Luc Boltanski

Luc Boltanski is a contemporary Sociologue French born in 1940.

Biography

The first searchs for Luc Boltanski are undertaken within the framework of the Center of European Sociology, directed by Raymond Aron then Pierre Bourdieu. Its first work is directed by the influence of the theoretical framework bourdieusien. Boltanski in its youth is thus inserted in the " group young people that Bourdieu had joined together around lui".

With the beginning of the year 1970, Boltanski becomes lecturer with EHESS. It takes part in the foundation of the review Actes of research in social sciences . In the middle of the Seventies, Boltanski disengages Actes and is disinvested of the team framed by Bourdieu. This intellectual disunion with sociology bourdieusienne, can be summarized by two opposite designs of criticism sociology.

Boltanski is also an author of reference concerning the sociology of the executives.

Boltanski and Bourdieu: two designs of criticism

Indeed, even if Luc Boltanski nourished himself at the school of Pierre Bourdieu, it is detached from the sociology of the “revealing”; “true” constraints weighing on the agents to consider the communication, relational elements and practices which make the agreement possible.

On the other hand, to see which are the elements which bring closer or divide the people around the same object, and analyzes it processes by which they arrive in fine at an agreement perceived, recognized and consciously wanted like such, here are one of the characteristics of the approach of Luc Boltanski; the past of the actors is not taken into account, even less their practices nor their sociocultural characteristics. On the contrary, each actor has a “free will” who allows him, at the time of the tests (and of its testing periods), to put forward his arguments and his justifications; those are based on a grammar specific but not infinite, according to the situations. We can consequently say that these two sociologies are opposite as for the goals to reach by their demonstration. The sociology criticizes (that which denounces the subjacent and unconscious mechanisms of the exploitation) is confronted with the sociology of criticism (that which analyzes the conditions and the consequences of criticism…). For Bourdieu, to some extent, any denunciation which is not about the sociological analysis, is a blind and deaf denunciation as for its true motivations: any attempt at “spontaneous” criticism is suspect. On the other hand, for Boltanski, the people are perfectly capable to include/understand their motivations; indeed, if they are “ under the veil ”, they are aware of it. They palpate it and dispute it, if one can say. In fact the conditions of this play interest Boltanski.

However, these intellectual stakes are soon redoubled and prolonged by institutional stakes when Boltanski founds with Laurent Thévenot the Group of political and moral sociology (GSPM) in 1984.

Boltanski is one of the representatives par excellence of the pragmatic Sociologie considering that the man makes the “company” and that the actors are qualified to give an opinion, judge, to denounce, to criticize, to give an account of it… This sociology is opposed to the Sociologie criticizes amongst other things (only the erudite direction can be critical and it is the company which makes the man) represented by Bourdieu. In 1984, Boltanski founds with Laurent Thévenot the Group of political and moral sociology. He writes besides with this one: “Of the justification” (1991), work which prolongs " The dénonciation" (Acts of research in social sciences, 51, March 1984, with Y. Darré and M. - has. Schiltz) since it shows that there exists not, as it explains it in the article “the denunciation”, only one way of being large in the social world, namely: by a work of die-singularisation, but quite various means of becoming large.

The meeting of Boltanski with Eve Chiapello and their collaboration for the new spirit of capitalism made it possible Luc Boltanski to widen the circle around the Sociologie of the economy of the sizes. Indeed, the new spirit of capitalism seems an illustrative configuration, with general and practical range, typology of the cities. The echo which this book in the media had, in particular in the field of the managers themselves, tends to prove the importance of its range. It recently published an entitled book " The condition foetale" who began a debate around the use of the concept of contradiction in social sciences and of the possibility of articulating structuralism and phenomenology in a historical approach.

Publications

See too

External bonds

Économie of conventions (forum.u-paris10.fr)
GSPM Groups Political and Moral Sociology (gspm.ehess.fr)
Site on the political & moral sociology of Luc Boltanski (boltanski.chez.tiscali.fr)
Fiche of reading of the Nouvel Spirit of Capitalism by Pascal Quidu, on February 2nd, 2001 (www.la-science-politique.com)
capitalism with the sauce artist by Anne Querrien (on the New Spirit of Capitalism , multitudes.samizdat.net)
Fiche of reading Of the Justification (www.cnam.fr)
Relire Boltanski and Thévenot: sociology and political philosophy, by Toni Negri (on Of the Justification , multitudes.samizdat.net)

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