On Justification: Economies of Worth

ISBN-13: 9780691125169 / Angielski / Miękka / 2006 / 400 str.

Laurent Thevenot

Opis

A vital and underappreciated dimension of social interaction is the way individuals justify their actions to others, instinctively drawing on their experience to appeal to principles they hope will command respect. Individuals, however, often misread situations, and many disagreements can be explained by people appealing, knowingly and unknowingly, to different principles. On Justification is the first English translation of Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thevenot's ambitious theoretical examination of these phenomena, a book that has already had a huge impact on French sociology and is likely to have a similar influence in the English-speaking world. In this foundational work of post-Bourdieu sociology, the authors examine a wide range of situations where people justify their actions. The authors argue that justifications fall into six main logics exemplified by six authors: civic (Rousseau), market (Adam Smith), industrial (Saint-Simon), domestic (Bossuet), inspiration (Augustine), and fame (Hobbes). The authors show how these justifications conflict, as people compete to legitimize their views of a situation.On Justification is likely to spark important debates across the social sciences.

O autorze

Luc Boltanski wurde 1940 als Kind eines jüdischen Arztes und einer katholischen Mutter in Paris geboren. Zunächst Schüler von Pierre Bourdieu, etablierte er dann eine eigene Soziologie der Kritik. 1984 gründete er die Groupe de Sociologie Politique et Morale an der École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. Kürzlich wurden seine Adorno-Vorlesungen aus dem Jahre 2008 veröffentlicht