Review article: Action as a combination

of 'common worlds'*
Nicolas Dodier
De la justification: Les economies de la grandeur
Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thevenot Gallimard Paris 1991 F
165, 485 pp. " , ,r
L et la justice comme competence: trois essais de sociolou'
de I actIOn 0 Ie
Luc Boltanski, Metailie, Paris, 1990, Fr 140, 382 pp.
In their recent writing Luc Bo1tanski and Laurent Thevenot
.the characteristics of action. The object of
thIS reVIew to mtroduce their important work, which is little
kn,:wn outsIde to an English-speaking audience. Their
baSIC argument IS sImple. It is that human action may be seen
a.s a of sequences in which agents seek to respond to the'
by mobilizing a limited number of specific
Or 'reglmes. of ac!ion'. It is this claim which is the distinctive fea-
ture of theIr the that agents deploy a small
number of to underpm and justify their acts and judge-
ments. In reVIew I by exploring the overall framework
and then .some of its implications for a series
of fundamental Issues m socIal science including the character of
agency and the way. in this relates to analytical time
fra.r.n
e
, the role of.obJects m socIal life, the relationship between
and phIlosophy, and questions of epistemology. In
addItIOn to De la justification (DJ) and L' Amour et la justice
(Al) I also focus on Laurent Thevenot (1990) 'L'acf .
convient' (AC). Ion qUI
*Translated by Philippa Crutchley Wallis
C> The Editorial Board of The Sociological Rev; 1993 P bl"
108 Cowley Road Oxford OX4 I1P UK and 23S
ew
M' S U IS
C
hed by Blackwell Publisbers,
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Review Article
Plural worlds and the cbaracter of competence
Boltanski and Thevenot claim that it is possible to break chains
of action into moments. Then they argue that in each particular
situation people mobilize the appropriate competence. For
instance they may 'switch to a state of justice' (Al p. 143), 'inter-
act with persons finnly fixed in another state' (Al, idem), or
'switch into another type of convention' (Ae p. 56). Though this
is a general claim, the authors focus in particular on what they
call 'disputes of justice' - those episodes when people who are in
disagreement put forward different justificatory principles and
search for a valid framework for agreement.
Put in this way this sounds abstract. But in practice it is very
concrete. An example will help, Imagine a factory manufacturing
metal drums. There is an incident on a production line. The fore-
man sees that the drums are dented and blames a particular
worker. The latter protests and says he is doing his best, but that
the machines are badly regulated because of constant switches in
production. The foreman retorts that the company has to react
quickly to market fluctuations, so employees and machines need to
be adaptable. The worker replies that nobody can work at that
rate and that he can't cope any more. 'And in any case' he adds,
'that's not the real problem. The real problem is that you're on my
back because I'm the shop steward'. The foreman tells the worker
he's 'crazy' and that he is not anti union. But, he says, if the
drums come out dented again he'll have to tell the supervisor.
This is the kind of dispute described by Boltanski and
Thevenot, one in which the protagonists each mobilizes his sense
of justice. The interaction reflects a conflict between different
notions of what is right: judging an individual's skill; adapting to
the laws of the market; criticizing impossible working conditions;
defending democracy in the company all of these draw on
specific models of justice.
In the first book (DJ) the authors consider six such models,
ways of assessing the 'worth' of human beings, or 'common-
wealths'. In the commonwealth of inspiration worth depends on a
state of grace; in the domestic commonwealth it has to do with
hierarchy; in the commonwealth of opinion it rests on the opinion
of others; in the civic commonwealth worth means giving up per-
sonal interests because social links between people are mediated
by the general will; in the mercantile commonwealth interaction
"The Editorial Board ofTbe Sociological Review 1993 557
Nicolas Dodier
depends on the free circulation of desirable goods and personal
worth is a function of wealth; and in the industrial commonwealth
worth is linked to efficiency and professional ability.!
Each of these models is derived from a major work of political
philosophy which makes explicit claims about the basis of a just
and universal order. But - and this is the novelty of the position
developed by Boltanski and Thevenot - it is also suggested that
each is used in daily practice by people as they disagree with one
another. For instance in the drum factory there were references,
explicit or implicit, to the industrial commonwealth (judgements
about skill), the mercantile commonwealth (the idea that har-
mony reflects the quick adjustment of supply and demand), and
the civic commonwealth (where the common good depends on
democratic systems which take citizens' aspirations into account).
In practice people usually use these principles of justice in a
fragmentary or indirect way. Nevertheless, Boltanski and
Thevenot claim that people draw consistently on these six mod-
els. The argument, then, is that in any particular dispute the
models are not fully spelled out but that their complete descrip-
tion is to be found in the texts written by political philosophers
who had the time and inclination to spell out the character of a
just social order. So how do we know that they have chosen the
right works of political philosophy? The answer, say Boltanski
and Thevenot, is empirical. We will only know we have got it
right when their arguments are used by people as they justify
their behaviour.
Boltanski and Thevenot also suggest that in their arguments
people refer to objects. That is, they refer to a 'common world'.
By drawing on objective links between people, they hope to call
on a reality valid for all by testing their verbal judgements. Thus
in the factory foreman may point to dents in the drums while the
worker finds another drum to show that there is nothing special
about this batch. There is argument, and someone suggests that
they should telephone the customer and ask him what he thinks.
Meanwhile, the foreman looks in the records to see whether the
worker has been involved in other accidents, and the worker
shows that he is tired by pointing to the way his hands tremble
and promises to put the question of complaints by workers on
the agenda of the next union meeting.
Boltanski and Thevenot are suggesting, therefore, that when-
ever we judge or decide something, we also mobilize objects to
indicate that we have a 'sense of the common order' (DJ p.
558 C> The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1993
Review Article
101ft). The latter has two components. On the one it is
gested that people have a 'sense of the natural orde; . an
to recognize objects that might be used to promo:e theIr of
view. On the other, they also have a 'moral sense an abIhty to
link particular circumstances with valid
justice. So valid justification depends on cItmg objects appropn-
ate to the principle of justice or 'commonwealth'. For example" a
long tenn plan may fit with the industrial, but not the mercantlie
commonwealth where desires or needs change rapidly. And an
employee's professional competence is assessed by professional
tests and not company elections. Boltanski and Thevenot hypoth-
esize that there is a 'common world' appropriate to each com-
monwealth - a set of 'beings' appropriate to each principle of
justice which links political philosophy ,to the. of
action. So they assume that people have a cognItIve and moral
capacity to make judgements' and can link the objects argu-
ments used in particular circumstances to the appropnate com-
mon world and model of justice. In other words, they assume
that people are able to 'test' their environment. And that each
'common world' defines a set of legitimate tests: elections belong
to the civic world, the customer's opinion to the mercantile
world, and professional tests to the industrial world.
People can choose which commonwealth and wO,rld
to refer to. That is, they can adjust their view of the SItuatIOn
depending on whether they wish to embark on a 'civic', a 'mer-
cantile' or an 'industrial' test. Again, when tests are started by
someone else, they can choose whether or not to refer. to the
same world. So there is a complex geometry of levels of mvolve-
ment: people may protest about the hidden presence of beings
that belong to another world (,denunciation'); choose whether or
not to notice the existence of certain beings; make a balanced
judgement by considering beings from different world ('p:u-
dence'); reach agreement by admitting that principles are
(,relativisation'); and imply that other beings are present WIthout
actually saying so. .'
In (DJ) Boltanski and Thevenot thus define actIOn as of
moments and index the disputes of justice as confrontatIOns
between the six 'common worlds', They also, however, discuss
intervals of 'peace in accuracy' when all the beings belong to the
same world and no-one disturbs the peace by noticing or invok-
ing beings from another world, And Boltanski (AJ) extends the
argument by considering what happens when people replace the
<0 The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1993
559
Nicolas Dodier
for justice with a search for love (or Christian 'agape').
Agam, he draws on traditional (philosophical and religious) texts,
and that people are able to recognize and participate in
agape without knowing its theory. But there is a difference
between justice and agape, for in the latter objects are not rele-
vant. .People are caught up less in 'situations' (and arrangements
of objects) and more in 'states'. In the same work Boltanski also
cons!de.rs This erupts when disagreements are not set-
tled m Justice by means of tests but rather by delegating action to
unknown, outside forces.
Thevenot (AC) extends the approach in another direction. He
places :justified' actions in the more general context of 'appropri-
ate actIOn' - that is action judged in terms of its success or fail-
ure. show.s there are different levels for specifying the
behaVIOur of mdlVlduals. On the lowest level there are 'intimate
gestures', the domain of 'personal convenience' in which the
is physically involved in his or her 'relationship to
Then there are 'acceptable actions' which imply the coor-
dmatIon of actions of several people. Finally, at the highest
level, there IS the common designation of things in 'collective
conventions' of justification.
The model assumes that there are many worlds of action. But
has implications for agency since it means that actors are
highly .competent can recognize and interact with the beings
belongmg to a particular world. Look what is involved. Each
assem?les. a collection of beings in terms of its logic (a
prmclple Justice,. a state of love, a type of convention), and
each has ItS own mternal dynamic. But there is no harmony
between worlds. Acting in one world and then in another trans-
posing beings from one to another, assembling beings beionging
t? several of action - all of these are demanding opera-
tIons.
2
A bemg may be 'great' in one world and 'small' in
anoth.er. Or it may. not be recognised at all. And the language
used m one world IS not understood in another. So to act is to
combine elements from many worlds - a complex, skilful and
hazardous accomplishment.
Timeframes, actions and competences
Many sociologies are concerned with short sequences of action
but Boltanski and Thevenot's approach is distinctive. For though
560
The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1993
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people may remain in the same regime for a long period, in their
sociology there is no need to study extended time.
this is an important theoretical point, because the appropnate
timeframe for sociological analysis is closely linked to models of
agency. Boltanski and Thevenot insist that agents are
which means that their sociology differs both from the dispOSI-
tional sociology of Bourdieu and the interest theory of such soci-
ologists as Crozier.
Consider first the timeframes associated with the notion of 'dis-
position'. Here agents embody and deploy a series of
stable competencies which define a habitus that charactenzes a
location in social space. When competencies change this reflects
deeper changes in the social field. Accordingly significant changes
are slow and the analytical time frame is extended. Again, such
'dispositions' act at an unconscious level, both as 'causes' and
'motives'. So in a dispositional sociology agents exist on two lev-
els - visible or conscious motives, and unconscious motives or dis-
positions - which operate in different timeframes. Surface act!ons
are shaped by apparent motives, while there a
longer timeframe appropriate to unconscIOus strategies.
Accordingly rapid shifts in action are superficial and less impor-
tant than the underlying designs which reflect both the structural
properties of the field and the 'character' of individuals.
Analogous arguments apply to 'interest sociologies' which also
distinguish between apparent motives and those that are real.
Thus the short term concerns, intentions and reasons of the
strategic actor only make sense within a broader plan of actio?:
so interests and presentation are distinguished. Thus III
Goffman's sociology, the actor attempts impression management,
and in Crozier's the actor's desire for power determines the posi-
tions he displays. Here again, the sociological timeframe has little
to do with short term appearances. What happens is part of a
deeper strategy, and what the actor anticipates is more important
than his immediate intentions. What is really important is hidden
behind the veil of appearance.
Boltanski and Thevenot's approach is quite different. They are
concerned with short sequences and timeframes, and shifts
between situations. In addition, they don't project from individ-
ual justifications to hidden motives. Imagine, for instance, that
after visiting the factory mentioned above an inspector wrote a
report critical about safety. Before starting her ethnography a
field sociologist influenced by Bourdieu's sociology would collect
The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1993
561
Nicolas Dodier
background information about training, social origins and pro-
fessional experience in order to locate the inspector (and the
other protagonists) in a series of fields. And she would use indi-
cators such as differences in dress and talk to show how inequali-
ties were highlighted or concealed by agents. The object would be
to identify, behind the participants' descriptions, the theoretical
agents that give the scene its real significance for it is assumed
that a dispute embodies relationships in a social space which can
only be decoded by means of preliminary contextual work.
An interest sociologist - for instance influenced by Crozier -
would also establish prior conditions, but she would go about
differently, gathering information about the position of the
inspector in a series of different systems of action: relations with
the administration; the inspector/trade-unionlboss triangle; rela-
tions with different state authorities, and so on. She would then
work out how the inspector would act in each system of action in
order to increase his power, position, or salary, and consider the
inspector's local alliances: whom did he support, in what context,
about what? Again, the aim would be to go beyond the interac-
tion by making sense of power plays in different systems.
For Boltanski and Th6venot the prior conditions are different.
The sociologist would start by talking to the inspector and listing
the means he used to make his judgement. Then she would tape-
record his visit to see how people 'populate the pertinent world'.
And she would go on to consider how he formed and gave his
judgement. So she might watch as he observed a worker, ques-
tioned employees about problems and procedures or consulted
the records. She might not understand all the terms or the refer-
ences to past events though she might extrapolate from some of
these to further similar events. But unlike the sociologies
described above, she would not use these prior conditions to
define a preliminary portrait of the inspector within a system of
relations between agents. Instead, she would create them as a list
of the resources the inspector mobilized to define or judge the
'beings' in the company. And until she went to the factory she
would have no idea what to these would be.
In this sociology interaction is thus a series of sequences in
which the inspector 'tests' certain 'beings' in order to judge the
'risks'. Certain sequences speak of certain 'beings'. What is this
unidentified liquid? The nearest worker doesn't know. Another
says that it is an oil used to check that drums are watertight. The
laboratory records take the form of a commercial code and don't
562 The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1993
Review Article
say anything about chemical composition. In t?is w.ay: the sociol.-
ogist would discover different models for the 011
together with their worlds: an (chemical
sition)' informal relations (the ClfcuiatlOn of the contamer
workers); personal convenience (the fact that the
cannot identify the oil); and a mercantile world (a
code). The object is to explore how eleI?ents . are
together in each test. It is not to a link With tIme-
frames such as the trajectory of the or the. history of
the field. For the assumption is that the mspector will to
adjust to the constraints of the situation and cope th.e
unexpected emergence of objects (a strange drum of flUid,
cal constraints' or the 'laws of the market') and the regime of
action imposed by other people.
Several lessons can be drawn from this compari.son .. first
concerns prior conditions. A to. dispositIOns.
interests demands a sociological portrait of the !hIS IS
because his real concerns are a function of this But
Boltanski and Thevenot ask us to ignore prior and
instead consider series of specific problems that for
agents as they make judgements about complex realities and
events. This, then, is the second lesson: it is important .to explore
the temporal flow of actions, the continuous work of mterpreta-
tion by agents as they link to cate-
gories, and the way in which they diSCUSS, negotiate, and
question their earlier as. they seek new agreements
that will allow the interactIOn to contmue.
Several sociologies have explored the character of the. local
coordination of interaction. However, though Boltanskl and
Thevenot follow in this tradition, their work addresses a new set
of questions: if agreements are local what, if anything,. can one
say about the general resources and mechamsms that
allow people to adjust and arrive at a .conciuslOn? And what are
the conventions which allow them to mteract while at the same
time linking themselves to more general that greater
in scope? Their approach suggests an solu-
tion to this problem of local ordering. betw.een
different regimes of action, and by allowmg to SWitch
or transfer resources from one regime to another, It acknowl-
edges the uncertainties which operate in contexts.
by taking the costs of switching from one to another
ously, it makes it possible to explore the qualities people mobilize
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563
Nicolas Dodier
when they operate within or pass between regimes. This then is
a 'pragmatic' approach, but it is a structured pragmatism,
which does not place too great an emphasis on contingency.
Objects
Sociology, science, technology and society, and cognitive science
become increasingly concerned with the way in which
objects shape, coordinate and restrict action. Boltanski and
Thevenot have their own particular perspective on the role of
objects. They argue that agents involved in a regime of action
their attention on certain beings and the specific paths that
Identify and qualify these beings. And - as we saw when the
!nspector to identify an unknown liquid - each regime has
ItS. tests and ways of judging objects. The important
IS to treat the different paths for approaching objects sym-
metncally and to make no distinction between those that are
high status (like science) and those that are not. Instead the aim
is .to the ways in which different regimes constitute
objects. For Instance, in the 'world of inspiration', objects 'are
not separate from the person. They belong both to the mind and
the .. In a (DJ p. 116) the world is impreg-
?y ImpreSSIOns and feehngs, by an aura of happiness, ver-
tIgo,fnght and trembling' (DJ p. 119). In the 'domestic world'
objects 'underpin and demonstrate the hierarchical
between persons' (DJ p. 124). The superior assesses the object
a?d 'trusts, assesses, values, congratulates, judges, demonstrates
?IS contempt, (DJ p 130). This approach is a plural-
ISt fO?D of realism - pluralist because it recognizes
an. med.uclble diverSity of worlds, and pragmatic because judging
objects IS a part of action.
Action is often mediated through the manipulation of intenne-
dia.ry And those intennediaries do not just belong to the
domains of scientific, administrative, economic, tech-
mca.1 and action. Thus Boltanski and Th{:venot CDJ) explore
farmly, rehglOus and artistic disputes where there is attention to
objects and the complex chains used to refer to these objects.
An.d they also the domain of love and intimate gestures
which reveal mediations that are no less complex for being non-
technical. For example, they analyse the use of metaphor in
agape (AJ), or the ways in which people become familiar with
564
The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1993
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objects in the environment in tenns of personal convenience
CAC). Throughout, the concern is not to define the primary chan-
nel for approaching objects, but to understand how ,people trans-
fer judgements made in one regime to another.
Philosophy and sociology
If a 'laboratory' is a set of spaces where the researcher looks for
entities on which to base her reasoning and share with her read-
ers, then Boltanski and Th{:venot are seeking a new kind of link
between the 'laboratories' of philosophy and sociology, a link in
which sociology is associated with a philosophy that both allows
and requires detours into the empirical. Hence their novel and
sometimes seemingly incongruous juxtaposition of major texts
from philosophy with everyday empirical sources. The argument
is that philosophical texts (and especially political philosophy and
Christian theology) may be seen as particularly well-developed
investigations into the foundations of worlds of action.
Accordingly such texts are empirical documents, and part of the
basic corpus of written material to be used in the contemporary
sociological laboratory.
Boltanski and Thevenot also borrow from analytical philoso-
phy, but do so quite differently. Their interest in the different
ways of referring to reality and approaching objects leads them
to the semantic questions associated with the philosophy of lan-
guage and the Anglo-Saxon pragmatism of Austin and Searle.
Their concern, then, is with a kind of 'analytical sociology' in
which analytical philosophy's imaginative laboratory of thought
is replaced by the laboratory of empirically observed actions. The
object is to clarify the words used by individuals, to represent
explicitly 'the conventions on which their words are based' (AJ
p. 59), and to identify 'the implicit meaning with which the actor
is comfortable' (AJ p. 60). The advantage of this sociological
shift is that it reflects not simply on language but also explores
the weight of the 'apparatus' (inventories, machines, intennediary
objects) which surrounds the actor when she judges a reality.
Boltanski and Th{:venot also reveal preoccupations anchored in
the henneneutic tradition. For instance Ricoeur (1986), who
argues that understanding of the self is mediated by signs, sym-
bols and texts, avoids the inwardness of an approach that is
purely reflective. But Boltanski and Th{:venot extend Ricoeur's
The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1993 565
Nicolas Dodier
'empirical detour'. For them, it is not simply a question of exam-
ining sentences to show where the person fits in; rather, it is a
matter of linking statements to 'tests'. In this sociology
hermeneutics is extended to action and the limits of the philo-
sophical laboratory are overcome as it seeks to understand the
self.
This suggests several possibilities for empirical study. The first
is to work with texts produced by people when they justify them-
selves. Thus the chapter on 'denunciation' (AJ, part 3) is based
on letters sent for publication to Le Monde. Investigation of the
way in which disputes of justice are opened, closed and re-opened
relies on documents collected as the controversy unfolds
(Chateauraynaud, 1991). The second possibility is that of obser-
vation. In this way the shifts between different regimes can be
detected as sequences of action develop. In addition, observation
uncovers the judgements made by individuals: how they recog-
nize, identify and prove the existence and character of beings. It
also shows how individuals switch between the general and the
particular as, for instance, happened with the identification of
the contents of the strange drum during the factory inspector's
visit. Finally, with observation it is possible to follow the ways in
which beings are transposed into successive worlds of action. The
third empirical possibility is that of 'sociological experiments' in
which the sociologist seeks to record the relations between worlds
of action. For instance, she might deliberately seek to limit peo-
ple to certain regimes of action - as, for example, in questioning
when interviewees are asked to justify their actions. Again, such
'experiments' might take the form of games in which certain rules
of judgement were systematically reinforced or relaxed.
Sociology and epistemology
As is well known, there is a fundamental epistemological division
in sociology between those who start from the point of view of
the actor and those, such as Durkheim, who endow the agent
with essential attributes or intentions of which she is incompletely
aware. However, though these two approaches differ they share a
kind of epistemological confidence, the assumption that sociology
can obtain access to social reality. It is this access which is said
to distinguish social science from everyday knowledge.
Many of the major debates of sociology take place in this epis-
566 o The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1993
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temological context. Each side claims that its model of the actor
and its method of interpretation allow it special c ~ to reality.
The importance of ethnomethodology in the history of sociology
is that it transformed the terms of these traditional debates.
Ethnomethodologists denied that one could say anything about
the motives of actors that would differ significantly from what
laymen already say. They denied the sociologist's claim to
uncover the real but hidden meaning of action, and thus defended
a very restricted concept of rigour. The key suggestions became:
suspend judgement; stop attributing conscious or unconscious
motives to individual's actions; describe what we actually observe
in detail; and instead of imputing meanings to actions, examine
the methods that people adopt, locally, to demonstrate to others
that their actions are meaningful.
Boltanski and Thevenot believe, like the ethnomethodologists,
that there is a fine line between scholarly and lay interpretations
of action and that we cannot automatically give precedence to
the sociologist's interpretation over that of ordinary people. Thus
as we have seen, in their work they attend to the way in which
people themselves qualify, identify, interpret and explain events.
But their approach is not ethnomethodological. DJ can be
summed up as follows: let us take peoples' justifications seriously
and study them in their plurality; let us observe how explanations
are displayed, and accumulate the accounts people give of their
actions; and let us examine the sense of justice they thereby
express. Here, then, with their pluralistic and pragmatic episte-
mology, they part company from those who claim that they can
describe the true meaning of action, but they do so without
adopting the interpretive restrictions of ethnomethodology and
excluding the possibility of a sociological discourse about action.
Boltanski and Thevenot's general theory of judgement is also
applied to the sociologist. Any discussion of individual actions,
whether sociological or not, requires assent to a regime of tests
for recognizing beings that imposes constraints on judgement.
Each regime suggests possibilities and imposes imperatives. But
by adopting the hypothesis of a plurality of regimes Boltanski
and Tbevenot avoid unitary realism. On the other hand, by tak-
ing the imperatives that guarantee the relevance of the discourse
within each regime seriously, they also avoid a Nietszehean ver-
sion of post-modernism in which discourse becomes a playful
affirmation of individuality.
At the same time there is nothing to stop us going beyond
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Nicolas Dodier
appearances to examine strategic interests or unconscious disposi-
tions - a critical process common to sociology and non-sociology
alike. Here the individual grounds herself in the objectivity of a
'common world' to unveil the true nature of action and challenge
the illusions (or pretentions) of those who believe (or claim),
wrongly, that they live in a particular world. But when she
unveils what is 'really going on', what she is doing is to position
herself in one of many common worlds, and speak from the cor-
responding commonwealth. For example, if she says that factory
inspectors are more interested in maintaining good relations with
their departmental heads than with whether a particular firm
respects the labour legislation, she is in the process of denouncing
a 'domestic' world from the standpoint of the 'civic' world.
Boltanski's and Thevenot's model is thus a powerful instrument
for dissecting the form of analysis undertaken both by lay people
and sociologists as they seek to uncover their version of the
truth, and points the way not towards a critical sociology, but
rather to sociology of criticism.
How, when he sacrifices this 'intelligence' (AJ p. 63), will the
sociologist herself judge actions? What claims can she make?
Once we acknowledge the symmetrical existence of different com-
monwealths, or different worlds of action, we lose the self-assur-
ance of those who believe in a single world and thus in a single
basic reality. On the other hand, we gain the possibility of reveal-
ing the tensions which result from the confrontation between
worlds. This suggests a new way of thinking of the relations
between individuals. Sociologists will no longer seek to judge the
validity of people's observations - this would contradict the the-
sis of plurality - but rather to demonstrate the difficulties of
moving from one world into another.
Historical time
Those who work on short sequences of action are often accused
of 'forgetting about history'. But, as I have already noted, a
longer timeframe is only necessary if agents are said to have rela-
tively stable competences, while short sequences are important if
we wish to observe the passage between different competencies in
the same person. Indeed, we need to start by 'forgetting about
history' if we want to treat the shifts that take place in the pre-
sent as anything other than superficial tremors. However, this
568 10 The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1993
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does not mean that the sociologist is unaware of longer historical
sequences, but simply that she takes a contrasting aPl'roach to
the relative importance of different timeframes. .
In disputes of justice, people tell stories in their justifications.
They refer to the past to find events which allow them to judge-
ments about the present, and they assume that action occurs
according to rules that can be reconstructed with hindsight (AJ p.
130). They sometimes refer to events long past which they believe
contain the origins of the present. So in this sociology stories are
extended through time and historical time is not discounted.
Rather the way in which the past is recalled is treated as an
expression of a regime of justification. So sociologists assume
responsibility for dividing up the network of stories that is told .in
regimes. On the other hand, they 'delegate' the task of reorgamz-
ing events into longer timeframes to others. The language of the
'individual' finds powerful justification here for 'individuals' act in
sequences of action and so configure their own identity and han-
dle the dialectic between the fragmentation of moments and the
potential unity of their being. So the object is to observe t ~
processes whereby individuals relate the tests of the present to dIf-
ferent timeframes. This division between different voices is a first
response to the claim that history has been forgotten.
Remember that situations are defined in terms of lists of beings,
and the stability of these inventories is central to the model of the
commonwealths. Boltanski and Thevenot suggest that 'pure'
assemblies (which depend on a single commonwealth) are more
solid than 'hybrid' assemblies, which are constantly under threat
from the tendency of their components to separate. But this
hypothesis suggests a relationship with history. Historical investi-
gation might take the form of the study over time of the transfor-
mation of the assemblies which govern tests. In particular, we
might explore the way in which the display of justifications
accompanies the construction of a new apparatus. Thus when the
apparatus is transformed, individuals are obliged to examine the
general character of their proposals more closely - and reference
to principles of justice becomes particularly important.
But there is a third dimension to the question of history. It
involves understanding how the sociologist defines and assumes
responsibility for his own terms within a historical context.
Boltanski and Thevenot do this for their own work by linking it
to a particular tradition. They argue that the past hands down a
set of texts that embody 'fundamental' work based on experi-
10 The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1993
569
Nicolas Dodier
ences of the world that are shared, in part at least, by their con-
temporaries. The object is to create a link between a textual tra-
dition and a pragmatic system of judgement. This daring
approach assumes that people share an 'ordinary sense of jus-
tice', and that when they justify their behavior they draw upon a
common reservoir of conceptions of justice. Their access to this
common capacity allows them to choose between different mod-
els of justice. This common reservoir represents a common inter-
nalized historical heritage. For Boltanski and Thevenot, the key
political philosophical texts deepen the ordinary sense of justice,
by endowing it with a coherence and architecture that cannot
unfold in the course of ordinary events. Reciprocally, the
influence of these texts reinforces the unremitting presence of this
heritage.
The hypothesis that there is a plural historical heritage which
shapes our sense of everyday justice raises two questions. The
first is to ask what happens if one extends analysis beyond those
actions that are determined 'according to justice'. Thus it only
makes sense to use philosophical texts to build models if people
justify their behavior by referring to a just and universal com-
monwealth. This is because only such texts are able to offer a
complete account of the commonwealth, in the context of a prag-
matic plan. However, if one retains a general theory of action as
a combination of distinctive regimes while abandoning the ques-
tion of justice, one must invent other methods of constructing
pertinent regimes (Dodier, 1993).
The second question concerns how agents acquire a 'sense of
justice'. The idea of a common heritage in the form of a set of
'commonwealths' suggests that when people think they rely upon
certain stable and long-standing resources which have been refor-
mulated in the context of the present. But Boltanski and
Thevenot do not describe how a common sense of justice is
formed via the heritage of a few commonwealths. So how is this
done? How does our heritage shape our present actions? How is
it passed on? These are important questions which Boltanski and
Thevenot themselves scarcely consider. But much recent work in
sociology suggests that the answers will be complex, and will
involve careful study of the materials that 'support' the transmis-
sion of heritage, materials that will include knowledgeable peo-
ple, but also texts, images, and technical objects.
Centre de Recherche Medecine, Maladie et Sciences Sociales
570 The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1993
I
I
I
I,
Review Article
Notes
Boltanski and Thevenot refer to the works of Saint Augustine (the common-
wealth of inspiration), Hobbes (the commonwealth of OpIniOn), Bossuet (t.he
domestic commonwealth), Rousseau (the civic commomveatlh), Adam SmIth
(the mercantile commonwealth), Saint-Simon (the mdustnal comm?nwealth).
2 These tensions between worlds of action are not like contradlctlons
'norms' or 'roles'. Roles, norms and injunctions represent only a fraction of
the beings (persons. objects, supernatural beings. conventIOns) .that rec-
ognize when they act in several worlds. To pass one regIme action to
another is, we might say, more 'upsetting' tban takmg on a succession of dif-
ferent roles.
References
Chateauraynaud, Francis, (1991). La faute professionne/le. Une soci%gie des
confiils de responsabilite. Paris, Metailie. ....
D ill N
' I s (1993) L'expertise medica/e. Essai de soclO/ogle sur / exerclce du
o ert 100 a , t
jugement, Paris, Metailie, , " "\
R
Paul (1986) Du texle d ['action. Essais dhermeneutlque II, Pans, $cUI.
ICoeur, , , . . k Ph d Luis
Thevenot, Laurent, (1990) 'L'action qui convient', m ar? an 0
Qeilre (OOs), us Formes de L'Action: Semantique et SoclO/ogle, Pans, EHSS.
The Editorial Board of The Sociological Review 1993
571
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1993 Editorial Board of The Sociological Review
ISSN 0038 - 0261

i Volume 41 No. 3 August 1993
I
review
Contents
Typification in a neuro-rehabilitation centre: Scheff revisited?
Lesley Griffiths and David Hughes 415
The pull of the fruit machine: a sociological typology of
young players
Sue Fisher
Renegotiating the domestic division of labour? A study of
dual career households in north east and south east England
Nicky Gregson and Michelle Lowe
Household finance management and the labour market:
a case study in Hartlepool
Lydia Morris
Research note:
Strategies in eliciting sensitive sexual information:
the case of gay men
Anthony P.M. Coxon with P.M. Davies, A.J. Hunt, T.].
McManus. eM. Rees and P. Weatherburn
Review articles:
Nicolas Dodier on Boistanksi, Thevenot and the sociology
of action
Nicos Mouzelis on David Lockwood

Book reviews '" .
Books received 1 3 [1UUI BiD!lolbequl!
A'fl
Notes on contributors
Keele University
446
475
506
537
556
572
583
610
617