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O humano recolocado na atividade. : Uma Conversa Com Laurent Thévenot

The Human Being Placed Back Into Action: A Conversation With Laurent Thévenot

Frédéric Vandenberghe & Alexandre Werneck (2026)

Sociologia & Antropologia, 16(1).
Open access

Resumo. Laurent Thévenot é uma das principais figuras da sociologia pragmática na França. Oriundo da sociologia da quantificação e da categorização na esteira de Pierre Bourdieu, cunhou o conceito de “formas de investimento”. Em colaboração com Luc Boltanski, elaborou em De la justification um quadro rigoroso, o chamado “modelo das cités”, para a análise de momentos críticos e de disputas em público. Em seguida, desenvolveu sua própria teoria da ação em outro quadro conceitual que articula diferentes regimes de engajamento (justificação, plano, proximidade), ilustrado por pesquisas empíricas realizadas na França, nos Estados Unidos, na Rússia e também no Brasil. Na entrevista, editada numa autobiografia intelectual, Thévenot reconstrói seu próprio itinerário, de Bourdieu a Desrosières e Boltanski até suas pesquisas atuais sobre os lugares-comuns, dando atenção especial ao seu diálogo com colaboradores brasileiros. A entrevista é precedida de uma apresentação de sua obra pelos organizadores do dossiê.

Abstract. Laurent Thévenot is one of the main figures of pragmatic sociology in France. Coming from the sociology of quantification and categorisation that takes its cues from Pierre Bourdieu, he coined the concept of “forms of investment”. Together with Luc Boltanski, in De la justification he worked out a rigorous framework, known as the “model of the cités”, to analyse critical public moments and disputes. Then, he developed his own theory of action in another conceptual framework that articulates various regimes of engagement (justification, the plan, proximity), exemplified by empirical research in France, the US, Russia, and Brazil. In this interview, edited as an extended autobiography, Thévenot reconstructs his own trajectory from Bourdieu via Desrosières and Boltanski to his current research on common-places, focusing on his dialogue with Brazilian collaborators. The interview is preceded by a presentation of his lifework by the editors of this dossier.

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A pragmatic approach to combating environmental disorders

Lien vers la version française

Interview with Robert Salais by Christian Bessy regarding his book

Le piège climatique. Entre le temps qui vient et le temps qui reste
(The Climate Trap: Between the Time to Come and the Time Remaining).
Villeneuve-d’Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion. 2025.
https://www.septentrion.com/fr/book/?GCOI=27574100146100

How did you come to take an interest in environmental issues?
I grew up in the countryside and returned there regularly, so I’ve always felt at home with nature. I’ve always enjoyed being lulled by birdsong and am always amazed when I spot a wild animal. I’m acutely aware of how quickly they’re disappearing. At INSEE, working on the ‘unemployed’ category made me realise how much the pursuit of a ‘real’ history comes up against an obsession with long-term trends, as well as a belief in a linear, singular and macro-level time. This approach doesn’t work for nature or for global warming. We must account for phenomena that follow historical processes across multiple levels, timeframes, phases, bifurcations, contradictions, interactions, regressions and accelerations.
And then today, it’s staggering to see the ever-increasing rise in temperature and the ineffectiveness of the measures that have been put in place. I wanted to try to understand the factors blocking international negotiations on combating global warming.

Did you embark on a historical analysis, as you did with the history of European integration?
How did we end up here after seventy years of international negotiations under the auspices of the United Nations, which have been ongoing since 1970 (the Stockholm Conference)? That is the question running through the first two parts of the book. Yet the early negotiators understood that they had to set a target and, above all, not exceed it. This constraint defines a ‘time remaining’ in which to act. If this is not used to bring about profound economic transformation, the ‘time to come’ will bring disasters that are no longer so ‘natural’ after all, and success will become increasingly difficult. The jaws of the climate trap are closing.

Can you identify different periods in the international negotiation process?
Yes, broadly speaking we can identify four main periods, but it is important to note that this process has unfolded without really drawing on international law.
A series of founding declarations of international law, established under the auspices of the UN, preceded Rio de Janeiro. The Rio climate negotiations should have taken into account: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the Stockholm Declaration on the Human Environment (1972), the World Charter for Nature (1982) on the protection of life in all its forms, the Montreal Protocol (1987) on the protection of the ozone layer, and the International Court of Justice, which settles disputes between states in accordance with international law… The work of legal scholars gives a clear impression of a disregard for international law throughout the process, extending as far as misinterpretation and outright rejection.

Could you therefore outline this chronology, starting with the 1970s and the Club of Rome’s initial questions regarding the limits to growth?
First period: From 1970 to 1989, negotiations got underway and culminated in the 1992 Rio Framework Convention on Climate Change. But all too soon, the environment took a back seat in the political strategies of the major powers and emerging nations. The collapse of the Soviet Union left the field open for market forces to penetrate the sector, and it was primarily North-South relations that shaped the agenda. The South was keen to promote development and ensure that environmental protection did not come at the expense of their right to development. The North was seen as responsible for environmental damage, and it was up to them to deal with it.

Is it this clash of agendas that will lead to a change of course?
Yes, in a way, this will trigger the second period: with the Kyoto Protocol (1997–2012), the United States (Clinton between 1993 and 2001; George W. Bush between 2001 and 2009) attempted to take control of the process by imposing the creation of a carbon credit market under the auspices of a central authority, in order to manage emissions reductions. The removal of one tonne of CO2 (with an equivalent for other greenhouse gases) entitles the holder to a carbon credit. These credits are traded on a market that sets a price around which all transactions are possible: sale, purchase, speculation, and use to improve one’s performance in terms of CO2 emissions . The results in terms of emissions are poor due to circumvention of the established rules and the absence of any rigorous oversight. Cheating and scandals are hushed up.

Is this what will lead to the promotion of the principle of ‘carbon neutrality’ and the use of technologies enabling the creation of ‘carbon sinks’?
Yes, this principle had been in the making for quite some time, and it was the 2015 Paris Agreement that promoted the term ‘carbon neutrality’, representing a third period in the regulation of environmental issues. This neutrality is defined as ‘achieving a balance between greenhouse gas emissions and anthropogenic removals by human-managed ecosystems – forests, grasslands, agricultural soils, wetlands – and by certain industrial processes, such as carbon capture and storage. These ecosystems and processes will be referred to as “sinks”. The hope associated with these sinks is that they will single-handedly offset emissions, without affecting human activities. To limit the temperature rise to below 1.5°C, the goal of carbon neutrality was to be achieved by 2050. Within the international negotiation process, carbon neutrality was seen as a way of leveraging two factors simultaneously: reducing emissions and utilizing carbon sinks. And that this approach could be applied at all levels – that of companies, their products, and regions. Indeed, the results could even be added together to achieve a ‘zero’ target. However, practical natural sinks have proved scarce, and technological solutions costly and complex. How can we distinguish between natural and anthropogenic factors linked to land use?
The key to properly understanding carbon neutrality lies in the measurement tool. According to ADEME (and the IPCC), the concept of ‘carbon neutrality’ only makes sense at the global and national levels. It requires the accounting of Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions, thereby applying a principle of responsibility. What is the responsibility of a multinational corporation when measured on a global scale? The calculation of these emissions must go beyond its own and include those of the companies it employs, upstream – its suppliers, subcontractors, etc. – and downstream – those that transport, distribute and sell its products, and those that recover and recycle its waste. Its responsibility is therefore most often on a global scale.
The accountability inherent in carbon neutrality relies on the intervention of a “situated” state that ensures everyone accounts for all emissions within its jurisdiction. The carbon credit market, as it is currently designed, is based on an “absent” state convention, as Lisa Knoll notes (“Sustainable markets and the State,” HSR 44 (2019)). The state removes all obstacles that would prevent market participants from acting as they see fit, without oversight, following a form of self-regulation, as we have seen.

Is the deforestation of tropical forests a good illustration of this?
The systematic clearing of primary forests dates back to the colonial era and continues at a frenetic pace in the three parts of the world that still have such forests, albeit diminished: the Amazon, tropical Africa and South-East Asia. For example, since 2024 the Indonesian government has launched a massive deforestation project across half of the territory of Papua that it controls. This is a still-unspoilt area that is home to the last remaining large forests rich in biodiversity, due to its distance from the capital, Jakarta, and the lack of infrastructure. At the end of 2024, Indonesia withdrew from the commitment it had made at COP26 in 2021.
The goal of zero deforestation by 2030 is the subject of lucrative schemes. Here is one example. A voluntary offset market is being applied to the ‘conservation’ of tropical forests. Each project must demonstrate the CO2 that would have been emitted had the forest not been protected in a baseline scenario. With no legal framework in place, an international alliance of politicians and businesses (including the Davos Economic Forum) has created a Verra certification standard for emissions reductions, which assesses the number of carbon credits to be allocated to each project. An official investigation used satellite imagery. What is the reality? Over 90% of offset credits are ‘ghost credits’. For these projects, the baseline scenarios appeared to be overestimated by 400%. The system creates an incentive to make inaccurate predictions. The more pessimistic the prediction, the more money there is to be made.

Ultimately, with the deterioration of international relations, did we quickly slide into a Fourth Period of Regression from Dubai to Doha and Belém, with the oil and gas majors and oil- and gas-producing nations seizing power?
In 2022, there were 425 ‘carbon bombs’ worldwide, in other words 425 fossil fuel production projects: 195 gas and oil projects and 250 coal mines. These are sites where the potential emissions from known reserves will exceed 1 gigatonne of CO2 if they are exploited and burned until depletion. The sum of their potential emissions exceeds the total permissible emissions required to stay within the 1.5°C threshold by a factor of between 4 and 7. Joe Biden, who was absent from Dubai, had in March 2023 given the green light to a major oil project in north-eastern Alaska. In doing so, he failed to honor his campaign pledges of ‘no drilling on federal lands’ and ‘no permits for the oil industry’. This was a signal not to turn towards renewable energy. John Kerry, sent to Dubai, will defend investment in carbon capture and storage as a substitute for any move away from fossil fuels. The major oil and gas companies and oil-producing nations were in agreement. The text of the agreement will refer to ‘transition fuels’, meaning fossil gas.
These COPs mark the abandonment of any protest by UN leaders against the oil majors’ takeover of operational control. The scene will be repeated in Betel where, in the midst of preparations for the COP, Lula will defend a mega-oil exploration project near the mouth of the Amazon and territories inhabited by indigenous peoples. At the same time, he had handed over vast areas (the Cerrado and the Pantanal) rich in biodiversity to large landowners.

Beyond this somewhat arbitrary periodization, what you highlight is a long-term trend towards the strengthening of the ‘voluntary carbon market’ organized by private actors, even though one gets the impression that political actors are pulling the strings – what are your thoughts on this?
Indeed, following the example of specialist companies, such as Verra, which create carbon neutrality metrics via a Low Carbon Label in order to establish a carbon credit market. The state no longer has control over the certification of these credits. In France, this market remains in its infancy despite public funding designed to encourage participation from agricultural businesses.

And where does Europe fit into this political landscape?
The idea of Europe is an old one, and I shall not revisit here its history and the ideals upon which it was founded (see our book Le Viol d’Europe. Une enquête sur la disparition d’une idée, 2013, PUF).
Although much has been achieved in many areas, we are a long way from those ideals today. It even appears that we are moving further away from them, perhaps irrevocably, if we consider the setbacks and abandonments by the EU over the past several years, particularly in the fight against global warming, the degradation of nature and the rise in human mortality. More worryingly, the obstacles that the major powers – first and foremost the United States, Russia (the successor to the USSR) and China – had raised against the creation of Europe, in opposition to the peoples’ ambitions for autonomy, political community and a model of democracy, have been revived in international relations.
The weakness since the beginning of European integration has been to oscillate between supporting multinational corporations to achieve the status of a global power and a commitment to environmentalism. The EU is torn between two camps: the market-oriented sceptics who hide behind the scenes and refuse any commitment, and the advocates of the fight against global warming who wonder if they are not going too far. The bold Green Deal of 2019, President von der Leyen’s flagship proposal, is being abandoned from 2024 onwards by the same president during her second term. Manfred Weber of Germany, leader of the European People’s Party (EPP), relying where necessary on the far right in the European Parliament, is dismantling the tools of the Green Deal, at the behest of big business backed by the government. The European Commission is following suit. It is abandoning the tools designed to regulate the financial policies of large corporations. It is thus embracing the general deregulation of the global economy, calling into question the survival of the European Union.
We must fear a shift towards a rump Europe compliant with American wishes at the end of the Second World War, prioritizing American economic and financial interests; a Europe serving as a protective buffer against the USSR (now the Russian Empire), the first line of defense.

In Part III, do you explore the realm of possibilities by demonstrating that other tools exist to properly assess the situation and to highlight the inequalities surrounding global warming and those responsible for them?
Fundamentally, we must address the root causes, the very concepts and foundations of actions and choices, in order to steer them in the right direction. We identify these tools throughout the history of the process. These include carbon budgets; scope-based accounting; an assessment for each emitting entity of its responsibility in relation to global emissions; international environmental law; human rights; and financing for green investments based on verifiable emissions reductions.
Our conviction is that most of these were known to IPCC researchers. Yet they have not, or have been unable to, utilize the potential of these tools. Their political implementation today should be championed by researchers and all movements advocating action against global warming; tools upon which, in turn, these movements could rely to raise awareness of their causes, mobilize all sectors of society in consultations and decisions relating to sustainable development.

Are you proposing a new approach to knowledge and action?
We cannot escape the climate crisis by approaching it from above using a general, abstract method that reduces problems and human beings to mere segments. History is not over. It cannot be reduced to this ‘last chance’ scenario that world leaders are trying to convince us of and abandon us to.
All this must be based on solutions tailored to the concrete problems arising in each place and at each moment. The paradox is that these concrete problems stem from the very human practices prevalent in those places and at those times. It is these practices that must be reformed by the very people who carry them out. Moreover, it is they who possess the knowledge—in other words, the shared understanding of local realities; we must go through them.
But are we still living in a democracy? We risk entering political regimes where a sphere of power goes round in circles, cut off from citizens and their needs. On the contrary, we must encourage individual and collective initiative, giving priority to the principles of autonomy of action, deliberation, self-organization, and evaluation based on the situation on the ground. The state provides the appropriate resources and intervenes only as a last resort (a state that is both capable and ‘situated’). The social priority is to empower individuals (as well as groups): the capacity for achievement (the power to act), the capacity for choice (real freedom), the capacity to express one’s ‘voice’ (participation in collective decisions), and capacity as the potential for responsibility, all of which contribute to an individual’s power to act in their work, their life and in society.
Hence the search for the human attitudes that should be taught and the modes of action that should be preferred: a few suggestions made in the book:
– Living the sensory dimension of our relationship with nature, of ‘feeling in one’s very body that we are part of it’ (Ingold)
– To inhabit the world as a poet… To re-enchant nature (Hölderlin)
– Reintroduce, adapted to today’s realities, into the curriculum the ‘lesson of things’ specific to the education of the senses so dear to Rousseau
– To provide financial support for this education through a tax on fossil fuel consumption
– For workers, the right to have a say in the measurement of gas emissions and other forms of pollution, to be involved in economic, financial and organizational decisions, and the right to object and put forward counter-proposals (at company, sector and community level).

So you are advocating a more pragmatic approach that contributes to the formation of ‘publics’ by prioritizing deliberations based on conflicting assessments and establishing new, sensitive relationships with nature that allow conventions of common sense to emerge?
Yes, in a way; it is by fostering dialogue between these common-sense conventions—which are essential for coordinating the identification, classification and conservation of natural resources—that we will be better able to inhabit the world.

Robert Salais

Those wishing to learn more about the author’s work may consult the collective volume edited by Christian Bessy and Claude Didry (2022), L’économie est une science réflexive. Chômage, convention et capacité dans l’œuvre de Robert Salais, also published by Les Presses du Septentrion.

https://www.septentrion.com/fr/book/?GCOI=27574100797150
https://books.openedition.org/septentrion/146586

References
Knoll, Lisa (2019): Sustainable markets and the State:  Taxation, Cap-and-Trade, Pay-for-Success, and Nudging. Historical Social Research 44(1): 231-257.
Salais, Robert (2013): Le Viol d’Europe. Enquête sur la disparition d’une idée, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Une approche pragmatique pour lutter contre les dérèglements environnementaux

Link to the English version

Interview de Robert Salais par Christian Bessy au sujet de son ouvrage

Le piège climatique. Entre le temps qui vient et le temps qui reste.
Villeneuve-d’Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion. 2025.
https://www.septentrion.com/fr/book/?GCOI=27574100146100

Comment es-tu venu à t’emparer de la question environnementale ?
J’ai acquis une familiarité avec la nature, étant enfant à la campagne et y revenant régulièrement, avec toujours le plaisir d’être bercé par le chant des oiseaux et toujours étonné quand j’aperçois un animal non domestique. Je me rends compte de la disparition rapide des uns et des autres. A l’INSEE, travailler sur la catégorie chômeur m’a fait comprendre combien faire une histoire « réelle » bute sur l’obsession des séries longues ainsi que sur la croyance à un temps linéaire, unique et macro. Cela ne marche pas pour la nature ni pour le réchauffement climatique. Il faut rendre compte de phénomènes qui suivent des processus historiques à multiples niveaux, temporalités, phases, bifurcations, contradictions, interactions, régressions, accélérations. Et puis aujourd’hui c’est sidérant de voir les augmentations croissantes de température et l’inefficacité des mesures qui ont été mises en place. J’ai voulu chercher à comprendre les facteurs de blocage des négociations internationales

Tu t’es lancé dans une histoire comme tu as pu le faire pour la construction européenne ?
Oui, comment en est-on arrivé là après soixante-dix ans de négociations internationales de lutte contre le réchauffement climatique sous l’égide de l’ONU, lesquelles s’enchaînent depuis 1970 (conférence de Stockholm) ? Telle est la question qui cours au long des deux premières parties du livre. Pourtant les négociateurs du début avaient compris qu’ils devaient se fixer un objectif et surtout à ne pas dépasser. C’est une contrainte qui définit un « temps qui reste » pour agir. Si ce n’est pas mis à profit pour engager des transformations profondes de l’économie, le « temps qui vient » est porteur de catastrophes qui ne sont plus si « naturelles » que cela et il devient de plus en plus difficile de réussir. Les mâchoires du piège climatique se referment.

Peux-tu distinguer différentes périodes dans le processus international de négociation ?
Oui, en gros on peut discuter quatre grandes périodes mais il faut bien voir que ce processus s’est déroulé sans vraiment recourir au droit international.
Une série de Déclarations fondatrices du droit international, établie sous l’égide de l’ONU, précède Rio de Janeiro. Les négociations de Rio sur le climat auraient dû prendre en compte : la Déclaration Universelle des Droits de l’Homme (1948), la Déclaration de Stockholm relative sur l’environnement (1972), la Charte Mondiale de la Nature (1982) sur la protection du vivant sous toutes ses formes, le Protocole de Montreal (1987) sur la protection de la couche d’ozone, la Cour Internationale de Justice réglant les différents entre les Etats conformément au droit international… Il ressort des travaux des juristes une nette impression de négligence des droits internationaux tout au long du processus allant jusqu’à la fausse interprétation et le refus.

Peux-tu donc présenter cette périodisation en partant des années 1970 et des premières interrogations du Club de Rome sur les limites de la croissance ?
Première période : De 1970 à 1989, les négociations se mettent en place et aboutissent à la Convention Cadre sur le Changement Climatique de Rio en 1992. Mais trop vite l’environnement passe au second plan des stratégies politiques des grandes puissances et des puissance nouvelles. L’effondrement de l’Empire soviétique laisse le champ libre à la pénétration du marché dans le domaine et ce sont surtout les rapports Nord-Sud qui allaient orienter l’agenda. Le Sud était soucieux de promouvoir le développement et de s’assurer que la protection de l’environnement ne se fasse pas au détriment de leur droit au développement. Le Nord est considéré comme responsable des dégâts environnementaux, à lui de s’en charger.

C’est ce conflit d’agendas qui va conduire à un changement de cap ?
Oui, d’une certaine façon, cela va enclencher la Seconde période : Avec le Protocole de Kyoto (1997-2012), les Etats-Unis (Clinton entre 1993 et 2001 ; George Bush Jr entre 2001 et 2009) tentent de prendre le contrôle du processus en imposant la création d’un marché de crédits carbone sous l’égide d’une autorité centrale, pour gérer les réductions d’émissions. La suppression d’une tonne de CO2 (avec une équivalence pour les autres gaz à effet de serre) donne droit à un crédit carbone. Ces crédits s’échangent sur un marché qui fixent un prix autour duquel toutes les opérations sont possibles : vente, achat, spéculation, usage pour améliorer sa performance en termes d’émissions de CO2. Les résultats en termes d’émissions sont médiocres en raison de contournements des règles fixées et d’absence de tout contrôle sérieux. Tricheries et scandales sont étouffés.

C’est ce qui va pousser à la mise en avant du principe de « neutralité carbone » et du recours aux technologies permettant de concevoir des « puits de carbone » ?
Oui, ce principe était en germe depuis pas mal de temps et c’est l’Accord de Paris en 2015 qui va promouvoir le terme « neutralité carbone » représentatif d’une Troisième période dans la régulation des problèmes environnementaux. Cette neutralité est définie comme « l’atteinte de l’équilibre entre les émissions de gaz à effet de serre et les absorptions anthropiques par les écosystèmes gérés par l’homme – forêts, prairies, sols agricoles, zones humides – et par certains procédés industriels, tels que la capture et le stockage de carbone. Ces écosystèmes et procédés seront appelés « puits ». L’espoir véhiculé par ces puits est que ceux-ci feront le travail de compenser à eux-seuls les émissions, sans toucher aux activités humaines. Pour limiter la température sous les 1,5°C, l’objectif de neutralité devait être atteint d’ici 2050. Au sein du processus de négociation internationale, la neutralité carbone fut vue comme permettant de jouer sur deux leviers à la fois : la réduction des émissions et les absorptions des puits de carbone. Et que ce jeu pouvait se jouer à tous les niveaux, ceux de l’entreprise, de leurs produits, des territoires. Plus même que les résultats pourraient s’ajouter pour arriver à une revendication de « zéro ». Mais les puits naturels pratiques se sont avérés rares, et les solutions technologiques coûteuses et complexes. Comment faire la part du naturel et de l’anthropique liée à l’usage des sols ?
L’important dans la neutralité carbone bien comprise est l’instrument de mesure. Selon l’ADEME (et le GIEC), la notion de « neutralité carbone » n’a de sens qu’à l’échelle de la planète et des Etats. Elle exige une comptabilité des émissions de gaz de rang scope 3, en cela elle applique un principe de responsabilité. Quelle est la responsabilité d’une multinationale mesurée à l’échelle de la planète ? Le calcul de ses émissions doit aller au-delà des siennes propres et doit intégrer celles des entreprises qu’elle fait travailler pour elle, en amont ses fournisseurs, sous-traitants…, en aval celles qui transportent, qui distribuent et vendent ses produits, qui récupèrent et recyclent ses déchets. Sa responsabilité est donc le plus souvent à l’échelle de la planète.
La responsabilité mobilisée par la neutralité carbone s’appuie sur l’intervention d’un Etat « situé » qui veille à ce que chacun rend compte de l’ensemble des émissions de son ressort. Le marché de crédits carbone tel qu’il est conçu relève au contraire d’une convention d’Etat « absent », comme le remarque Liza Knoll (Sustainable markets and the State”,HSR 44(2019)). L’Etat écarte tous les obstacles qui empêcheraient les intervenants sur le marché d’agir comme ils l’entendent, sans être contrôlés, suivant une forme d’autorégulation, ce qu’on a pu constater.

La déforestation des forêts tropicales en donne une bonne illustration ?
La mise en coupe réglée des forêts primaires date de la colonisation, elle se poursuit à un rythme effréné dans les 3 parties du monde ayant encore, bien qu’amoindries, de telles forêts, Amazonie, Afrique tropicale, Asie du Sud-Est. Un exemple, le gouvernement indonésien a lancé depuis 2024 un projet immense de déforestation dans la moitié de la Papouasie qu’elle possède. Un endroit encore préservé qui abrite encore les dernières grandes forêts à forte biodiversité, en raison de son éloignement de la capitale Djakarta et du manque d’infrastructures. L’Indonésie a dénoncé fin 2024 son engagement pris à la COP26 en 2021.
La déforestation zéro d’ici 2030 fait l’objet d’opérations juteuses. Un exemple. Un marché de compensation volontaire est appliqué à la « conservation » des forêts tropicales. Chaque projet doit prouver que le CO2 aurait été émis si la forêt n’avait pas été protégée dans un scénario de référence. Non encadrée légalement, une alliance internationale de politiciens et d’entreprises (dont le Forum économique de Davos) ont créé une norme de certification des réductions d’émissions Verra qui évalue le nombre de crédits carbone à attribuer à chaque projet. Une enquête officielle a utilisé des images satellite. Qu’en est-il en réalité ? Plus de 90% des crédits de compensation sont des « crédits fantômes ». Sur les projets les scénarios de référence sont apparus surévalués de 400%. Le système crée une incitation à faire des pronostics inexacts. Plus le pronostic est pessimiste, plus il y a d’argent à gagner.

Finalement, avec la dégradation des relations internationales on a vite basculé dans une Quatrième période de régression de Dubaï à Doha et Belém, avec la prise de pouvoir des majors et des pays pétroliers et gaziers ?
Un nombre de 425 « bombes de carbone » pouvait être dénombré en 2022 dans le monde, autrement dit 425 projets de production d’énergies fossiles :195 projets en gaz et pétrole et 250 mines de charbon. Il s’agit des sites dont les émissions potentielles des réserves connues dépasseront, si elles sont exploitées et brulées jusqu’à épuisement, 1 gigatonne de CO2. La somme de leurs émissions potentielles dépasse d’un facteur multiplicatif de 4 à 7 fois le total des émissions admissibles pour ne pas outrepasser le seuil de 1,5°C. Joe Biden, absent à Dubaï, avait en mars 2023, donné son feu vert pour un grand projet pétrolier dans le nord-est de l’Alaska. Ce faisant il n’a pas respecté ses promesses de candidat « pas de forages sur les terres fédérales » et « pas de permis pour l’industrie pétrolière ». C’était un signal pour ne pas se tourner vers les énergies renouvelables. John Kerry, envoyé à Dubaï, défendra les investissements en capture et stockage du carbone en remplacement de tout abandon des énergies fossiles. Les majors et pays pétrogaziers firent chorus. Le texte de l’accord parlera « d’énergies de transition », entendant par là le gaz fossile.
Ces COP marquent l’abandon de toute protestation des dirigeants onusiens contre la prise de pouvoir des majors sur la conduite des opérations. La scène se répétera à Betél où, en pleine préparation de la COP, Lula défendra un mégaprojet d’exploration pétrolière proche de l’embouchure de l’Amazone et de territoires habités par des populations autochtones. Il avait en parallèle abandonné aux grand propriétaires terriens de grandes zones (Cerrado et Pantanal) abritant une riche biodiversité.

Au-delà de cette périodisation qui est un peu arbitraire, ce que tu mets en évidence c’est une tendance de long terme de renforcement du « marché du carbone volontaire » organisé par des acteurs privés bien que l’on ait l’impression que les acteurs politiques sont à la manœuvre, qu’est-ce que tu en penses ?
En effet, à l’instar des entreprises spécialisées, comme Verra, dans la création de métriques de la neutralité carbone, via un Label Bas Carbone, afin de créer un marché de crédits carbone. L’Etat n’a plus la maîtrise de l’homologation de ces crédits. En France, ce marché reste embryonnaire malgré les apports de fonds publics incitant à la participation des entreprises agricoles.

Et l’Europe dans ce paysage politique?
L’idée d’Europe est ancienne et je ne vais pas revenir ici sur son histoire et les idéaux qui l’ont fondée (voir notre livre Le viol d’Europe. Enquête sur la disparition d’une idée, 2013, PUF).
Même si bien des choses ont été réalisées dans de nombreux domaines, nous sommes bien loin de ces idéaux aujourd’hui. Il apparaît même que nous nous en éloignons, définitivement peut-être, si nous considérons les reculs et abandons de l’UE depuis plusieurs années, notamment dans la lutte contre le réchauffement climatique, les dégradations de la nature et l’accroissement de la mortalité humaine. Plus inquiétant, sont ranimés dans les relations internationales les obstacles qu’avaient élevés à la création de l’Europe les grandes puissances – Etats-Unis en premier, la Russie héritée de l’URSS, la Chine – contre les ambitions d’autonomie, de communauté politique et d’exemple de démocratie des peuples.
La faiblesse depuis le début de la construction européenne est d’osciller entre le soutien des entreprises multinationales pour accéder au statut de Grand du monde et l’engagement dans l’écologie. L’UE balance entre deux camps, les sceptiques partisans du marché qui se dissimulent et refusent tout engagement et les partisans de la lutte contre le réchauffement qui se demandent s’ils n’en font pas trop. Au Green Deal audacieux de 2019, proposition phare de la présidente von Leyen, succède son abandon à partir de 2024 par la même présidente sous son second mandat. L’Allemand Manfred Weber, chef du Parti populaire européen (PPE), s’appuyant si nécessaire sur l’extrême-droite au Parlement européen, démolit les outils du Green Deal, à la demande du grand patronat soutenu par le gouvernement. La Commission européenne suit. Elle abandonne les outils prévus pour contrôler les politiques financières des grands groupes. Elle se convertit ainsi à la dérégulation générale de l’économie mondiale, mettant en question la survie de l’Union européenne.
On doit craindre l’évolution vers une Europe-croupion conforme aux volontés américaines à la fin de la Seconde Guerre Mondiale, avec en priorité leurs intérêts économiques et financiers américains ; l’Europe glacis protecteur face à l’URSS (aujourd’hui l’Empire russe), la première défense.

Dans la partie III tu abordes le temps des possibles en montrant que d’autres outils existent pour apprécier correctement la situation et pour dénoncer les inégalités face au réchauffement climatique et leurs responsables ?
Il faut fondamentalement agir sur les causes premières, sur les conceptions et les fondations même des actions et des choix pour les courber dans la bonne direction. Nous repérons ces outils au fil de l’histoire du processus. Il s’agit des budgets carbone ; de la comptabilité en termes de scopes ; d’une évaluation pour chaque entité émettrice de sa responsabilité à l’égard des émissions globales ; du droit international de l’environnement ; des droits de l’homme ; d’un financement des investissements verts fondés sur une réduction des émissions vérifiable.
Notre conviction est que la plupart étaient connus des chercheurs du GIEC. Mais ceux-ci n’ont pas ou n’ont pu utiliser leur potentiel de ces outils. Leur mise en œuvre politique aujourd’hui devrait être revendiquée par les chercheurs et tous les mouvements en faveur de l’action contre le réchauffement climatique ; des outils sur lesquels, en retour, les luttes pourraient s’appuyer pour populariser leurs combats, faire connaître, mobiliser tous les pans de la société dans la consultation et les décisions relatives au développement durable.

Tu proposes une approche nouvelle de la connaissance et de l’action ?
On ne peut pas sortir du piège climatique en l’abordant d’un haut selon une méthode générale et abstraite qui découpe les problèmes et les êtres humains en tranches. L’histoire n’est pas finie. Elle ne se réduit pas à cette situation de dernière chance à laquelle les dirigeants du monde tentent de nous convaincre et de nous abandonner.
Le tout sur la base de solutions adaptées aux problèmes concrets qui se posent dans chaque lieu et moment. Le paradoxe est que ces problèmes concrets proviennent des pratiques humaines en elles-mêmes qui ont cours dans ces lieux et moments. Ce sont ces pratiques qui doivent être réformées par ceux-là même qui les pratiquent. En outre, ce sont eux qui ont la connaissance, en d’autres termes le savoir commun sur les réalités locales ; il faut en passer par eux.
Mais, sommes-nous encore en démocratie ? Nous risquons d’entrer dans des régimes politiques où une sphère de pouvoir tourne en rond coupée des citoyens et de leurs besoins ? On doit au contraire favoriser l’initiative individuelle et collective, donner la priorité aux principes d’autonomie d’action, de délibération, d’auto-organisation, d’évaluation partant du terrain, l’Etat fournissant les ressources adéquates et n’intervenant qu’en dernier ressort (un Etat à la fois capable et « situé »). La priorité sociale est de mettre les personnes (vs les collectifs) en capacités : la capacité de réalisation (pouvoir de faire), la capacité de choix (liberté réelle), la capacité d’exprimer sa « voix » (participation aux décisions collectives), la capacité comme potentiel de responsabilité, l’ensemble contribuant au pouvoir d’agir de la personne dans son travail, sa vie, dans la société.
D’où la recherche des attitudes humaines qui devraient être enseignées et des modes d’action qui devraient être préférés : quelques suggestions faites dans le livre :
-Vivre la dimension sensible de notre relation à la nature, d’un « sentir jusques en son corps que nous en sommes » (Ingold)
– Habiter le monde en poète… Réenchanter la nature (Hölderlin)
– Réintroduire, adaptée aux réalités d’aujourd’hui, dans l’enseignement « la leçon de choses » propre à l’instruction des sens chère à Rousseau
– Allouer à cette instruction un soutien financier par une taxe sur la consommation d’énergies fossiles
– Pour le travail, droit d’intervenir sur la mesure des émissions de gaz et autres pollutions, d’être partie prenante des décisions économiques, financières et d’organisation, droit d’opposition et de contre-proposition (entreprise, branche et lieux de vie).

Tu milites donc pour une approche plus pragmatique qui contribue à la formation des « publics » en donnant la priorité aux délibérations basées sur des évaluations contradictoires et instaurant de nouvelles présences sensibles avec la nature permettant de faire émerger des conventions de sens commun ?
Oui, en quelque sorte, c’est en faisant dialoguer ces conventions de sens commun propres à coordonner les activités d’identification, de classement et de conservation des ressources naturelles, que l’on pourra mieux habiter le monde.

Robert Salais

Celles et ceux qui voudraient en savoir plus sur les travaux de l’auteur peuvent consulter l’ouvrage collectif dirigé par Christian Bessy et Claude Didry (2022), L’économie est une science réflexive. Chômage, convention et capacité dans l’œuvre de Robert Salais, publié également par les Presses Universitaires du Septentrion.
https://www.septentrion.com/fr/book/?GCOI=27574100797150
https://books.openedition.org/septentrion/146586

Bibliographie
Knoll, Lisa (2019), Sustainable markets and the State:  Taxation, Cap-and-Trade, Pay-for-Success, and Nudging. Historical Social Research, 44(1), 231-257.
Salais, Robert (2013), Le Viol d’Europe. Enquête sur la disparition d’une idée, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France.

 

L’économie des conventions : les exigences de l’incertitude de la coordination. Entretien avec Guillemette de Larquier

Economics of Convention: The Requirements of Coordination Uncertainty. Interview with Guillemette de Larquier.

Guillemette de Larquier & Thomas Lamarche (2025)

Revue de la regulation, 39. Open access.

Introduction. Guillemette de Larquier est économiste, reconnue pour ses travaux en économie du travail et pour son implication dans l’économie des conventions. Dès sa thèse à l’université de Nanterre sous la direction d’Olivier Favereau, elle développe une approche conventionnaliste en économie du travail. Maitresse de conférences dans cette même université jusqu’en 2017, elle a longuement contribué au Centre d’études de l’emploi, en y étant notamment en détachement entre 2007 et 2012. Depuis 2017 elle enseigne en tant que professeure de sciences économiques à l’université de Lille en conduisant ses recherches au Clersé, Centre lillois d’études et de recherches sociologiques et économiques. 
Ses travaux ont porté sur les modes d’appariement sur le marché du travail, en lien avec la pluralité des conventions de qualité du travail en vigueur tant à l’échelle des entreprises que mise en mouvement par les intermédiaires du placement. Elle a développé des travaux de nature empirique, travaillant notamment via un traitement statistique de grandes enquêtes (enquêtes Emploi de l’Insee et Offre d’emploi et recrutement de la Dares). Elle contribue aussi à ses recherches via des méthodes qualitatives (par exemple sur l’évaluation de la méthode de recrutement par simulation).
Guillemette de Larquier est très impliquée dans les actions et œuvres collectives de l’économie des conventions, elle est notamment animatrice du Carnet de recherche Économie des conventions. Elle est coéditrice avec Rainer Diaz-Bone, du Handbook Economics and Sociology of Conventions, qui est une grande production collective de tous les auteurs et toutes les autrices qui se reconnaissent dans l’économie (et la sociologie) des conventions ou qui y contribuent en échangeant sur la construction conceptuelle et ses apports appliqués.”

Introduction. Guillemette de Larquier is an economist renowned for her work in labor economics and her involvement in the economics of convention. Since her thesis at the University of Nanterre under the supervision of Olivier Favereau, she has developed a convention theorist approach to labor economics. A lecturer at the same university until 2017, she contributed extensively to the Center for Employment Studies, notably through a affiliation between 2007 and 2012. Since 2017, she has been teaching economics at the University of Lille while conducting her research at Clersé, Lille’s center for sociological and economic studies and research.
Her work has focused on matching patterns in the labor market, in relation to the plurality of quality of work agreements in force both at the company level and as implemented by employment agencies. She has developed empirical work, notably through the statistical processing of large surveys (INSEE employment surveys and DARES job offers and recruitment surveys). She also contributes to her research through qualitative methods (for example, on the evaluation of the simulation recruitment method).
Guillemette de Larquier is heavily involved in collective actions and works in the field of economics of convention, notably as the coordinator of the Économie des conventions blog. She is coeditor, with Rainer Diaz-Bone, of the Handbook Economics and Sociology of Conventions, a major collective work by all authors who identify with the economics (and sociology) of conventions or who contribute to it by discussing its conceptual construction and applied contributions.

Lien / Link

EC/SC Workshop “Doing neopragmatist research – Using and reflecting methods and methodologies in convention theory”

Workshop report from 09.09.2025/10.09.2025
University of Lucerne

Anja Wohlgemuth, Vanessa Leutner and Janna Muff (all University of Lucerne)

Lucerne – a relatively small city by international standards located on a lake with magnificent views and home to a small but fine sociology department.
And on September 9 and 10, 2025, it was the venue for another EC/SC workshop. With around 50 participants, and one dog, the workshop entitled “Doing neopragmatist research – Using and reflecting methods and methodologies in convention theory” took place at the University of Lucerne. Over two days, ten sessions, 27 presentations, four coffee breaks and two dinners, a wide range of topics were explored and discussed. The afternoon before, a pre-workshop was held to discuss the application of multiple correspondence analysis in convention theory, with a following pre-workshop dinner.

Picture 1: Everyone listens eagerly to Laurent Thévenot’s keynote speech

Tuesday 9th

After a warm welcome by two of the organizers, Rainer Diaz-Bone (University of Lucerne) and Kenneth Horvath (Zurich University of Teacher Education), the workshop opened with an insightful keynote speech by guest speaker Laurent Thévenot (EHESS). The presentation introduced the history of EC/SC, illuminated influential trends, and examined methodological innovations and problems. Laurent Thévenot highlighted the importance of examining the various forms of spaces, as well as the role of capacity, power, agency, and personal identity—and the malleability of personality. Another topic that was covered discussed the statistical chain, which is currently undergoing change in the age of big data and deep learning that requires critical examination. Finally, the “method of stranger” was explored, which plays a significant role in comparative methods in EC/SC: by seeking to take advantage of the shocks and misunderstandings of estrangement, the reflexivity of the researchers can be promoted.

The focused and interested atmosphere of the audience – not even interrupted by minor microphone problems – led to a lively and stimulating discussion afterwards. This opening summed up the entire essence of the workshop quite well and ensured an excellent start.

Picture 2: The presentation by Laurent Thévenot.

After an initial coffee break, the workshop continued with the first two sessions – where participants had the difficult task of choosing between AI and machines or educational research.

Session one

Guy Schwegler (University of Lucerne) kicked off session one with his presentation: A convention-theorist critique on the usages of AI. He examined how scientists used AI in coding and wanted to investigate the moment when scientists were confronted with AI. The audience asked critical questions, specifically about whether AI has any interpretative power at all. However, Schwegler emphasized that his work was not about the quality and functioning of AI, but about how scientists use AI, frame its output, and make sense of it. In other words, a neopragmatic perspective on methodology in which the research process itself becomes the subject. He himself used a grounded theory approach, which includes interviews and autoethnographic protocols, among other methods of data collection.
The presentation and work of Liv Nøhr (University of Copenhagen) was particularly striking due to her exciting method. For her dissertation, she filmed young people in a laboratory (LIFE) and used a convention theory approach to examine how the young people organized themselves. The following discussion concerned the ethical dimensions of research projects. How can videos be used as a method while respecting privacy? The topic of ethics ran through the entire workshop and was also discussed at the beginning by Laurent Thévenot.

Session two

At the same time, the second session took place in the next room: Researching Education. Pierre-Yves Bernard (Nantes University) spoke about how convention theory broadens our understanding of educational institutions. He distinguished between general models of conventions and institutional models of conventions. While the former can be generalized to any coordination situation, the latter is present in specific fields. In his case study on the use of civic service as an instrument to combat school dropout, Pierre-Yves Bernard showed how both models can be encountered: While the school institution and its legitimacy are based on an institutional convention, criticism and responses to it are based on general models of convention, but manifest themselves in the form of compromises and local arrangements.
Jan Frode Haugseth (Norwegian University of Science and Technology) followed him by proposing a methodological framework for examining a fundamental link between education, doubt, and belief. He demonstrated how this framework provides a situated approach to understanding engagement as lived coordination between self and world. By emphasizing the shaping and inhibition of diverse forms of investment, his work contributes to a better understanding of doubt and belief in education and to the development of an empowering educational environment.

Posterwalk

After this first round of sessions, participants followed Valeska Cappel (University of Lucerne) to the poster walk organized by her and Karolin Kappler (Catholic University of Applied Sciences Nordrhein-Westfalen). The posterwalk presented selected student research projects developed in two advanced seminars held at the University of Lucerne under the theme “Health – Digitalization – Conventions”. The diversity of research approaches underscored the methodological openness of convention theory and the ways in which students applied and further developed EC/SC. This sparked discussions about empirical strategies, challenges in operationalizing EC/SC concepts, and the potential of convention theory for investigating health and digitalization.

Following the posterwalk, and a lunch to recharge everyone’s batteries, the day continued with the next difficult task: choosing between session three and four.

Session three

The former focused on researching HRM and accounting. Through a critical examination of the concept of sociomateriality in e-HRM from the perspective of convention theory, Sabine Boesl (University of Innsbruck) and Marilyn Poon (University of Salzburg) argued that sociomateriality studies prioritize human agency, while the materiality of e-HRM technologies is under-theorized. They proposed convention theory as a valuable extension to the concept of sociomateriality in e-HRM. This allows technologies to be understood as carriers of conventions, while the conventions inscribed in them do not have to be realized, but can be. In this way, e-HRM technologies can be studied as material entities with agency and their relational nature can be examined.
Laverne Iminza Chore (University of Innsbruck) then presented her research on skill development programs in Kenya. Opening up research on skill formation beyond the Western context, she focused on participants’ evaluation of reskilling programs. Drawing on a methodological situationalism lens, she additionally explored how actors establish coordination and what forms of coordination unfold in an institutional context filled with uncertainty.
Last but not least, Anna Schneider (University of Innsbruck) presented her study of multiple entire inclusive recruitment processes to understand the role different orders of worth play in the evaluation of candidates and in the final decision-making. While inclusive recruitment processes are said to bring several orders of worth into a compromise, diverse orders of worth become salient and influential for the next subsequent recruitment step in the process as well as for the final outcome. Using a process perspective in the study, she discussed how this perspective could shed new light on compromises.

Session four

The very interesting fourth session started with the topic about “Using Online Data”. Hence, it was about how convention theory can methodically deal with the increase in online data. The methods ranged from analyzing comment sections under articles about paternity leave to applying NLP techniques (– with an LLM called CamemBERT –) to examine messages between (Uber) drivers and users.
Mathilde Abel’s (ENSAE – Institut polytechnique de Paris) contribution referred to her analysis on where cognitive power is located in the platform economy. Her empirical approach aimed to investigate how coordination between users is organized by digital platforms. Applying a mixed-methods approach and focusing on agency as a text-based signal, she was able to capture the mechanisms from which cognitive power asymmetries arise. The research approach demonstrates the possibility of combining statistical methods and EC/SC. During the discussion, the main focus was on the legitimacy of the natural language processing (NLP) technique used regarding the black box problem. It was explained that this is not the case, as despite the algorithm, all parameters and data are known and transparent, and the results were validated by a sample of workers.
Marlene Schuster (University of Applied Sciences Wiener Neustadt) presented her dissertation project, in which she read the comments sections of various Austrian media outlets. Her topic was how people feel about paternity leave and how they justify their opinions. For her, comments are good data material for the EC/SC. They are an interesting arena of justification due to their independent and unfiltered expression. Her main research question was: Why does an inequality in the ratio between fathers and mothers taking paternity leave exist? With her dissertation, she also wants to build a bridge: to bring EC/SC as a methodology into family sociology and gender studies.
Eeva Luthakallio (University of Helsinki) introduced another methodological concept: holistic analysis. For her book “Doing Society” she used ethnography, interviews (200 of it!), big data, and computer analysis with different observational distances. With this approach, she pursued the empirical goal of understanding the current political culture and the participation of young people.

Session five

Picture 3: Christian Schneijderberg presenting.

Kathryn Telling (University of Manchester), Christian Schneijderberg (University of Kassel), Ann Vogel (University of Applied Sciences Mecklenburg-Vorpommern) and Alan Shipman (The Open University Milton Keynes) contributed to session five with presentations on the theme “between institutions and conventions”. Kathryn Telling opened her inspiring presentation with the suggestion that comparative research should not be limited to national comparisons: Using a comparison of different serious leisure sites, she showed how judges refer to different conventions and compromises when making fair judgments and suggested comparing this with fair university admissions. Christian Schneijderberg, on the other hand, compared the EC/SC itself with sociological neo-institutionalism along a theoretical continuum and discussed the peculiarities of axioms and orders of worth. Ann Vogel and Alan Shipman, in turn, looked at the process by which economists convert “real” flows into financial terms, whereby accounting conventions come into play. They pointed out that this conversion often leads to economic models neglecting a variety of aspects and, as a consequence, failing. Furthermore, the implications of such cases were discussed. Particularly with regard to sustainability as well as the potential of convention theory to capture these accounting conventions.

Session six

Picture 4: Raschko also took part in the workshop.

Session six focused on neopragmatism’s methodologies and perspectives. Kenneth Horvath opened the session by referring to John Dewey’s pragmatist epistemology propounded in “Theory of Inquiry” as a silent but under-recognized heritage for designing, doing, and reflecting research – especially in the field of EC/SC. Dewey’s pragmatist epistemological thinking can be conceived as a productive foundation for convention theorists’ methodology. Discussing five key tenets that connect EC/SC and Dewey’s “logic” reveals a potential for reflecting on the complex interiority (i.e., political, methodological, and personal) of conducting research. As such, Dewey’s pragmatic thinking invites and empowers to go beyond the application of canonical and orthodox methods and to enter in a thoughtful and coherent engagement with methods and methodologies. A specific type of data was the focus of the next contribution.
Guillemette de Larquier (University of Lille) discussed the analysis of job ads from both a historical and disciplinary perspective. She drew on a current study conducted together with Géraldine Rieucau (Université Picardie Jules Verne). With the rise of job advertising platforms, job ads as data have been used not only by economics and sociology of conventions but also by mainstream economics. The latter studies exploit job ads as sources to build indicators for quantifying, documenting, and evaluating labor markets. In contrast, job advertisements in EC/SC are not understood in terms of quantifying skills, but rather as “discourses” of actors.

Picture 5: Guillemette de Larquier in session six on analyzing job ads.

By analyzing local authority jobs an EC/SC perspective contributes to the investigation of the plurality of describing work and jobs and the coordination of various actors, especially with regard to professions that are not yet stabilized as the so called “green jobs”. The problem of the methodological position of worlds – especially scientific worlds – was the focus of Rainer Diaz-Bone’s contribution. Although work in EC/SC focuses on data worlds, in particular on data qualities and categorization, there is a lack of systematic exploration and understanding of EC/SC’s own world(s) and scientific practice and their methodological foundation. Rainer Diaz-Bone proposed the work of American neo-pragmatist Hilary Putnam. As such, there is potential for EC/SC to analyze its own plurality of scientific practices and data worlds. This can contribute to enhancing EC/SC as a reflexive approach and methodologically integrate its own research practices. Putnam’s work offers a crucial perspective for reflecting on EC/SC with regard to its coherence, potential, deficits, and prospects.

The inspiring first day of the workshop ended with a dinner in the city, where participants had the opportunity to continue their discussions and get to know one another better.

Wednesday 10th

The second day of the workshop started with a round table discussion with Julia Brandl (University of Innsbruck), Guillemette de Larquier, Kenneth Horvath and Rainer Diaz-Bone. After a brief introduction to the questions of who they are as researchers and teachers and how they are related to methods, the presentation moved on to the core topic of the workshop. The focus was on how research has been conducted within the EC/SC tradition to date and how its methodological perspective, the application of methods, and research practice in general are interrelated.

Picture 6: The roundtable with Guillemette de Larquier, Rainer Diaz-Bone, Julia Brandl and Kenneth Horvath.

The roundtable discussion examined the role of methods from various perspectives. For Julia Brandl, methods are tools that help answer research questions and capture different social realities. Kenneth Horvath, on the other hand, emphasizes that methods are not fixed within a particular discipline, but can be used appropriately depending on the subject area.
For Guillemette de Larquier, it was important that methods are not only used for quantification, but can also open up new ways of questioning quantification itself; here, too, the keyword is reflexivity. She also finds convention theory brings up exciting perspectives and methods for economics – having the potential of opening up more conservative realms.
Rainer Diaz-Bone emphasized once again the connection between pragmatism and EC/SC. Its strength lies in analyzing how people act in concrete terms and shape their world(s). This raises key methodological questions: What is the surplus value of EC/SC, how do we operate EC/SC, and finally, the question already raised by Kenneth Horvath: How do we communicate and teach convention theory?
The term “convention” was also critically examined during the discussion. It was described as too rigid and therefore appearing stable even though this is not the case. Instead, more dynamic terms such as criticism and justification could build the starting point. They appear less fixed and more open-ended.
Finally, the handling of artistic practice was emphasized. While Laurent Thévenot discussed learning from artistic perspectives, Rainer Diaz-Bone highlighted the importance of still being a researcher and not shifting too much into the artistic field. Another topic was the often-mentioned openness of EC/SC, which – while convention theory is a liberal approach especially to methods – still needs some framework that synthesizes the value of EC/SC.

After the roundtable, there was a coffee break where the outstanding issues and questions could be discussed.

Session seven

Frithjof Nungesser (University of Graz) started the following session seven by presenting his ongoing research project: Livestock production conflicts in Germany over the last 50 years are examined from three perspectives: synchronous, diachronic, and contextual. However, examining the spectrum of justifications in these debates also raises questions, and he successfully demonstrated that a wide variety of aspects must be considered: Various concepts for relating justifications were discussed, such as complementarity and alignment. The structuredness of different justification arenas, their differences and methodological implications (such as accessibility, potential archives, and more), possible transfers between the arenas, and muted justifications – connected to possible power relations – were also highlighted. Finally, Frithjof Nungesser asked whether the EC/SC is bound to a specific political and normative background and how comparisons can be made when the context shifts. This opened the discussion on possible regime shifts when contexts change – especially in non-democratic times –, national differences in the study of the past, and appropriate methods.
Following the rich discussion, Alfredo Grattarola (City St. Georges University of London) presented a typology of research practices and methodological tasks based on a review of organization and management literature that mobilizes the EC/SC. Among other things, he showed how different concepts of EC/SC (such as orders of worth or critiques) are linked to methodological choices. He emphasized the unexploited potential for theorizing organizations and suggested using analogies of “system” instead of “toolkit,” encouraging organization and management researchers to engage more comprehensively with the economies of worth and to expand methodological repertoires.

Session eight

The thematic focus of session eight was on games and vignettes. The contribution by Léonie Bisang (University of Lucerne) addressed the lack of theorization and empirical investigation on how actors act in and shift between different registers. She presented an analytical strategy for exploring situational constellations that lead to changes in registers. In her empirical work, she examines access to higher education institutions using a game-based research tool. Relating to her dissertation project she discussed analysis strategies and how shifts between registers can be captured.
Carsten Damm (University of Erfurt) introduced his doctoral thesis, which takes an empirical approach to social theory debates on Ludwig Wittgenstein’s late philosophy using vignette-based research. A research design was applied to realize language games as vignettes. The aim was to document the politicizing use of economic model worlds, which can be evaluated by analyzing the moves of players through an online survey. As such, the approach can serve as a methodological example to provide further possible EC/SC research formats. Following this, Thomas Grunau (University of Bremen) rounded off session 6. He also picked up on the subject of vignettes and presented the approach of his postdoctoral project, which examines different social worlds in which and through which childhood is produced. Referring to the EC/SC’s studies on education and development issues related to childhood, he addressed the scarcely analyzed phenomenon of (early) childhood in order to examine how this institution is coordinated, organized, and secured in specific situations. In his contribution, he discussed methodical challenges that arise when analyzing this subject area.

Session nine

Session nine was devoted to situational analysis and situationalism. Helena Geisler and Miriam Grønning (Swiss Federal University for Vocational Education and Training) started the inspiring session by proposing using reflexive thematic analysis to construct analytical situations as a meaningful research unit for convention theory. While recruiters construct applicants’ suitability for the job by relying on various conventions, supported by investment in forms such as credentials and formalized processes, they showed how hiring situations differ in the (de)construction of meaning of credentials. Using the development of four different types of these hiring situations, they showed how these types of situations correspond to firm and occupational characteristics. On the other hand, Simon Schrör (Weizenbaum Institute Berlin) and Anna Maria Wittorf (University of Applied Science Reutlingen) both highlighted the suitability of situational analysis in their research projects. Simon Schrör proposed a neopragmatist adaptation of situational analysis, expanding its applicability to the study of coordination processes in situations of uncertainty. He showed how the mapping of coordination situations helps to trace how conventions, coordination mechanisms, intermediaries, and worlds interact within economic and legal conflicts concerning intellectual property rights. Anna Maria Wittorf, in turn, showed how combining discourse analysis with mapping techniques can be used to uncover how leadership legitimacy is constructed in different organizational settings.

Session ten

Picture 7: Sheena F. Bartscherer started with session 10.

In session ten, entitled “beyond orders of worth”, Sheena F. Bartscherer (Humboldt University Berlin) introduced her self-developed Neopragmatic Discourse Analysis (NPDA), which integrates emotions and suggestive actions toward alternative regimes (like the regime of violence or love) into the analysis of orders of worth in discourses. Using her analysis of the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaigns of Trump and Clinton, she presented the application of NPDA and thereby drew conclusions about argumentative structures, strategies, patterns, and argument formation. This opened up a discussion about the emotionality of orders of worth, an irrationality blindness in EC/SC, as well as structuralist and pragmatic approaches to analyzing the situation.
Valeska Cappel continued the theme of regimes (and regime shifts) and showed how classifications in health apps influence user behavior and how users can resist this. She successfully highlighted how a regime perspective reveals everyday tensions that users face as they constantly switch between regimes – within seconds. It became clear that these new technologies do not determine how users interact with them. Rather, users can actively shape how they use health apps.
Meg Holden (Simon Fraser University Vancouver) – the only participant who flew across the Atlantic to attend the workshop – showed how an intersectional layering of an analysis of translanguaging pathways with convention theory analysis should enable a nuanced understanding of the conditions necessary for constructive public debate on aspects of the common good in conditions of radical diversity, inequality, and change. Using examples from a variety of cities, she presented the use of different orders of worth in similar discussions, demonstrating how language and culture influence this usage.

Workshop outcomes and final discussions

While session ten concluded the session rounds, the day was far from over: Guy Schwegler and Léonie Bisang prepared and coordinated one final discussion and presented workshop outcomes. They organized questions that all participants were able to submit during the workshop along two axes: one dimension ranging from “EC/SC specific” to “social sciences in general”, the other opposing “concrete/method/technique” to “abstract/methodology/epistemology”. The questions covered topics such as how to methodically grasp processes, how to move beyond a mere deductive description of conventions, the possible advantages of multimodal analysis in EC/SC and introducing reflexivity into methods.

Picture 8: The final discussion moderated by Léonie Bisang and Guy Schwegler.

The lively discussion that arose further explored the possible binding of orders of worth to a specific context, and whether and how an analysis of other contexts would be possible. In line with this, Laurent Thévenot also brought the learning of conventions to attention, for example with the question of when children begin to refer to conventions. The possibility of sharing results as interactive web apps was also raised, as was a discussion about systematizing the existing literature using keywords and a simplified search function on the EC/SC website. This would help scholars to quickly look for previously used methods, similar topics, and reflections, for example.

After two exciting and intense days, the official part of the workshop ended with words from Rainer Diaz-Bone. He emphasized how impressed he was by all the participants and their work. He expressed his special thanks to Laurent Thévenot for all his work, to Julia Brandl and Guillemette de Larquier, and to the entire organization team, including Guy Schwegler, Kenneth Horvath, Léonie Bisang, and Monika Sy.

Finally, attention was drawn to the next workshop in Innsbruck in February 2027. More information to follow.

A last engagement at the workshop was offered by an aperitif and dinner on a ship, where participants could once again enjoy the beautiful view and get involved in the EC/SC gathering.

Picture 9: Final remarks from the workshop on the ship Wilhelm Tell.

Workshop “Applying multiple correspondence analysis in convention theory”

Julia Brandl, Guillemette de Larquier and Rainer Diaz-Bone

On 8 September 2025 the pre-workshop “Applying multiple correspondence analysis in convention theory” took place at the University of Lucerne (Switzerland). It was organized by Julia Brandl (University of Innsbruck), Guillemette de Larquier (University of Lille) and Rainer Diaz-Bone (University of Lucerne) as a four-hours workshop before the EC/SC workshop “Doing pragmatist research” (see the report https://conventions.hypotheses.org/27824), which took place 9-10 September.
The aim was to present multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) as a statistical technique applied in EC/SC-based projects. From its beginnings French scholars of EC/SC as Francois Eymard-Duvernay employed MCA. The workshop intended to discuss this tradition of a quantitative methodology in EC/SC and to present ongoing applications of MCA. Twelve international participants took part in the workshop. Finally he recommende some resources to approach MCA more easily and the R package FatoMineR (in combination with the package explor).

First Rainer Diaz-Bone introduced MCA’s history as it has been invented by Jean-Paul Benzécri since the 1060ies for his research in mathematical linguistics. But it was the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu who took over MCA into sociology and who made MCA more popular in the social sciences. Bourdieu and his collaborators/colleagues trained several of the founders of EC/SC at the French national statistical institute (INSEE, Paris) and transmitted the usage(s) of MCA. Diaz-Bone pointed to some potentials and possible usage of MCA for the neopragmatist methodology of EC/SC.

Then, Julia Brandl presented MCA as a robust method for analysing complex data in convention theory research, focusing on Austrian higher education institutions. She demonstrated MCA’s application through research projects comparing it with traditional quantitative methods. MCA allows for the reconstruction of institutional action logics by developing and transforming variables, including complex ones such as “gender_education.” This method captures multidimensional complexity beyond simple dependent/independent variable models.

Julia Brandl

Julia Brandl highlighted key challenges like careful data labelling and interpreting multiple dimensions, recommending analysis of 4-6 dimensions. She stressed that subject expertise is crucial for interpreting MCA results. Visualizations depict constellations of variables, e.g., contrasting unitarist versus pluralist HRM teaching approaches in Austrian higher education. She also emphasized MCA’s value in revealing nuanced, multifaceted patterns and tracking organizational changes over time. Brandl encouraged researchers with creativity and a critical stance toward quantitative methods to adopt MCA. Her talk concluded with reflections on overcoming misconceptions and increasing MCA’s acceptance in academic research.

After a refreshing coffee break, Guillemette de Larquier presented an example of research based on the economics and sociology of conventions, using the method of multiple correspondence analysis (MCA), which led to a publication with Emmanuelle Marchal: “Does the Formalization of Practices Enhance Equal Hiring Opportunities? An Analysis of a French Nation-Wide Employer Survey” (Socio-Economic Review 14(3): 567-589).
The starting point was theoretical: there are a variety of conventions of competence, as outlined by François Eymard-Duvernay and Emmanuelle Marchal in their book Façons de recruter (1997) based on qualitative research. Using the French Offre d’emploi et recrutement (OFER) survey on the hiring practices of 3,584 firms in 2005, Guillemette de Larquier and Emmanuelle Marchal had three main objectives: to quantify the plurality of ways of recruiting; to demonstrate that the use of a particular way is not arbitrary, but depends on the context (the company, its market, its size, working conditions, labor contracts, etc.), and that a way of recruiting valorizes or devalorizes different types of applicants.

Guillemette de Larquier then emphasized that they chose the active variables for their MCA in line with their hypotheses. They therefore selected indicators relating to screening methods and the organization of the screening process. The aim was to capture a diversity of ways of acting rather than a diversity of actors (for example, by selecting variables characterizing recruiters), because, in accordance with convention theory, it is the form of coordination situations that matters much more than the preferences or determinism of actors. Finally, in their article, the authors highlighted four ways of judging or assessing the quality of candidates, which are four different ways of formalizing the screening process.

Following the presentations, numerous questions were raised about the difficulty of the method, the time required to complete a full analysis, and the strategy for publication.

In sum the workshop made aware that at its beginnings EC/SC’s scholars as Francois Eymard-Duvernay employed MCA, because it can be adopted to a neopragmatist way of research. but that this technique has been long marginalized in EC/SC’s research. Only few scholars as Emannuelle Marchal and Guillemette de Larquier contibued employing MCA. Now the workshop mobilized the impression that MCA should be more focussed by EC/SC, because there is an now “culture” how to use MCA for neopragmatist institionalismas Julia Brandl’s contribution demonstrated.

EC/SC Panel at the 28th Congress of the Austrian Association for Sociology in Graz (July 2, 2025)

Report by Jakob Gasser (University of Graz) and Frithjof Nungesser (University of Graz)

From June 30 to July 2, 2025, the biennial Congress of the Austrian Association for Sociology (ÖGS) took place at the University of Graz (Austria). Part of the extensive and diverse program was a panel (a so-called “ad-hoc group”) on the “Sociology and Economics of Conventions”. By providing insights into some current theoretical and empirical developments, the panel aimed to present the EC/SC approach to the Austrian sociological community, where it is not yet widespread compared to other countries. The panel, which took place on the morning of July 2, was organized by Jakob Gasser and Frithjof Nungesser, both from the Department of Sociology at the University of Graz. Following a short introduction by the organizers, the panel featured three presentations by Julia Brandl, Valeska Cappel, and Eva Nadai/Anna Gonon.

Speakers and organizers of the EC/SC panel. From left to right: Anna Gonon, Julia Brandl, Valeska Cappel, Eva Nadai, Jakob Gasser, and Frithjof Nungesser

Julia Brandl from the Department of Human Resource Management & Employment Relations at the University of Innsbruck (Austria) kicked things off with a presentation entitled “The Art of Compromise: Challenges and Solutions in the Implementation of Rules in the Corporate Context”. In her talk, Julia Brandl addressed the question of how the EC/SC approach can help to explain the actions of actors within organizations during phases of regulatory change. In doing so, her presentation concentrated on the theoretical concept of compromise. Drawing on the work of Boltanski and Thévenot, Brandl argued that a compromise enables different actors to respond jointly to a situation—even when they hold contradictory positions. A compromise represents a temporary agreement that ensures various modes of action are equally integrated and viewed as legitimate. As it becomes embedded in organizational structures and boundary objects, and through the actor’s daily commitments, such a compromise can be stabilized in the long term.
After outlining the theoretical framework, Julia Brandl applied the concept to an empirical case—the reform of personnel evaluations in the German armed forces (the Bundeswehr). In 2008, the central service regulation governing performance appraisals in the German Bundeswehr was revised. The background to this reform was that, under the existing evaluation system, an increasing number of soldiers were receiving high ratings, which made it increasingly difficult to justify promotion decisions. The new system required superiors to rank their subordinates within an ordering system. Additionally, they were allowed to issue top evaluations only in exceptional cases. This reform represented a critical moment within the organization: In order to avoid conflicts, the involved actors developed a compromise that balanced the functional requirements of the new evaluation system and the responsibility toward those being assessed. The new rules were jointly documented and communicated transparently. Interestingly, the compromise also rested on a system of managing expectations, whereby soldiers with poor evaluations were placated with the prospect of improved ratings at the time they became eligible for promotion. Thus, in her presentation, Julia Brandl demonstrated how in the process of regulatory change multiple goals of different organizational actors can be integrated by means of compromise.
The second presentation was given by Valeska Cappel from the Department of Sociology at the University of Lucerne (Switzerland). The topic of the talk was “Digital Health Classifications Between Justification and Engagement: Regime Change in the Use of Health Apps”. Drawing on a qualitative study of health apps use, Valeska Cappel demonstrated that innovations and technologies do not determine how actors actually use them. Although it is undoubtedly important to consider the history of the development of health apps or the potentially conflicting interests of tech companies, health insurance providers, and data protection authorities (which Valeska Cappel briefly outlined at the beginning), this is not enough to understand the concrete and varied use of these apps. Rather, actors actively shape how these technologies are used—often beyond their originally intended functions.
In order to analyze how health apps are used in practice, Valeska Cappel combined the EC/SC perspective with Thévenot’s concept of “regimes of engagement.” By means of this concept, Laurent Thévenot captures in an exploratory manner the manifold forms of engagement with the environment. Within this framework, justification appears only as one regime of action among others. If actions are situated within the regime of familiarity or the regime of planned action, for example, they are not linked to a broader common good and do not claim generalizability. Building on this framework, Valeska Cappel illustrated how app users strategically develop ways to either enable or avoid shifts between different regimes of engagement, thus situating themselves in specific relationships to health apps, their categories and standards of evaluation. While some use the app for preventive health purposes, others rely on it for self-management (e.g., tracking calorie intake or sleep patterns). Still others use the app outside its original scope, for instance, for social interaction or navigation. By drawing on both EC/SC concepts and the regimes of engagement, Valeska Cappel contributed valuable insights into how digitalization processes succeed or fail in everyday contexts.
The panel was concluded with a presentation by Eva Nadai and Anna Gonon from the School of Social Work at the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland, who shared their insights into “Distribution Systems for People Affected by Poverty from a Convention Theory Perspective.” Based on a qualitative long-term study on households affected by poverty in Switzerland funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, the researchers’ presentation explored two main questions: Which distribution systems are available to those affected by poverty in order to obtain consumer goods? How do the people affected by poverty actually use these systems?
With regard to the first question, the researchers found that those affected by poverty have three main distribution systems at their disposal: In addition to the system of the profit-oriented market, the dominant system for society in general, they also make use of the secondary distribution system of the “charity economy”, which provides those affected by poverty with donated basic goods free of charge or at a symbolic price. In addition, some of the people in the sample also use online peer-to-peer platforms on which second-hand goods are sold, lent, or given away for free by private individuals. Drawing on the EC/SC approach, Eva Nadai and Anna Gonon interpret these systems as compromises between different coordination logics, specifically between the market convention, the ecological convention and the philanthropic welfare convention. They also emphasize that access to the different systems is regulated by specific tests and formats. If, for example, the neediness of the persons is tested, this format implies the separation of poor and non-poor consumers and thus also a determination of the value of the actors.
With regard to the second question, Eva Nadai and Anna Gonon showed that the use of these different distribution systems is determined not only by the availability of economic means, but also by competent and flexible use of these systems. For example, those affected by poverty make strategic use of certain budget brands and discounts, which often requires precise local knowledge and exact timing of purchases, thus involving these individuals in the regime of planned action. An important aspect of (non-)use of the systems is the associated risk of shame and humiliation. While this often results in the non-utilization of services such as food banks, at least in some contexts, coping with this is made easier by the social revaluation of using second-hand goods or avoiding waste. Even if those affected do not typically employ environmental justifications themselves, Eva Nadai and Anna Gonon argued, the growing prominence of the green world in society may help reduce the risk of embarrassment and humiliation.
Overall, the panel once again demonstrated the diversity of research topics and analytical possibilities opened up by the EC/SC – especially through interdisciplinary exchange. In addition, all contributions showed how productive it is to consider both the plurality of justifications and the diversity of regimes of engagement and to integrate these two conceptual frameworks with each other.

L’accès à l’emploi et au recrutement: une approche par l’économie des conventions

Access to employment and recruitment: a convention economics approach

Entretien avec Guillemette de Larquier (2025)

Podcast. 18e épisode de FRESQUES – Les RDV socio-éco du Clersé – 41 minutes

Guillemette de Larquier est professeure en économie au Clersé UMR8019, à l’Université de Lille. Spécialiste en économie des conventions, elle s’intéresse, à travers ce champ de recherche, aux modalités de recrutement et d’accès à l’emploi. Elle a par exemple mené des travaux sur l’Enquête offre d’emploi et recrutement (enquête Ofer) de la DARES (2016), travaux qui se poursuivent encore aujourd’hui. Elle coordonne avec Rainer Diaz-Bone, sociologue à l’Université de Lucerne (Suisse), chez Springer, un ouvrage collectif « Handbook of Economics and Sociology of conventions » (2025) dont l’objectif est de rassembler de nombreux experts en France et à l’étranger en économie et sociologie des conventions. Ce courant, à l’origine français et développé dans les années 80, interroge la capacité des acteurs économiques à se coordonner, interpréter, anticiper et aussi évaluer leurs actions à l’aide de conventions qui viennent cadrer les situations d’interaction. Il peut se décliner dans de nombreux domaines appliqués (agro-alimentaire, recrutement, industrie …) dès lors que la question de la qualité et de sa pluralité émerge.

Dans cet épisode du podcast FRESQUES du Clersé, Guillemette de Larquier, avec l’approche par l’économie des conventions, discute de l’accès à l’emploi, des différents canaux de recrutement, des compétences et de l’utilisation de l’intelligence artificielle dans le processus de recrutement.

Lien / Link

Inventing Value

Dave Elder-Vass (2024)

October 17, 2024
First talk of the Canadian Sociological Association Economic Sociology RC 2024-25 Speaker Series on “Confronting Contemporary Capitalism”.

YouTube

Lien / Link

French-Japanese Joint Meeting around the American Institutionalist John RogersCommons

French-Japanese Joint Meeting around the American Institutionalist John Rogers Commons was held in online in November 2 and 9, 2024. It contributed to activate the institutionalist and pragmatic sociologist network across France and Japan.

The meeting was organized by Véronique Dutraive (Lyon 2 University) and Takayuki Nakahara (Hannan University), inspired by the publication of French translation of J.R. Commons’ masterpiece, Institutional Economics 1934 (L’Économie institutionnelle: Sa place dans l’économie politique. Translation supervisors: Jean-Jacques Gislain and Bruno Théret. Garnier, 2024).

Presenters drew his economic-legal perspective, economic-ethic perspective, institutional evolution approach, and pragmatist approach. The participants eagerly exchange their knowledge on the multiple perspectives and approaches contained in Commons Institutional Economics. This knowledge will be presented in the annual meeting of Japan Association for Evolutionary Economics, March 22-23, 2025.

On the Economics of Convention (EC), Christian Bessy (IDHES ENS Paris-Saclay) and Kota Kitagawa (Kansai University) demonstrated the convergences between EC and Commons’ Institutional Economics (IE) on their viewpoints of the transformations of the employment relationship.

Working Paper of C. Bessy and K. Kitagawa is published in following URL :“John R. Commons and Convention Theory around the transformations of the employment relationship”, https://shs.hal.science/halshs-04896550

Whole program of the meeting is following:

French-Japanese Joint Meeting AROUND JOHN ROGERS COMMONS

Saturday, 2 November – Session 1

  1. Hiroyuki UNI (Otemon Gakuin University): John R. Commons’s Two-layered Theory of Reasonable Value
  2. Laure Bazzoli and Véronique Dutraive (Lyon 2 University): John Commons and John Dewey: a cross-fertilized reading
  3. Akihiro Abe (Otemon Gakuin University): The Conditions for a Reasonable Institution: Comparing the Positions of J.R. Commons and Amartya Sen
  4. Guillaume Vallet (University of Grenoble): John R. Commons and Sociology: More Than an Influence

Saturday, 9 November – Session 2

  1. Takayuki Nakahara (Hannan University): Basic Model of Evolutionary Institutional Economics on J. R. Commons’ Institutional Economics
  2. Christian Bessy (IDHES ENS Paris-Saclay) and Kota Kitagawa (Kansai University): Commons and Convention Theory around the transformations of the employment relationship
  3. Shingo Takahashi (Tokyo College of Transport Studies): Social Security Theory of John R. Commons
  4. Thierry KIRAT (CNRS): John R. Commons: A Legal Theorist

Convention theorist presentations at SSA congress at Basel 9-11 September 2024

Congress report by Rainer Diaz-Bone

From 9 to 11 September 2024 the congress “Vulnerable Societies: Risks and Responses” of the Swiss Association of Sociology (SSA) took place at Basel (Muttenz). Two workshop sessions were organized by Rainer Diaz-Bone (University of Lucerne, Switzerland) and devoted to economics and sociology of conventions (EC/SC).

On Tuesday 10 September the first (out of two) workshop session “Crises, conflicts, catastrophes – on the relationship between «self-vulnerabilization» and collective capacities for action from a convention theory perspective” took place. The main aim of this session was to grasp self-vulnerabilization as resulting out of societal process. The loss of social self-evidence or consensus can be regarded as caused by social mechanisms as emerging populisms, increasing social inequality, ageing societies, environmentally destructive lifestyles, the inadequate handling of migration consequences (as failing to integrate migrants). There have been four presentations at this workshop. First, Rainer Diaz-Bone introduced some of EC/SC’s core concepts which can be fruitfully applied in the analysis of self-vulnerabilization. For him, self-vulnerability can be conceived of as the damaging of fair evaluation, critique and justification as well as the institutional corruption of coping capacities. He pointed to EC/SC’s concept of bad conventions (Philippe Batifoulier and Guillemette de Larquier), self-referentiality (André Orléan) and the power of evaluation (François Eymard-Duvernay) which could be employed. Also, he argued that the difference between conventions and institutions (Robert Salais) could cause effects of self-vulnerabilization.

Ross Wallace

Valentin Rottensteiner

Luca Perrig

Ross Wallace (University of Lisbon, Portugal) presented research on a local project for energy transition and the resistance against it in Cercal in Portugal. In his lecture “From place imaginaries to regimes of engagement with alternative energy futures: A report from a Portuguese” Wallace shared insights from his research project team (with Kaya Schwemmlein and Susana Batel) about how a local social movement emerged to act against a planned solar plant in 2021/2022. The analysis focused on the discourse and how critique was mobilized in it. One of the key findings was that the state is accused to ignore the vulnerability of the Portuguese community of Cercal. In the third lecture on supply chain vulnerabilities titled “Conflicting worlds of production: How the strive for supply chain vulnerability creates conflict in the semiconductor industry” Valentin Rottensteiner (Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Cologne, Germany) employed the model of worlds of production (developed by Michael Storper and Robert Salais) to study how actors in different worlds identify supply chain vulnerabilities. He argued that vulnerabilities are identified and solved in different ways – depending on the world of production. The last presentation “Enrolling hackers into a market for cyber-vulnerabilities” was given by Luca Perrig (University of St. Gallen, Switzerland). He referred to the market of hacking services and the hacking activist movement of “hactivism”. Perrig tracked the way how the mobilization of justifications for hacking (“ethical hacking”) goes hand in hand with the construction of a market for hacking service and hacking activism.

The second workshop session took place on Wednesday 11 September and was entitled “The Pluralization of Social Knowledge Production and the Paradox of Vulnerability”. Four lectures were given which were focusing the “paradox” that science is at once regarded as a resource for tackling uncertainty and crises as well as a realm which generates uncertainty and becomes vulnerable itself. The pluralization of knowledge production and the questioning of academic knowledge now lead to the fact that its analyses and solution perspectives for vulnerability(ies) themselves come under social criticism (e. g. “climate deniers”).

Frithjof Nungesser

Léonie Bisang and Guy Schwegler

Valeska Cappel

Walter Bartl

​The first presentation was given by Frithjof Nungesser (University of Graz, Austria) on “Forms of valuing livestock: On the pluralization of justifications, vulnerability claims, and the uses of science in animal welfare debates”. Nungesser offered first elements of a beginning analysis of two situations of animal welfare legislation in Germany (the 1972 Animal Welfare Act and the 2023 introduction of a mandatory animal husbandry label). Relying on the notion of order of justification (Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot) he sketched the pluralization of justifications and critiques on the two legislation initiatives. The second presentation by Valeska Cappel (University of Lucerne) on “Health-Apps: The pluralization of knowledge production and its consequences” presented first results of a research project on health app users’ practices. Cappel demonstrated how actors invent “multiple truth” and different justifications about the validity and usages of health data. Guy Schwegler and Léonie Bisang (both University of Lucerne) showed in their presentation “Is place the new social? Geodata and the encounter of data worlds” how geodata can be used to generate a different kind of representation of “the social”. They based their presentation on the notion of “data worlds” and questioned the approach to replace class concepts by geodemographic classifications as explanatory principles (e.g. postcodes as it was proposed by Richard Webber and Roger Burrows). The last presentation in this workshop session was given by Walter Bartl (University of Halle, Germany). Entitled “Worlds of scientific knowledge transfer” Bartl’s presentation applied the “worlds of production” model and showed how scientific knowledge transfer can be understood in different worlds. Bartl made the perspective of EC/SC evident by applying it to two examples of scientific knowledge translations in Germany.

Beside the eight presentations in the two workshop sessions, there have been other presentations based on EC/SC, too, as Kenneth Horvath’s (University of Teacher Education Zurich, Switzerland) presentation “Beyond resilience and vulnerability: employing the Sociology of Critique to explore the social foundations and implications of the AI-transformation of educational organisations” or Jessica Pidoux, Núria Sànchez-Mira and Philip Balsiger’s (University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland) lecture on “Algorithmic Predictions in Uber’s Digital Labor Market: A Study on Economic Risks and Autonomy of Drivers” in which they used Robert Salais’ concept of labor conventions.
The convention theorist presentations at the SSA congress in 2024 continued the series of workshops and presentations included in the SSA congresses for almost ten years now (SSA congresses in Lausanne 2015, Zurich 2017, Neuchâtel 2019, Geneva 2021), which are devoted to convention theory’s research in Switzerland and abroad.

EC/Sociology of Conventions Workshop – Sustainability, conventions and compromise

Workshop report by Adèle Sébert (University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne )

What is going on at Paderborn? In between railway turmoils and a German wind coming with fall, another EC/SC Workshop took place on 26th and 27th September 2024.
Overview: Over two days, 5 sessions and 1 three-way roundtable took place, with a succession of 15 presentations, ranging from projects to be or just-submitted, to research projects or in-progress thesis, to published articles and chapters. Sessions covered a variety of themes: from the workshop, to training and work – a theme strongly present in the Department of Sociology at the University of Paderborn – and a variety of topics, as well as a session dedicated to the methodological issues involved in convention theory.
Expertly managed by the session moderators, each presentation was discussed at length with the audience, focusing on the research topics or the implications for EC/SC. Discussions focused on the units of analysis of the convention theorist’ approaches presented, the relevance of mixed methods for EC/SC, the use of typologies if they lead to an increase in generality, the translation issues of the EC/SC (its degree of internationalization and appropriation by non-French-speaking researchers). All of this in an open and spontaneous setting, to enrich everyone’s research and provide an interdisciplinary (sociology, history, economics, management), pluralist (in the sense of EC/SC frameworks applied) and inter-European viewpoint.

Wednesday 25th
The traditional pre-workshop diner took place on the evening of Wednesday 25th September, giving participants a chance to get together at the start of this academic year.

Thursday 26th
After the welcoming words of the organizers, and a first round of coffee, the session “Sustainability and conventions” opened the dance.

Felix Rossmann and Eltje Gajewski

Eltje Gajewski (University of Duisburg-Essen) introduced one of the results from her thesis: a typology of entrepreneurs according to the degree of ecological focus of their companies. She described her methodological approach, based on a qualitative design mixing interviews and documents analysis. Crossing this material study with the On justification framework (Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot), she ended showing there are four types of what she called “ecopreneurs”: minimalists, self-actualizers, world-saviors and strategists. In what it describes, the typology raised some questions from workshop participants, as well as the way in which one (or more) types can diffuse or not. Workshop participants shared a global interrogation about the relevance of typologies, which EC/SC’s researches tend to end with. A question that went through most presentations for the rest of the workshop.
Then Felix Rossmann and Lisa Knoll (Paderborn University) took the lead by discussing sustainable financial regulation in order to transform the manufacturing industry. Comparing different programs and standards while focusing on the East-Westphalia-Lippe, they showed that different logics are coexisting today, relying on diverse standards and engaging worlds of justifications. Using Alain Desrosières research, the ended their presentation by posing that different standards also imply different ways of managing the economy, then not complying with the ordoliberal scheme promoted by the EU’s programs.

Felix Rossmann

Questions were asked on both green finance and effects of the financial crisis of 2008 when accessing these financial programs and governing the green transformation for small and medium-sized enterprises (SME). The unit of analysis led to a back and forth discussion with workshop participants for EC/SC is not solely about programs but also about coordinating actors maneuvering those programs.

To complete this dedicated session, Alan Shipman and Ann Vogel (University of Applied Sciences of Güstrow) joined forces to introduced a working-progress project on which they try to overcome the Baumol effect encountered for some goods when it comes to environmental issues.

Alan Shipman and Ann Vogel

Drawing on a comparison with arts, they explained how costs in the art sector are bound to increase because other goods and services, in other sector, also increase. Using Kenneth E. Boulding definition of “saving”, they wished for a better integration of temporality and future when looking at consumptions. Colleagues asked questions about connections to convention theorists’ research of Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot, and about the adequacy of the orders of worth to understand specificities of environmental goods and services.Helped by a coffee to break ice, the participants partook to the second session “Convention theories”. This session investigated differently what was discussed previously, as typologies, units of analysis, adequacy between theoretical frameworks.

Rainer Diaz-Bone

Simon Schrör

Christian Schneijderberg

​Drawing on a chapter published in the Handbook of Economics and Sociology of Conventions, Rainer Diaz-Bone (University of Lucerne) chose to focus on specific designs of convention theorists researches: comparative studies, historical analysis and case studies. He reminded everyone that other designs are possible, but this proposition is a way to sum up what he encountered for the last years. He insisted on two shared questions faced by EC/SC researches: how to identify the boundaries of situations and how to identity conventions (and conversely the population, that is to say object of the disputes, institutions refers to by people, people coordinating with each other). Both unit of analysis and situation raised questions from participants, and it was stated that referring to unit of analysis avoided too early decision about causes and consequences, which are key to operate situations within the course of analysis.
Simon Schrör (Weizenbaum Institute e.V.) addressed physical goods in the realm of applied arts. He studied cases on protection in processes and laws designs, targeting the role of lawyers in the valorizing process, even valorization of things that were not thought as art before. In order to do so, he used Luc Boltanski and Arnaud Esquerre Enrichment and applied it to modular shelving system. Since the framework referred to was not the orders of worth, questions from colleagues focused on the choice made up here. Consequently, linking theory with methodology and methods, a second wave of questions dealt with data chosen to approach such judiciary subjects with this framework.
To round off the morning, Christian Schneijderberg (University of Kassel) presented his reflections on “good” and “bad” conventions, questioning the relevance of the idea of bad conventions, currently being explored by Paris Nanterre French colleagues. He introduced these conventions to characterize economies relying on illegal or marginal activities, showing how orders of worth can be turned the way round in order to qualify regimes of violence. Three cases were proposed in conceptual tables: mafia, prostitution and human trafficking, associating them with industrial, domestic and civic orders of worth. This presentation led to two sets of theoretical questions. One on the limits of the application of the order of worth’s toolkit when qualifying non-western European economies, in which On justification was thought about. Another set of questions focused on the adequacy of the model of Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot to conceptualize bad conventions.

The afternoon opened with the first session “Education and Work”.

Christian Imdorf and Philipp Gonon

The education system was firstly addressed through the vocational education and training (VET) by Christian Imdorf (Leibniz University Hannover) and Philip Gonon (University of Zurich). They showed that VET is a recent phenomenon and is based on individual initiatives, making it difficult to fully grasp the coherence behind it. Using a convention theorist framework, they considered VET as a hybrid structure relying on a compromise that stabilizes demand coming from different actors (broader than firms level). Then they took time to draw on a diversity of researches, in different countries, that could lead them to better theorized VET. Colleagues vividly discussed their presentation by referring to different countries and varieties of perceptions towards such training, thus underlining the value of EC/SC framework for achieving greater coherence.

Kenneth Horvath and Stephan Dahmen

Following their path, Stephan Dahmen (University of Paderborn) and Kenneth Horvath (Teachers University of Zurich) took over and introduced their work-in-progress about potentials at school. They put under scrutiny the testing situation as a social one which enroots in a test chaining throughout education, and which results in effects on career guidance. Reactions of participants built on insights of EC/SC when it comes to understanding inequalities (and why they persist even if we know them) and on how EC/SC helps to consider test as investment in form (Laurent Thévenot), even when people and testing changed through time.

Léonie Bisang

Finally Léonie Bisang (University of Lucerne) chose to present a preliminary results of her PhD study on students path from secondary to higher education level in Switzerland. She explained her choice to go for a reintroduction of structure (agency) to consider students’ decisions and perceptions, but she also took into account their reflexivity. She introduced to workshop participants a game she designed, based on cards and videos (for her to analyse students’ reactions). With this game she aimed at getting students’ perceptions of higher education (entertaining vs. hard facts) and splitting those according to students’ expectations when it comes to higher education (quality criteria and conception of higher education). Colleagues raised questions on methodological implications behind this design and on how she evolved her presentation through times, Léonie Bisang partaking in different research events.
Last session of this eventful day put under scrutiny “various themes”. Laverne Iminza Chore and Julia Brandl (University of Innsbruck) presented a research based on a focus group with actors, who know each other, in order to address temporary workers issues. They created a setting relying on workshops and rounds of opinions in order to produce scenarios and somewhat failed to ensure the realisation of those scenarios afterwards. Reminding the audience that scenario planing is uncertain and may be shaped by social conventions. They discussed the fact that scenarios are compromise device themselves. Which led to many questions from workshop participants about the method behind this particular scenario planing setting, the type of actors involved, the possibility to create cooperation between actors in absence of hierarchy in such settings (even though underlying power relations might arise). Participants agreed to further discussion about the role of researchers that designed such setting and used it as both tool and research material. They also raised a related question when it comes to such a research process: who takes responsibility for ideas and what comes out of them? EC/SC enables researchers to embrace both the diversity of economic and institutional actors (coordinating in a way they were not used to before) and the effects of researchers themselves when trying to provoke a coordinating setting.
Relying on a variety of maps of work activities in Sweden, Rebecca Ye (University of Stockholm) presented a project, CYCLE, she launched and the way she envisions realising it, where it to be funded. She explained the Swedish cyclical context about skills shortages, often presented in the media as a problem and more and more intensively with green transition. Using data registers (available in Sweden), mixing their analysis with three case studies in diffferent municipalities and the frameworks of On justification (Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot), she wishes to study how public programmes have been justified and why people do engage in them. Participants had questions on the skills targeted with these programmes she intends to look at, and on the availability of quantified data in Sweden, compared to other countries. This reminded everyone how EC/SC is linked, all at the same time theoretically, methodologically and in methods, to data and successive operations of quantification (Alain Desrosières).
Last to present her research for the day, Adèle Sébert (University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne) discussed an article to be published in a French journal and that she wanted to present the participants, as a first time to introduce herself in the EC/SC network. In this article about French households energy access difficulties, she posed that Michael Storper and Robert Salais’ framework, Worlds of production and the concept of conventions of the state, is adequate to analyse the role of the state and expectations towards it in a situation where the state involves a diversity of economic actors to take in charge a public problem. Less used by colleagues than On justifications, the choice of the Worlds of production framework brought questions on how it helped saying something that do not stop at being another typology to describe a variety of actions.

Julia Brandl and Laverne Iminza Chore

Rebecca Ye

Adèle Sébert

The first day of the workshop ended with a diner in the city center, a wonderful opportunity to catch up and to get to know with each other.

Friday 27th
Chaired by Christian Schneijderberg, the roundtable featured Sarah Lenz (University of Hamburg), Adèle Sébert (University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne) and Lisa Knoll (Paderborn University). Designed to go back and forth with the participants, the roundtable aimed at questioning the links between sustainability and conventions. Each featured participant began by choosing a starting point: sustainability as a new principle of justice (for future generations), the adequate framework for analysing a research subject that crosses social and ecological issues, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) seen as compromise or a dynamic of unsolved conflicts. The discussion then opened to a shared reflection between featured participants and the moderator, tackling sustainability as a battlefield, and a built discussion between them and other workshop participants. This discussion can be summed up in three stages and a forward-looking statement. The first stage led to come back on how EC/SC is learned in Germany and France as well as on how a new generation of French convention theorists is trying to integrate EC/SC and environmental issues. The second stage spinned around convention theorist tools and concepts that were discussed during the workshop: the vision of temporality and the way EC/SC deals with it, the need to assess the plural nature of quantification and the diversity of wealth indicators, the dynamics that helps standards (private or public) to emerge and to diffuse. The third stage questioned the relationship between social and natural sciences and the degree of interdisciplinary that makes sense or, on the contrary, may put social sciences at risk. The final words of the roundtable were given by Rainer Diaz-Bone who pointed that the main question such crossing between sustainability and conventions raises is the one of identity: “why do we exist as convention theorists?” and how this identity enables us to consolidate an added-value to address environmental issues. To avoid falling into either a form of “service science”, which hyper-individualises things and paradoxically excludes plurality while promoting a systematic benchmarking and way of thinking, or a “media science”, which selects trendy subjects and cannot delve into issues, the convention theory researchers insight is that of a detection of non-intended perverted effects of addressing environmental issues and of a shedding light at compromises and their dynamics.

Christian Schneijderberg, Lisa Knoll, Sarah Lenz, Adèle Sébert

Last session of the workshop: “Education and work” second session. Three scholars presented in-progress researches while showing the participants that they took the previous day’s discussions into account while formulating their thought processes.

Sophie Gigl

Sophie Gigi (University of Bielefeld) begun by introducing the audience to her PhD project questionning the (de)stabilized goals of Germany’s upper secondary school level and which focuses on lesson preparation. She explained how she wishes to address the issues of the mode of preparing and adapting social sciences lessons (which is an uncertain situation of action) and of the social material environmental of social sciences lessons (the situation of planing and adapting being the unit of analysis), thus putting the light on horizontal and vertical pluralities. Methodologies and methods were discussed in order to reinforce the data collection and analysis process to come with such a research.

Laura Seifert-Uhl

Laura Seifert-Uhl (University of Tubingen) took over and described a project, StellaA, she coordinates as research assistant from 2022 to 2025. The research object being the occupational profiles of public adult education, the team wants to question both the development of public adult education centers in Germany and the occupational profiles themselves. The project articulates historical documents since the 1960s and job advertisements, thus creating a massive database to deal with. Laura pointed some of their interrogations when dealing with such an amount of data. Discussions ensued on analysis issues, on tips to avoid being too descriptive, on the way to find a convention using historical documents and databases (the answer being none because of the distance between data and conventions, relying on Alain Desrosières’s sociology of quantification).

Lena Nüchter

Lena Nüchter (University of Gießen) had the heavy task of closing the morning’s dynamic. She chose to discuss theoretical compatibilities of sociology of conventions and graduate capitals. Coming from a Bourdieusian perspective, she underlined the difficulties she has currently to characterise recruitment situation and the so-called employability. The main problem being that graduate capitals are not necessarily the driving force behind recruitment decisions. Rather she identified three examples of capital assessment (social, cultural, identity) that manifest what can be considered as domestic conventions. To what extent are capitals not only built within a situation? A lively exchange ensued, with colleagues wishing to contribute on the relevance of such a mixed framework with regard to the research object (discussing François Eymard-Duvernay and Emmanuelle Marchal research on recruitment, suggesting a comparison with financial capitals studied by André Orléan) but also from a disciplinary perspective (degree of compatibility of Bourdieu’s tools, capital theory).

After a quick lunch, closing words ended the workshop and gave perspectives for the next edition, in September 2025. Many thanks to the organising team: Lisa Knoll, Stephan Dahmen and Maurice Paaschen !

Stephan Dahmen and Lisa Knoll

Felix Rossmann, Maurice Paschen, Lisa Knoll

Questioning perception in (organized) valuation

Workshop report written by Nadine Arnold (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) and Christian Bessy (IDHES ENS Paris-Saclay)

At the end of October 2024, the working group on Organization and Valuation from the Sociology of Organizations section of the German Sociological Association convened to explore the role of perception in valuation at the Centre “Futures of Sustainability” of the Unviersität Hamburg. For this endeavor, the working group invited Christian Bessy from IDHES ENS Paris-Saclay, to discuss his conceptualization of “prise” referred to as the “sense of things,” as elaborated together with Francis Chateauraynaud in their well-received book ‘Experts et Faussaires’ (1995, 2nd ed. 2014)).

The group of sociologists who explored the role of perception in organized valuation processes in Hamburg on October 24th and 25th. Back row, left to right: Ronny Ehlen, Thorsten Peetz, Christian Bessy, Désirée Waibel, Sarah Lenz, Konstantin Hondros, Christopher Dorn. Front row, left to right: Marco Hohmann, Frank Meier, Nadine Arnold

Christian Bessy (ENS Paris-Saclay) kicked off the workshop by presenting how the sense of things unfolds when abstract evaluation templates that are socially accepted (referred to as landmarks) align with sensory apprehension, which is not pre-given and occurs situationally (referred to as folds). While, he explained how this conceptualization developed in relation to two widely recognized theoretical currents: Actor Network Theory (ANT) and Convention Theory, the most relevant claim for the workshop was that it is not only metrics, standards, and other formalized elements from the organizational domain (i.e., landmarks) that guide valuations; full engagement of the sensory faculties (perception) also plays a crucial role in valuation processes, particularly in identifying, maintaining and authenticating objects. During his introductory lecture, Bessy emphasized that the link between these two levels (perceptions and qualifications) is based on conventions of trans-identification of things in different contexts. These conventions presuppose a collective learning of description languages and collections. He also highlighted the fact that paying attention to things makes it possible to link aesthetic and environmental aspects.

Two contributions directly engaged with the differentiation between the formally organized aspects of valuation (i.e., landmarks) and the more perceptive aspects (i.e., folds, traces and signs), in which situated body-to-body interactions matter. In this regard, Désirée Waibel (Universität Luzern) raised the question of whether valuation can be distinguished into the abstract and the concrete, hypothesizing that amateurs, rather than experts, are ascribed to the realm of the concrete, where valuation relies heavily on perception and senses. Christopher Dorn (Universität Bielefeld) also addressed the contrast between organized and perceived valuation, elaborating on a causal chain that begins with the rationalized evaluations of hospitals through rankings. He noted that patients attending poorly ranked hospitals may face stigma, which can lead to shame and stress, presenting a case of abstract valuations that may have bodily consequences.

Building on compelling empirical cases, another group of workshop contributors highlighted the centrality of sensory perception in assessing value(s) and authenticity. Thorsten Peetz (Universität Bamberg) and Frank Meier (Universität Bremen) captivated the audience with their analysis of Therese Neumann, known as Resl von Konnersreuth (1898-1962), who was famous for her reported stigmata and extreme fasting. Therese Neumann sparked public fascination and pilgrimage due to her bleeding wounds resembling those of Christ. While the dominant discourse has focused on the controversial debate regarding the authenticity of Therese Neumanns’ stigmata, Peetz and Meier used her case to argue that bodily changes and perceptions serve as valid means for valuation, especially for laypeople, going beyond the conventional level.

Konstantin Hondros (HSU Hamburg) expanded the discussion on perception in valuation processes by illustrating how senses are utilized to evaluate art and student papers generated by AI. He argued that AI can evoke a range of emotions, from appreciation to rejection and fear, calling for a better understanding of the role of perception in the valuation and appreciation of AI and the authenticity of the things it generates. An empirical case where individual senses play a recognized role in valuation conventions was presented by Marco Hohmann (Universität Hamburg). Reporting from his multi-site ethnography of upcycling startups in the textile sector, he demonstrated how perception is pivotal in transforming wasted textiles into desirable products. These startups selectively choose materials for upcycling, consciously avoiding scaling, in contrast to conventional mainstream textile businesses that prioritize large volumes and low prices.

Two further contributions focused on food valuation, where sensory experience might intuitively seem paramount. While this is particularly true for individual food consumption, Nadine Arnold (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) and Allison Loconto (Université Gustave Eiffel) illuminated that the international trade of food produced in the Global South is structured in a highly standardized way that enables cheap food and sidelines perception. Interestingly, this logic also applies to newer standards that invoke social and ecological values. Ronny Ehlen (Universität Hohenheim) echoed this observation by emphasizing the omnipresence of quality standards in food commerce, making the relevant argument that in everyday supermarket contexts, abstract standards are subject to interpretation. In these spaces of interpretation, one can expect that shopfloor workers’ individual sensory experiences will matter, even though the quality standards are intended to mask or suppress them.

Overall, the workshop provided a rich exploration of the intricate ways perception conditions and shapes valuation across various domains, encouraging participants of this workshop to consider and rethink the theoretical and empirical implications of the body and sensory experiences in valuation processes that appear stable and rationalized. Particularly, when valuation comes to unique items such as works of art, local produce, discarded and composite objects (upcycling) or the evocation of sanctity.

Relevant literature and links:

  • The workshop was mainly building on this book: Bessy, Christian, & Chateauraynaud, Francis (2014). Experts et faussaires : pour une sociologie de la perception (2e éd. Augmented by a postscript translated in English, Being attentive to things: Pragmatic approaches to authenticity). Paris: Pétra. The English postscript can be downloaded here.
  • The workshop program can be found here and more information about the working group on Organization and Valuation from the Sociology of Organizations section of the German Sociological Association here.

Presentation of the Handbook of economics and sociology of conventions at AFEP Congress

At the 13th congress of the Association française d’économie politique (AFEP) [French Political Economy Association], held in Montpellier from July 3 to 5, 2024, a plenary session organized by Nicolas Postel (University of Lille) and Thomas Lamarche (University of Paris City) focused on collective publications in the field of institutionalist economics. The session was entitled “Institutionalist syntheses, what synthesis exercises teach us about institutionalism”.

Four collective publications were presented by a member of each editorial team: (1) Le Grand manuel d’économie politique presented by Anaïs Henneguelle (University of Paris City); (2) Théorie de la régulation, un nouvel état des savoirs presented by Thomas Lamarche (University of Paris City); (3) L’économie post-keynésienne, Histoires théories et politiques presented by Jean-François Ponsot (University Grenoble Alpes); and (4) the Handbook of economics and sociology of conventions presented by Guillemette de Larquier (University of Lille).

Jean-François Ponsot, Guillemette de Larquier, Thomas Lamarche, Anaïs Henneguelle and Nicolas Postel

Nicolas Postel asked each speaker to explain the origin of his or her project and its position in the field of institutionalism in economics (in particular, its contribution). This provided an opportunity to promote the Handbook, co-edited by Rainer Diaz-Bone (University of Lucerne) and Guillemette de Larquier, and to recall what convention theory can contribute to other institutionalist approaches (and vice-versa).

Guillemette de Larquier introduces the Handbook as a response to the lack of introductory works on the economics and sociology of conventions (EC/SC) in French, and a fortiori in English for an international audience. When Master or PhD students want to familiarize themselves with EC/SC, there is no single text to recommend. Within EC/SC there are a number of authors who can be described as founders. EC/SC is not a school, but a research program in which researchers, mainly economists and sociologists, develop their own analyses. This plurality makes it difficult for a novice student, or even a researcher from outside the program, to identify what the core of EC/SC is.

Rainer Diaz-Bone and Guillemette de Larquier’s aim was to publish the first handbook introducing EC/SC to an international and interdisciplinary scholarship. It systematizes and presents the results of four decades of EC/SC’s research and it includes foundations, applications, comparisons, and methods. The handbook comprises more than a hundred chapters, divided into conceptual, disciplinary and applied sections. A student or researcher interested, for example, in the concept of investments in form, or in human resource management approaches or in the ecological crisis, will thus have at his or her disposal one or more chapters providing an overview of the state of knowledge on the issue as addressed by EC/SC. The handbook’s international and multi-disciplinary character can be illustrated by a few figures: 50% of contributors are French, 24% are German-speaking and the others are mainly European, but also (South)American or Japanese; 36% are economists, almost 50% are sociologists and the others are management researchers, political scientists, historians or geographers.

Guillemette de Larquier

As for EC/SC’s contribution to the field of institutionalism in economics, paradoxally its early work says little about institutions. This is not the object EC/SC seeks to explain, nor the concept by which it explains economic coordination. In fact, EC/SC’s approach to institutions as instituted rules, accepted or imposed, as resources or constraints, is quite common in the social sciences. The contribution of EC/SC to institutionalist economics is to explain how institutions are applied in practice, how they are interpreted, readjusted to the context, reinforced or distorted, on the basis of conventions, i.e. representations of what is appropriate to do in a given context. Conventions enable actors to give institutions a meaning appropriate to the situation. If we take the example of the institutions that regulate wage-earning (in other words, the “rapport salarial”, one of the fundamental institutional forms of French regulation theory), EC/SC are interested in the conventions underlying their implementation, justification, criticism and evolution.

Guillemette de Larquier concludes by stressing that it would be a mistake to limit EC/SC to a microeconomic approach. It’s true that many analyses focus on the practices of actors in well-defined, small-scale situations. However, the conventions highlighted by EC/SC can be operational at several scales: local, national or international. They can, for example, explain how employability is interpreted in recruitment, in the implementation of a public training program for the unemployed, or in the construction of job quality indicators in the European Union. Let’s not forget that John M. Keynes, to whom macroeconomists (and post-Keynesians) largelly refer, introduced the concept of convention to explain the functioning of financial markets. Also, the work of Alain Desrosières on statistical conventions has an immediate macroeconomic application: the numerical analysis of GDP, inflation or unemployment is based on conventions that need to be studied to understand economic policies. This is exactly the work produced by Florence Jany-Catrice in her chapter published in the book on the state of knowledge in French regulation theory (TR) presented in the same session: “Articuler analyses conventionnaliste et régulationniste : le cas de la mesure de l’inflation”: she shows how statistical measurement conventions (concept of EC/SC) act on capital accumulation regimes (concept of TR) and also evolve with the transformations of these regimes. On the contrary, to confine EC/SC to a micro-economic approach, even a non-standard and heterodox one, would lead to the failure of any attempt to mutually enrich the different institutionalist approaches.

Text: Guillemette de Larquier
Photos: Martine Pernod-Lemattre

Regula Julia Leemann’s farewell lecture at Basel

On 21 June 2024, Prof. Dr. Regula Julia Leemann, Professor & Chair of Educational Sociology, gave her farewell lecture at the University of Teacher Education at the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW) in Basel. With Regula Julia Leemann, one of the key German-speaking representatives of the Economics and Sociology of Conventions (EC/SC) in the field of education is retiring.

Lecture hall at Basel/Muttenz

Over the past 15 years, Regula has been intensively pursuing the reception and empirical application of EC/SC to questions of Swiss educational institutions, partly in collaboration with Christian Imdorf, another scholar in the field of EC/SC. A core result of these endeavors was the edited volume “Bildung und Konventionen” (Education and Conventions) with Christian Imdorf and Philipp Gonon (published in 2019; see https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-658-23301-3).

In Regula’s last three research projects funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (“Training networks in practice” with Christian Imdorf, “Specialized middle school as an independent educational pathway alongside vocational training and baccalaureate schools” with Christian Imdorf, and the current project “Governance of transitions in the Swiss education system“, whose proposal was awarded an excellence grant by the SNSF), she also productively applied and further advanced EC/SC in the field of education, generating important insights for educational sociology, teacher training as well as evidence-based education policy.
In 2014 Regula has – together with Julia Brandl (University of Innsbruck) – invented the workshop series “Sociology of conventions” (first time held in Basel). This series has been institutionalized since then and become very important for the establishment of EC/SC outside of France. In sum, Regula’s Team has organized three of these biennial workshops, which bring together researchers from different disciplines to discuss theoretical, methodological and methodological issues relating to the EC/SC.

Leanna

On 21 June 2024, after a long career, Regula Julia Leemann was given a well-deserved farewell. The lecture theatre was filled with many important representatives of German-speaking educational sociology, as well as family and friends of Regula. LEANNA provided the live music for the event. After a welcome address by the head of the Institute, Prof. Dr. Claudia Schmellentin Britz, Prof. Dr. Christian Imdorf gave a speech on the importance of universities of teacher education for the establishment of educational sociology as a reference discipline for teacher training, thereby emphasizing the role of EC/SC in contemporary sociology of education. He paid tribute to Regula’s work and her great commitment, not only to the EC/SC in particular, but also to educational sociology in general. Regula was a persistent advocate of the institutionalization of a sociological perspective in teacher education.

Christian Imdorf

 One expression of these efforts was a handbook on sociology of education for prospective and practicing teachers, which Regula published with colleagues from the Universities of teacher education in Zurich and Bern. The teacher training that Regula and her team initially conducted in seven degree programs in four cantons at seven locations also benefited greatly from the high-quality research projects, Regula has trained and supported “a second Swiss” generation of EC/SC researchers in the field of sociology of education. This way, EC/SC was also productively used and further developed in their dissertations.
In addition to her commitment to teaching, research and the EC/SC, Christian Imdorf also recognized Regula’s dedicated work for the scientific community.
Christian also paid tribute to Regula’s long-standing commitment (2008-2020) to the board of the Education Section of the German Sociological Association. For many years, Regulas chair of sociology of education has been responsible for the monthly newsletter for this section and for the section of educational sociology of the Swiss Society for Sociology. Since 2020, Regula has been a member of the board and treasurer of the latter.
Regulas team then took the opportunity to say goodbye with some personal tributes to the many years of close collaboration and thanked Regula for her tremendous support, encouragement and excellent leadership in both research and teaching over the past 15 years.

Regula’s Team (from the left to the right): Damaris Wittwer, Rebekka Sagelsdorff, Andrea Fischer, Luca Preite, Raffaella Esposito, Sybille Bayard, Sandra Hafner, Fanny Klaffke, Bettina Weller, Jasmin Näpfli, Kim Stäheli.

To conclude, Regula herself gave a speech on the importance of sociology of education for the teacher education. She provided an overview of the most important research findings that have been produced by the staff of the Chair of Sociology of Education in the last years, and showed how these findings can be put to practical and fruitful use in teacher education.
The event closed with a heartfelt and moving thank-you speech from Regula, in which she expressed her gratitude to her relatives and friends, current and former colleagues, professional and personal companions, acquaintances and, in particular, her long-standing team.

Regula Julia Leemann

Sandra Hafner, Raffaella Esposito, Rainer Diaz-Bone