Luc Boltanski (born 4 January 1940) is a French sociologist, Professor at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, Paris, and founder of the Groupe de Sociologie Politique et Morale, known as the leading figure in the new "pragmatic" school of French sociology. [1] His work has significantly influenced sociology, political economy and social history.
Boltanski contributed to the start of the "political and moral sociology" framework. Political and moral sociology has gradually developed as a research programme—in the sense proposed by Imre Lakatos —around a conceptual nucleus looking to construct a theory of action based on Émile Durkheim's theory of moral fact, revising the inheritance of ‘methodological structuralism’ from the point of view of dynamics and processes. The research program stresses how, in many conflicts, the characteristics of the disputants change during the course of the conflict. This work has influenced research on civic culture within and beyond French sociology. [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]
Boltanski's most recent work deals with the links between detective novels and the emergence of the nation state. [7]
A book co-authored with Laurent Thévenot, On Justification: Economies of Worth, 2006 (French original: 1991), presents a comprehensive framework for understanding how people justify their actions and critique others in modern societies. Boltanski and Thévenot argue that modern societies are not governed by a single social order, but rather by multiple, coexisting "orders of worth" or "economies of worth."
Boltanski and Thévenot identify six distinct orders of worth, each representing a systematic and coherent principle of evaluation:
1. The Inspired World: Values creativity, spontaneity, and inner guidance. Exemplified by figures like Saint Augustine, this world emphasizes unique character and the capacity for inspiration.
2. The Domestic World: Values tradition, hierarchy, and personal relationships. Modeled on familial structures, this world prioritizes loyalty, obedience, and respect for authority (illustrated by Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet's Politics Drawn from the Very Words of Holy Scripture).
3. The Civic World: Values the common good, equality, and solidarity. Rooted in ideas of citizenship and collective responsibility, this world is exemplified by Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
4. The Market World: Values competition, efficiency, and the pursuit of self-interest. As described by Adam Smith, this world operates on principles of supply and demand, valuing individuals based on their ability to compete and accumulate wealth.
5. The Industrial World: Values productivity, efficiency, and technological progress. This world, represented by Henri de Saint-Simon, emphasizes standardized processes and the optimization of systems for maximum output.
6. The Fame World: Values recognition, reputation, and the pursuit of fame. Exemplified by Thomas Hobbes, this world focuses on visibility and the accumulation of social capital.
These orders are not confined to specific social domains, but coexist and interweave throughout the social space. The authors demonstrate this through a content analysis of texts used in managerial training in contemporary French corporations.
Each order of worth is illustrated with work from classic authors:
Central to On Justification is the notion of the "test" (épreuve), a moment when the worth of people or things is evaluated according to the principles of a particular common world. Legitimate tests allow for the resolution of disputes within a single order of worth. However, when agents in conflict refer to different orders of worth, legitimate tests are not available within a single framework. In such cases, if the agents are oriented toward a notion of the common good, an (albeit fragile) "compromise" may evolve to settle the dispute. The authors provide the example of workers' rights as a compromise between the industrial and civic orders. However, these compromises are always fragile because attempts to define the common good can reignite the conflict due to the lack of a higher common principle that can fully integrate the different orders of worth involved.
The book combines theoretical analysis with empirical observation, drawing on a wide range of sources including management handbooks, union manuals, and classical texts in political philosophy. The framework developed in On Justification has broad implications for understanding social coordination, conflict resolution, and the plurality of value systems in modern societies. It offers a nuanced alternative to both universalist theories of justice and relativist approaches to social values.
The New Spirit of Capitalism, 2005 (French original: 1999), co-authored with Ève Chiapello, explores a seventh "projective city" [8] organized around the concept of flexible networks now prominent in the conception of "the project". While On Justification was based on an analysis of major texts of political philosophy, this book is based on a systematic analysis of managerial literature from the 1960s and 1990s and aims "to describe the 'residue', which cannot be interpreted in the language of the six existing cities" (p. 24).
By ‘enrichment economy’, Boltanski and Esquerre (2014, 2016) designate a development of capitalism based on tourism, luxury, art and heritage. The term ‘enrichment’ does not refer to the growth of private fortunes, but rather to the processes that increase the value of objects. Boltanski and Esquerre define value as the justification for price. Any object can be enriched, however ancient or modern it is, and the enrichment can be physical or cultural, through the use of a narrative device. At the heart of this ‘enrichment economy’ is the ‘collection form’, which makes room in the capitalist cosmos for increasing the value of things from the past and things that, though they may be recent, are treated as if they were destined to become immortal.
Vilfredo Federico Damaso Pareto was an Italian polymath, whose areas of interest included sociology, civil engineering, economics, political science, and philosophy. He made several important contributions to economics, particularly in the study of income distribution and in the analysis of individuals' choices. He was also responsible for popularising the use of the term "elite" in social analysis.
Urban sociology is the sociological study of cities and urban life. One of the field’s oldest sub-disciplines, urban sociology studies and examines the social, historical, political, cultural, economic, and environmental forces that have shaped urban environments. Like most areas of sociology, urban sociologists use statistical analysis, observation, archival research, census data, social theory, interviews, and other methods to study a range of topics, including poverty, racial residential segregation, economic development, migration and demographic trends, gentrification, homelessness, blight and crime, urban decline, and neighborhood changes and revitalization. Urban sociological analysis provides critical insights that shape and guide urban planning and policy-making.
Modernization theory holds that as societies become more economically modernized, wealthier and more educated, their political institutions become increasingly liberal democratic. The "classical" theories of modernization of the 1950s and 1960s, most influentially articulated by Seymour Lipset, drew on sociological analyses of Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Talcott Parsons. Modernization theory was a dominant paradigm in the social sciences in the 1950s and 1960s, and saw a resurgence after 1991, when Francis Fukuyama wrote about the end of the Cold War as confirmation on modernization theory.
This is an index of sociology articles. For a shorter list, see List of basic sociology topics.
Moishe Postone was a Canadian historian, sociologist, political philosopher and social theorist. He was a professor of history at the University of Chicago, where he was part of the Committee on Jewish Studies.
Laurent Thévenot is a French sociologist Professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris).
Scott Lash is a professor of sociology and cultural studies at Goldsmiths, University of London. Lash obtained a BSc in Psychology from the University of Michigan, an MA in Sociology from Northwestern University, and a PhD from the London School of Economics (1980). Lash began his teaching career as a lecturer at Lancaster University and became a professor in 1993. He moved to London in 1998 to take up his present post as Director for the Centre for Cultural Studies and Professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths College.
Fred L. Block is an American sociologist, and Research Professor of Sociology at UC Davis. Block is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading economic and political sociologists. His interests are wide ranging. He has been noted as an influential follower of Karl Polanyi.
Articles in social and political philosophy include:
The sociology of literature is a subfield of the sociology of culture. It studies the social production of literature and its social implications. A notable example is Pierre Bourdieu's 1992 Les Règles de L'Art: Genèse et Structure du Champ Littéraire, translated by Susan Emanuel as Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field (1996).
Ernesto Screpanti is a professor of Political Economy who worked in various universities, like Trento, Florence, Trieste, Parma, New York, Rio de Janeiro, Siena. He did research in the “rethinking Marxism” scientific programme, in the attempt to update Marxist analysis by bringing it in line with the reality of contemporary capitalism, on the one hand, and to liberate Marxism from any residue of Hegelian metaphysics, Kantian ethics and economic determinism, on the other.
Critique of political economy or simply the first critique of economy is a form of social critique that rejects the conventional ways of distributing resources. The critique also rejects what its advocates believe are unrealistic axioms, faulty historical assumptions, and taking conventional economic mechanisms as a given or as transhistorical. The critique asserts the conventional economy is merely one of many types of historically specific ways to distribute resources, which emerged along with modernity.
This bibliography of sociology is a list of works, organized by subdiscipline, on the subject of sociology. Some of the works are selected from general anthologies of sociology, while other works are selected because they are notable enough to be mentioned in a general history of sociology or one of its subdisciplines.
Political economy in anthropology is the application of the theories and methods of historical materialism to the traditional concerns of anthropology, including but not limited to non-capitalist societies. Political economy introduced questions of history and colonialism to ahistorical anthropological theories of social structure and culture. Most anthropologists moved away from modes of production analysis typical of structural Marxism, and focused instead on the complex historical relations of class, culture and hegemony in regions undergoing complex colonial and capitalist transitions in the emerging world system.
A critical theory is any approach to humanities and social philosophy that focuses on society and culture to attempt to reveal, critique, and challenge power structures. With roots in sociology and literary criticism, it argues that social problems stem more from social structures and cultural assumptions than from individuals. Some hold it to be an ideology, others argue that ideology is the principal obstacle to human liberation. Critical theory finds applications in various fields of study, including psychoanalysis, film theory, literary theory, cultural studies, history, communication theory, philosophy, and feminist theory.
Maria N. Antonopoulou is an emeritus professor at the Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences Athens, Department of Sociology. She holds a PhD in sociology, Birmingham University, UK. She has published four books and several articles.
Richard Lachmann was an American sociologist and specialist in comparative historical sociology who was a professor at University at Albany, SUNY.
The sociology of valuation is an emerging area of study focusing on the tools, models, processes, politics, cultural differences and other inputs and outcomes of valuation.
Philippe Corcuff is a French academic, full professor in political science at the Institut d'études politiques de Lyon since October 1992 and member of the CERLIS laboratory since October 2003. Politically committed to the left, with a trajectory that took him from social democracy to pragmatic anarchism, via the ecologists and the New Anti-Capitalist Party, he defines himself as an “anti-globalization and libertarian activist”. He was a columnist for the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo from 2001 to 2004.
Ève Chiapello is Professor at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), Paris, where she holds a chair in the 'sociology of the transformation of capitalism'. She has published numerous articles and books, including Artists Versus Managers (1998) and The New Spirit of Capitalism, translated into nine languages including English (2005).