put. It urges an enlargement of the scope, from verbal
communication to the pragmatic modes of involving objects in conflict and coordination. The
sociology of scientific controversies initiated by Callon (1985) and Latour (1987) turned its
attention to the network linkage between human beings and technical objects. The sociology of
disputes and coordination presented here brings to the fore critical tensions between different ways
of arranging things in relation to persons in accord to different qualifications (as efficient tools;
pledges that anchor trust; inspired creation; commodities appropriate for marketing; public goods;
signs supporting fame). The tests or trials cannot rely on a single equivalence medium such as force
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in "trials of force". Different qualifications, in different orders of worth, leads to different kinds of
trials: a test of technical efficiency, of creativity, of reputation, of market competition, of
democratic vote, of diffusion in public opinion. Tensions between qualifications are overcome
through an intense effort of compromise which can be paralleled with the crafting of "boundary
objects" (Bowker and Star 1994) but which is more stable when the justification orders have been
themselves compromised to some estent.
This attention to proofs and arrangements of objects in disputes breaks a path from rhetorical to
organisational settings (Dodier 1993a). A main purpose of organisations is to implement modes of
coordination of activities which are compatible with general forms of judgement (whether they rest
upon prices, efficiency, reputation, etc.) and foster compromise between them (Thvenot 1989).
The study of theses different modes of coordination which are supported by various conventions
has been developed in a new French institutional current coined "Economics of conventions", in
close relations with sociology (Salais and Thvenot eds. 1986; Thvenot ed. 1986; Dupuy Eymard-
Duvernay Favereau Orlan Salais and Thvenot in Revue conomique 1989, n2; Salais and Storper
1993, Orlan ed. 1994). These studies, although they step across the Iron Curtain raised between
sociology and economics - which is even more sturdy in the US than in France - can be compared
with the New Institutionalism and Organisational analysis (Powell and DiMaggio eds. 1991).
Especially suggestive is the French context have been those works which highlight, in a
comparative perspective, different types of orders of rationality or legitimacy governing industrial
decisions (Dobbin 1994). The identification of different modes of coordination and of their
respective efficiency may also converge with sophisticated rethinking of internal labor
markets (Stark 1986).
Coordination, pragmatic regimes and objects in action
A common concern with the dynamics of coordination, the reconsideration of the different
approaches to activity (intentional, habitual, ritual, situated, scriptual, etc.), the comparison with
various philosophical traditions (pragmatism, hermeneutics, semantics of action, moral and political
philosophy, etc.), brought together a network of social researchers around the new series Raisons
pratiques (Pharo and Qur eds. 1990, Petit ed. 1991, Cottereau and Ladrire eds. 1992, Conein
Dodier and Thvenot eds. 1993). The extent of the coordination through general evaluations is
limited by divergent attitudes towards other people, like agap which requires the suspension of the
equivalence which is needed for justification (Boltanski 1990), or the diverse reactions to suffering
of others (Boltanski 1993). The continuation of the research program procedes with the exploration
of a variety of dynamics of adjustment with the environment. Instead of the a canonical opposition
between the collective and the individual, or between macro and micro spheres, we need to account
for a whole architecture of pragmatic regimes which human beings can use to cope with their
human and non human environment and to monitor their own conduct: the justification regime
which has been explored through the different orders of worth; the regime of intentional action
which is used in the interpretative stance; or the familiarity regime which does not rely on general
forms of evaluation, nor on the attribution of intention, but on specific clues distributed in a circle
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of familiar human an non-human beings (Thvenot 1990, 1994). Studies of reaction to failures in
the workplace in different organisational setups illustrate the fact that a justification regime allows
for attributed competence and imputation of responsibility which fosters judicial litigation, whereas
a familiarity regime rests upon distributed competencies and permit a more flexible but local
accomodation. The analysis of different regimes demands that social researchers pay as much
attention to the distinct formats through which actors grasp their objectal environment (through
function, properties, clues, spatial setup, etc.) as to the ways actors deal with their human
environment. The analysis of objects in action (Conein Dodier and Thvenot eds. 1993) offer
bridges with cognitive anthropology and cultural studies that pay attention to the relations with
objects (Lave 1988, Zelizer 1994).
The new current presented here, which focuses on the study of disputes and modes of
coordination with the human and objectal environment, has recently contributed, among other
trends, to recasting the relationship between disciplines, and to building novel alliances between
sociology and philosophy (political, moral and theory of action), institutional economics, micro-
history and social cognition.

Laurent Thvenot, in addition to being directeur d'tudes at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en
Sciences Sociales, Paris, is heading the "Groupe de Sociologie Politique et Morale" (EHESS-
CNRS).
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