Victor Pimentel Ferreira (2024)
New Sociological Perspectives, 4(1). Open access, pp. 30-44
Abstract. This paper is dedicated to the mapping and analysis of the values and devices commonly mobilized around the action of organizing. To this end, I investigate the justifications of personal organizers (POs) and examine the definitions explained in personal organizing manuals/books. Methodologically, the work is divided into three fronts: semi-structured interviews with POs, analysis of manuals on the subject, and participant observation at a Brazilian event in this market. In the theoretical field, I draw on the tools of the sociology of morality and French pragmatic sociology. The results of the research point to the possibility that, at certain times, social actors recognize the existence of conflicts in the relations with different entities in their environment (time, money, objects, people, etc.) and, therefore, manifest an impulse to order social reality, trying to mitigate its unstable and potentially problematic character. In this way, this research contributes, on the one hand, to the complexity of the debate on the regimes of engagement pragmatically mobilized by social actors in the coordination of their daily actions and, on the other hand, to the discussion on how the problem of social order appears not only as an important problem of sociological theory, but also as a practical problem of social actors themselves in their daily lives.
