Archives mensuelles : mars 2025

Taking into Account the Diversity of Work and Its Organization: The Worlds of Production Approach

Lucas Fabre (2025)

In Rainer Diaz-Bone & Guillemette de Larquier (eds.), Handbook of economics and sociology of conventions. Cham: Springer, Online first

Abstract. The analytical framework of “worlds of production” was developed by Michael Storper and Robert Salais in a book written in French in 1993 and translated into English in 1997. The study of worlds of production allows to understand the functioning of specific branches of production. Worlds of production are characterized by a specific coordination of the production of goods and services market, conventions, and institutions. Worlds of production are defined by the perceived quality of products and production processes. Labor conventions emerge in response to the emergence of specific markets: labor must be able to adapt to production constraints and potential hazards. Worlds of production are also shaped and stabilized by the conventions of the state, which plays a central role in economic coordination. The state is both the actor and the context of coordination. The worlds of production framework has been proven to be a veritable toolbox for social science researchers: it allows for an understanding of the trajectories of a research object in relation to their economic, geographic, social, and institutional contexts.

Table 2 State conventions and definitions of the common good. Source: Design by author inspired by Storper and Salais 1997: 207–223

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New Social Pragmatism: Politics of Engagements, Conventions and (E)valuations

University of Helsinki, May 8-9, 2025

In a world increasingly torn apart by mistrust, polarization, and tensions between and within nations, local contexts and groups, it becomes pertinent to ask how societies are made possible. How to build commonality, solve conflicts and adjust different ways of relating and belonging to the world? How to create and maintain mutual understanding and build common ground without excluding or taming down differing voices? How to create, change, and maintain societies based on multiple modes of valuation and plural conceptions of the common good?

These questions open avenues for analysing key cultural and political trends in today’s societies including processes of politicization, participation, and marginalization. Understanding the processes in which common ground is found – or lost – requires an approach that is anchored in situations, chains of events, and processes. It also emphasizes the material world not only as an immobile context, but a dynamic, and mobilizable, part of people’s efforts to live together.

The Centre for Sociology of Democracy (CSD) organizes the New Social Pragmatism Conference to bring together theoretical and empirical analyses that build on and develop pragmatist approaches on societal and political action. These approaches focus on practices, habits and patterns of action that build communities, societies and through those, our democracies.

Keynote speakers:
Rachel Brahy is University Lecturer at the University of Liège, Belgium.
Her approach expands from her work on the socio-anthropology of experience and public spaces towards building further theoretical tools to address sensitive, often non-discursive experiences. Brahy draws from the pragmatist theorizing by Laurent Thévenot, Laura Centemeri, and others, and has recently addressed the concept of resonance by Hartmut Rosa and to discuss the questions of presence and enchantment.
Isaac Ariail Reed is Professor of sociology at the University of Virginia, US. He is a historical and cultural sociologist whose recent work has concentrated on power and transitions to modernity. He draws on Arendt and American pragmatism to theorize the questions of agency, signification, authority, delegation, and modernity. He is one the authors and editors of New Pragmatist Sociology (2022).

We invite both theoretical and empirical presentation drawing from pragmatist, pragmatic, and cultural sociology. Potential topics for papers include, but are not limited to:

  • Research on political participation and social movements
  • Theory development within pragmatist, neopragmatist and pragmatic sociology on how to build commonalities and solve conflicts
  • Novel theoretical combinations
  • Sociology of (e)valuation, and its potential and existing connections with neighbouring intellectual movements
  • Urban questions and broader role of material environments
  • Commonalities between humans and nonhumans
  • Theoretical and empirical approaches to environmental questions and activism

Submit your 200-word abstract by March 21, 2025 here: https://elomake.helsinki.fi/lomakkeet/133731/lomakkeet.html

We also welcome panel suggestions.

We aim to have the notification of acceptance of papers by March 15th. Conference attendees will be responsible for their own travel and accommodation. Conference fee including lunches is 40 eur for PhD candidates and 60 eur for others. If you have any difficulties to cover these expenses, do not hesitate to contact us. Further information such as practical details will be updated in coming weeks.

Further information:
Professor Eeva Luhtakallio
Coordinator Jutta Juvenius
email addresses firstname.lastname (a) helsinki.fi

Conference is supported by Kone Foundation, Helsinki Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities and University of Helsinki.

Vivendo uma vida vegana. Uma análise do processo de conversão ao veganismo no Brasil e Canadá

Living a vegan life: an analysis of the conversion process to veganism in Brazil and Canada

Felipe da LuzColomé (2024)

Contemporânea, 14: 1-36

Resumo. O artigo analisa o processo de conversão ao veganismo. Para isso, com base na adaptação de um modelo de análise de conversão religiosa, discutem-se as diferentes etapas do processo de conversão ao veganismo com base em entrevistas realizadas com adeptos no Brasil e Canadá, atentando para as motivações e valores mobilizados pelos atores e como eles justificam a sua adesão a esse modo de vida. As conclusões apontam que o processo de conversão ao veganismo é fortemente marcado por operações de racionalização e reflexão sobre o sofrimento animal, que são articuladas por sentimentos morais e emoções. Ademais, ele é caracterizado pela politização crescente dos discursos e práticas que integram esse modo de vida.

Abstract. The article analyzes the process of conversion to veganism. Based on the adaptation of a religious conversion analysis model, the different stages of the conversion process to veganism are discussed drawing upon on interviews carried out with adherents in Brazil and Canada. Thus, the article explores the motivations and values mobilized by the actors and how they justify their adherence to this way of life. The conclusions indicate that the process of conversion to veganism is strongly marked by operations of rationalization and reflection on animal suffering, which are articulated by moral sentiments and emotions, as well it is characterized by the increasing politicization of discourses and practices that integrate this way of life.

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Conceptualizing Intangible Assetization. Entangled Processes and Controversies in a Public Context

Laure Célérier, Eve Chiapello & Anne Jeny (2025)

This is a preprint article, it offers immediate access but has not been peer reviewed.

Abstract. The article proposes a conceptual framework to account for initiatives aimed at identifying and managing intangible assets. In contrast to recent work proposing a narrow definition of assetization rooted in a financial definition of assets, we highlight the variety of forms of assetization. We conceptualize intangible assetization as a process of transforming things into intangible assets. Intangible assetization requires some work and we construct four types of operations: the identification of what can be an intangible asset, the managization (the introduction of some management) of the identified assets, their commercialization (the search for ways of generating revenue from them), and finally their balance-sheetization (their inclusion in the balance sheet). Each of these is a trial of explicitness (Muniesa & Linhardt, 2011) that is enacting notably a certain conception of the accounting entity. This conceptual framework enables us to analyze an initiative by the French government, which in 2007 set up an in-house consultancy agency to promote the management of public intangible assets. Our analysis is based on 42 interviews and a collection of documents, from the inception in 2006, to 2021

Les qualités promises des opérations algorithmiques en GRH : Morphologie de la convention de qualification de l’appariement candidat – poste

The promised qualities of algorithmic operations in HRM: Morphology of the candidate-job matching qualification convention

Agathe Fonsagrives (2025)

@GRH, online first

Résumé. Certains recruteurs délèguent la présélection à des algorithmes quantifiant l’adéquation candidat-poste. Bien que les éditeurs promettent la neutralité comme qualité phare, l’objectivité de la quantification fait néanmoins débat. Contrairement à l’idée que la qualité d’un service résulte des attentes des clients, le conventionnalisme cherche à comprendre quel est le sens socio-économique de la qualité. Pour analyser la construction de la qualité de l’opération d’appariement RH algorithmique, nous décrivons la morphologie de la convention gouvernant la qualification au sein d’un petit groupe d’adopteurs. Un an durant, nous avons collecté chez un éditeur de logiciels de recrutement différents types de données que nous avons exploitées au sein d’une analyse qualitative reprenant les composantes morphologiques des conventions de qualification de Gomez (1994). Même si elles s’ancrent dans les préoccupations techniques et commerciales des éditeurs (productivité, objectivité), les qualités de l’opération d’appariement RH algorithmique évoluent néanmoins sous l’effet du jugement qualitatif des clients, ouvrant ainsi la voie à une potentielle meilleure prise en compte des attentes des recruteurs (adaptabilité, maturité, pertinence et transparence). Avec son prisme conventionnaliste, notre travail se démarque des nombreux travaux où la quantification en GRH est uniquement envisagée sous un angle technique.

Abstract. Some recruiters delegate pre-selection to algorithms that quantify the candidate-position match. Although publishers promise neutrality as a key quality, the objectivity of quantification is nevertheless a matter of debate. Contrary to the idea that the quality of a service results from customer expectations, conventionalism seeks to understand the socio-economic meaning of quality. To analyze the quality construction of the algorithmic HR matching operation, we describe the morphology of the convention governing qualification within a small group of adopters. Over the course of a year, we collected various types of data from a recruitment software publisher, which we used in a qualitative analysis based on the morphological components of Gomez’s (1994) qualification conventions. Although rooted in the publishers’ technical and commercial concerns (productivity, objectivity), the qualities of the algorithmic HR matching operation nonetheless evolve under the effect of customers’ qualitative judgment, opening the way to a potential better consideration of recruiters’ expectations (adaptability, maturity, relevance and transparency). With its conventionalist prism, our work stands out from the many works where quantification in HRM is considered solely from a technical angle.

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Rescaling Renewable Energy Communities in Portugal: Expert Imaginaries of Business-As-Usual, the Empowered Citizen and the Smart Network

Ross Wallace & Susana Batel (2025)

In: Halonen, Maija/Albrecht, Moritz/Kuhmonen, Irene (eds.), Rescaling Sustainability Transitions. Unfolding the Spatialities of Power Relations, Governance Arrangements, and Socio-Economic Systems. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Open access, pp. 95-118

Abstract. In the midst of the climate crisis, growing demands for an acceleration of Europe’s transition to renewable energy have led to the institutionalization and “upscaling” of disparate and local practices of community energy. This chapter examines how new laws for “Renewable Energy Communities” (RECs) have so far been constructed and construed by an array of different technical experts who are key intermediaries for the diffusion of this legal innovation in the Portuguese energy sector. We enquire into how this new object has or has not been envisioned as a desirable and realistic response to the challenges of energy transition and climate change, and how it has been shaped by different imaginaries, discourses and social representations. In particular, we examine the spatial and temporal dimensions of these imaginaries and how expert actors anchor their visions in relation to “the common good.” By focusing on the spatial, temporal and moral dimensions of different expert representations of RECs, we aim to foreground the contingency of legal innovation and the critical moments where the polysemy of RECs and the plurality of scalar possibilities are opened up or closed down.

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Global Citizenship Education. Modern Individualism under the Test of Cosmopolitanism

Sébastien Urbanski and Lucy Bell (2024)

Leiden: Brill. Open access.

Extract: “4 The Social Totality in Practice
These issues of distinguishing holism, individualism, liberalism and republicanism are crucial for mapping the “conceptual framework” (UNESCO, 2015, p. 10) that constitutes the dynamic notion of global citizenship education, which itself deserves “conceptual clarity” (Tang, 2015, p. 6). Education professionals, whatever their specific logic of actions, are to a large extent the guarantors of “a conception of the collective good […] in an individualistic society [whose] definition of the common good is the imperative of ensuring the autonomy of each person” (Descombes, 2013, p. 154). In sociology, Boltanski and Thévenot’s approach makes it possible to explore two aspects mentioned above. One aspect is the aspirations of individuals imbued with individualistic morality, as evidenced by the ‘worlds’ (civic, domestic, industrial, inspired, opinion, market) typified around Smith, Rousseau, Saint Augustine, etc. The other aspect is the modes of construction of what is common, based on individual interactions within situations where the hierarchy of beings in presence – and sometimes the definition of these situations – is played out, since people, with similar critical skills to sociologists’, can question social reality on the basis of a ‘world’ or ‘city’ as a typified reserve of topoi prevalent in a given society (Boltanski & Thévenot, 2006).” (p. 35)

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Domestic service and legal parity. Argumentative dispute and associated factors

Alexandre Barbosa Fraga (2024)

Cadernos de Pesquisa, 54(1). Open access

Abstract. The objective of this article is to analyze the legislative procedure and arguments for and against the approval of Convention n. 189 of the International Labor Organization (ILO) in 2011, and the “PEC das Domésticas” [Domestic Workers Constitutional Amendment Bill] in the Brazilian National Congress in 2013, ultimately enacted and regulated in 2015. We also examine the possible factors associated with why legal parity for domestic workers was achieved only at that moment, and not earlier. The methodology involves analyzing documents from debates at the ILO and in the Brazilian National Congress. The findings demonstrate a debate opposing economic justifications on one side and social and ethical considerations on the other. We also highlight a set of six factors associated with the delayed achievement of parity.

Résumé. Cet article entend analyser le processus de la Convention 189 de l’Organisation Internationale du Travail (OIT) en 2011 et les arguments pour et contre son approbation, ainsi que la proposition d’amendement constitutionnel concernant le travail domestique, nomée “PEC das Domésticas”, approuvée par le Congrès national brésilien en 2013 et réglementée en 2015. Ce travail cherche aussi à examiner les facteurs ayant pu contribuer à ce que cette quasi-égalité juridique des travailleures domestiques n’ait pas été mise en place plus tôt. La méthodologie utilisée est celle de l’analyse des documents produits lors des débats à l’OIT et au Congrès national. Les résultats montrent qu’il existe un conflit entre les arguments ancrés sur des justifications économiques et ceux basés sur des justifications sociales et éthiques. Ils indiquent également un ensemble de six facteurs associés à cette égalité juridique tardive.

Resumo. O objetivo do artigo é analisar a tramitação e os argumentos favoráveis e contrários à aprovação da Convenção n. 189 da Organização Internacional do Trabalho (OIT), em 2011, e da “PEC das Domésticas”, no Congresso Nacional brasileiro, em 2013, regulamentada em 2015. Também busca examinar os possíveis fatores associados para essa quase equiparação legal dos trabalhadores domésticos ter se dado apenas naquele momento, e não anteriormente. Para isso, a metodologia utilizada é a análise de documentos produzidos durante os debates na OIT e no Congresso Nacional. Os resultados demonstram a disputa entre argumentos centrados em justificações, de um lado, econômicas e, de outro, social e ética. Indicam, ainda, um conjunto de seis fatores associados para a equiparação tardia.

Resumen. El objetivo del artículo es analizar el procedimiento y los argumentos a favor y en contra de la aprobación de la Convención n. 189 de la Organización Internacional del Trabajo (OIT), en 2011, y de la “PEC das Domésticas”, en el Congreso Nacional brasilero, en 2013, reglamentado en 2015. También busca examinar los posibles factores asociados para que esa casi equiparación legal de los trabajadores domésticos haya pasado solo en aquel momento y no antes. Para esto, la metodología utilizada es el análisis de documentos producidos durante los debates en la OIT y en el Congreso Nacional. Los resultados demuestran la disputa entre argumentos centrados en justificaciones, por un lado económicas, y por otro sociales y éticas. También indican un conjunto de seis factores asociados a la equiparación tardía.

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