Archives de catégorie : Billets

2026

Since March 2017 the blog has published 2000 posts, informing about publications, conferences/workshops/events, PhDs/habilitations and interviews with scholars in the field.
– 1691 posts about publications
– 157 posts about Theses, PhD and Dissertations
– 49 conference or seminar reports
– 35 interviews or videos
– 68 other

2024

Bonne année !   Gutes Neues Jahr!   Happy New Year!  
¡Feliz Año Nuevo!  Buon anno!  Hyvää uutta vuotta!  
新年あけましておめでとうございます。  
Feliz Ano Novo!   كل عام وأنتم بخير  С Новым годом!   
Gelukkig Nieuwjaar!   新年快乐!   
  Καλή χρονιά!  Godt nytår!  שנה טובה ודרך שמחה בכל עת.

The EC blog was implemented in March 2017. Up to now, it has published almost 1600 posts, informing about publications, conferences/events, PhDs/habilitations and interviews with scholars in the field. The blog includes around 1300 posts about publications based on/applying/referring to EC/SC, 123 PhDs and Habilitations (including also thesis before 2017), 42 reports about conferences and workshops, 28 interviews and videos as well as additional pages on references for EC/SC.

The EC blog can be used as an archive and/or as a tool to search publications for selective purposes. To facilitate this, the blog includes a search field (at top right: RECHERCHER/SEARCH). Because all (non-English) titles and abstracts are translated into English, users can easily use English search terms.

2022

Bonne année !   Gutes Neues Jahr!   Happy New Year!   ¡Feliz Año Nuevo!   
Buon anno!  Hyvää uutta vuotta!     新年あけましておめでとうございます。  
Feliz Ano Novo!   كل عام وأنتم بخير  С Новым годом!    Gelukkig Nieuwjaar!  
新年快乐!     Καλή χρονιά!    
Godt nytår!

L’évolution des visites entre la création du blog en mars 2017 et décembre 2021 :
The evolution of visits between the creation of the blog in March 2017 and December 2021:

La station de métro Convention bientôt renommée Incitation

Une décision annoncée par Édouard Philippe ce mercredi 1er avril à l’issue d’un Conseil des ministres extraordinaire consacré au coronavirus

Underground station “convention” soon to be renamed “incitation”

The decision was announced by Edouard Philippe on Wednesday 1st April at the end of an exceptional government meeting devoted to the covid-19 crisis

2020

Bonne année !
Happy New Year!
Gutes Neues Jahr!
¡Feliz Año Nuevo!
新年明けましておめでとうございます
عام سعيد
С Новым годом!

Robert Salais, Dr. h.c. – Lecture “Products: Objects and/or Things”

Robert Salais talks on coming challenges to EC on the occasion of being named honorary doctorate by the University of Lucerne

Kenneth Horvath (University of Lucerne) and Guy Schwegler (University of Lucerne)

On 8 November 2018, Robert Salais received an honorary doctorate degree from the University of Lucerne, among others for his groundbreaking interdisciplinary engagement linked to the formation of Économie des conventions. In his laudatory speech, Rainer Diaz-Bone emphasized Salais’ central position for the development of new French pragmatism, an approach that, as Diaz-Bone nicely summarized, offers “many solutions to many problems”—and opens many new perspectives for social sciences.

Rainer Diaz-Bone, Robert Salais, Bruno Staffelbach (Rector)

On the occasion of the academic celebration, Robert Salais held an evening lecture in which he provided insights into his current studies of the relation between nature and conventions, with a focus on the convention-based creation of objects and things. An object, in this understanding, is created via an equivalence principle, making both a classification and comparison possible. A thing, on the other hand, is based on a specific identification and addresses something in all its particularities. Such a differentiation, Salais went on, is well established in philosophy. In the social sciences, however, most writers tend to use both terms indiscriminately—even within the same paragraph. For Salais, the conceptual differentiation between objects and things is essential, but the same entity could become an object or a thing depending of the types of conventions used by actors. Hence the conceptual distinction should not be used as an ontological opposition in the social sciences, the use of entities is dependent on two different types of conventions—one type already widely covered by EC research practices as well as one to be added to EC’s analytical repertoire.

After introducing central axioms of EC, Salais continued to elaborate the distinction between thing and object using the example of forest management in France. On the one hand, through the standardized planting of trees and through the possibilities of advance woodcutting machines, the forest can be turned into an object. The planting techniques and machines enable to establish relations of equivalence for trees. This corresponds with a rapid investment of capital and a specific temporality for a tree, determined e.g. by the duration of production cycles. This first way of handling products as objects is based on the first type of conventions in a classic EC sense: coordination based upon situations’ commonality. On the other hand, there is the work of lumberjacks who assess trees and decide which one to cut one by one. Within randomly growing forests, the lumberjacks handle trees as things. As a result, the self-sustaining regulation of nature is used as capital, where there is no standardized idea of time for the production cycle. Treating products as things is then based on a second type of conventions: a trans-identification, that is always based upon the particularity of a situation.

Salais further explained the consequences of the distinction between products as objects or as things. Handled as objects, products become subordinated to subjects. Through this subordination, the particularities of the things are being denied, the products as a consequence only exists as the object. At the end of a life cycle of a product, however, its existence as a thing becomes apparent again. Old computer and other electronic devices, for example, result in specific forms of waist that very often were not considered in their production as objects in the first place. Salais went on to explain why products should be treated as things—especially in relation to environmental issues. Unexpected or even perverse effects of environmental regulations become apparent. Those effects, he claimed, are a result a consequence of a conventional logic of products as objects. Furthermore, these effects are also a consequence of regulatory policies following a top-down logic. For Salais, however, the starting point for regulations should be a different one. Central for him is the coordination of actors. Starting there would allow for an openness to things. The goal is to have things taking part in the deliberation itself. Ultimately, Salais closed his lecture, such an assemblage to influence production would correspond with the German etymology of thing: Ding, as a gathering for decisions.

The Sociology of Work in France

Guillaume Tiffon & Jean-Pierre Durand (2019)

In Stewart P., Durand JP., Richea MM. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of the Sociology of Work in Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

Abstract. Between 1945 and 1975, the sociology of work was nurtured by Friedmann and Naville, operating in an environment defined by post-war national reconstruction. The sociology of work was largely influenced by American psychological methods, often based on quantitative and empirical analyses, distant from a critical position. In the second phase (1975–1990), the crisis of simple labour became a focus of activity. Contemporaneously, sociology began to professionalise, thus marginalising radical agenda. From 1990, the rise of lean production, the sociology of work increasingly became more a companion than a critic of change.

Link to the chapter


Création d’une page Facebook / Creation of a Facebook page

Une page Facebook vient d’être créée : https://www.facebook.com/ecoconventions/
N’hésitez pas à “aimer” la page, vous serez informé.e.s des posts du blog sur votre mur Facebook.

A Facebook page has just been created : https://www.facebook.com/ecoconventions/
Do not hesitate to “like” the page, you will be informed of the posts of the blog on your Facebook wall.

 

Création d’un nouveau blog consacré à l’Économie des conventions !!

L’objet de ce carnet est de constituer une plateforme d’informations pour les chercheurs appartenant à l’école de l’Économie des conventions.

Ce courant de pensée est apparu en France au milieu des années 1980, sous l’impulsion d’économistes (dont beaucoup travaillaient à l’Insee et réfléchissaient aux conventions statistiques sur lesquelles reposent quantification et évaluation) et de sociologues (questionnant la capacité des acteurs à juger ce qui vaut ou ne vaut pas, ce qui est équivalent).

               

Les conventions correspondent à des représentations collectives, des références partagées qui résolvent des problèmes de coordination en environnement incertain. Ces représentations sont conventionnelles au sens où il s’agit d’une solution parmi plusieurs envisageables et qu’elles peuvent toujours être remises en cause.

              

L’analyse conventionnaliste est donc nécessairement dynamique. L’objectif n’est « pas tant d’offrir une théorie meilleure que de rouvrir le langage de la théorie économique » qui accorde trop de poids à la rationalité et pas assez aux institutions, comme l’indique Olivier Favereau, l’un des principaux fondateurs et animateurs de l’Économie des conventions. Cette conception des conventions est présente dans les travaux de Keynes qui l’emploie pour désigner ce qui guide les anticipations et interprétations des opérateurs sur les marchés financiers. Mais il y a bien d’autres domaines où il y a de l’incertitude et un besoin de conventions pour y faire face : l’activité de production (conventions de qualité des biens et modèles d’entreprise), le recrutement, le système de santé, etc.

              

La visée du carnet est avant tout la diffusion d’informations sur l’actualité des recherches conventionnalistes en France et à l’étranger : publications, séminaires, colloques, appels à communiquer, résumés de travaux (masters, thèses, habilitations à diriger des recherches), comptes rendus de journées d’études ou de conférences. Le public de lecteurs attendu est constitué de chercheurs (économistes et sociologues, jeunes ou confirmés) appartenant à (ou proches de) ce programme de recherche.

         

Les auteurs sont : Franck Bessis, Nicolas Da Silva, Rainer Diaz-Bone, Guillemette de Larquier, Kevin Mellet & Delphine Remillon

Contact pour diffuser une information : carnetecoconv@gmail.com

Compte Twitter lié : @ecoconv

Creation of a new blog devoted to Economics of conventions!!

The purpose of this academic blog is to provide an information platform for researchers belonging to the Economics of Conventions. Information will be published in French and/or in English.

The Economics of Conventions is a research program that emerged in France in the mid-1980s, led by economists (many of whom worked at INSEE) and sociologists (questioning the capacity of the actors to judge what is worth or is not worth). Conventions correspond to collective representations, shared references that solve problems of coordination in an uncertain environment. These representations are conventional in the sense that they are one of several possible solutions and can always be called into question. Conventional analysis is therefore necessarily dynamic.

The aim is “not so much to offer a better theory than to reopen the language of economic theory” which gives too much weight to rationality and not enough to institutions, as Olivier Favereau, one of the main founders and leaders of the Economics of Conventions. This conception of conventions is present in the work of Keynes who uses it to designate what guides the expectations and interpretations of operators in the financial markets. But there are many other areas where there is uncertainty and a need for conventions to deal with it: production activity (quality conventions of goods and business models), recruitment, the system Health, etc.

The autors are : Franck Bessis, Nicolas Da Silva, Rainer Diaz-Bone, Guillemette de Larquier, Kevin Mellet & Delphine Remillon

To share an information, please write to: carnetecoconv@gmail.com

Twitter count linked to the blog: @ecoconv