Abstract.In this article, Jan Frode Haugseth discusses a multidimensional model of educational engagement by outlining Laurent Thévenot’s regimes of engagement in an educational setting. Haugseth argues that six intertwined regimes of educational engagement could be perceived to exist in tension with each other: formality, justice, familiarity, exploration, love/care, and retreat, all reflecting the relationship between cognition, bodies, and the environment (immediate surroundings as well as cultural and historical configurations). The regimes are simultaneously valid on a personal level, as engagement is established and maintained individually, and on a collective level, since engagement is shared and negotiated in a dynamic social space. The regimes differ from and complement each other, providing notions of benefits, tensions, and investments, while allowing for various forms of confidence and doubt. Many researchers study the causes of dropout and disengagement without a clear idea of what engagement truly entails: when students engage in all the rich facets of educational engagement and are able to freely transition among regimes, they develop a real sense of power over their own education.
Abstract.Over the past two decades, several approaches have emerged to address the management of difference within organizations: fighting discrimination, promoting diversity, and fostering inclusion. Concurrently, the production of quantitative indicators has gained increasing significance in corporate settings. To legitimize their positions, these three approaches must conform to this trend toward quantification. We draw upon the sociology of quantification to reveal both the evolution of the statistical representation of diversity within a major CAC 40 company and the successive logics of quantification that have emerged since the 2000s.
Plural Entanglements – On the Dedifferentiation of Art, Politics, Science and Economy
Marie Rosenkranz & Nina Tessa Zahner (eds.)(2025)
Wiesbaden: Springer VS
Über das Buch. Der Band untersucht die immer neuen Austauschprozesse zwischen Kunst und Politik, Kunst und Wissenschaft, Kunst und Ökonomie, die sich seit einigen Jahren zu etablieren scheinen. Er fragt, inwieweit diese möglicherweise einen Funktionswandel der Künste anzeigen, der ihnen eine zentrale gesellschaftliche Rolle zuweist. Denn künstlerische Forschung, künstlerisch-politischer Aktivismus und eine zunehmend kulturalisierte Ökonomie werfen zunehmend die Frage auf, inwieweit diese künstlerische Selbstentgrenzung vielleicht auch als Versuch der Künste zu deuten ist, unter Bedingungen einer umfassend ästhetisierten Gesellschaft noch gesellschaftliche Relevanz zu zeitigen. Fest steht, dass die zunehmend durchlässigen Grenzen von Kunst, Wissenschaft, Politik, Wirtschaft und Ästhetik verschiedenste Unschärfen und Ambivalenzen produzieren, die es hinsichtlich der Gefahr der Neutralisation des kritischen Potentials der Kunst ebenso zu diskutieren gilt, wie hinsichtlich ihres Beitrags zu mehr Demokratie. Der Sammelband untersucht in dieser Ausrichtung Effekte, Dynamiken und Bewertungen wechselseitiger Entgrenzungsprozesse zwischen Kunst, Politik, Wissenschaft und Wirtschaft und diskutiert deren theoretische wie forschungspraktische Implikationen für die Soziologie. In diesem Zusammenhang scheint sich auch die Rolle der Soziologie der Künste zu wandeln: Wird die kunstsoziologische Perspektive nun zunehmend zu der einer neuartigen allgemeinen Soziologie?
Auszug: “Gegenwärtig scheinen sich die Kunst und ihr Weltwahrnehmen zunehmend in andere gesellschaftliche Wertsphären einzubringen. In Form des ‚künstlerischen Aktivismus‘ (Marchart 2019; Rosenkranz 2022, 2023; van den Berg 2015, 2019), ‚künstlerischer Forschung‘ (Badura et al. 2015; Bippus 2009; Busch 2007, 2016) sowie ‚Kunst als Wertschöpfungsform‘ (Boltanski und Esquerre 2018) haben aktuell Praktiken Konjunktur, die sich kaum mehr bloß dem Feld der Kunst zuordnen lassen.” (Introduction, S. 1)
About the book. This volume examines the ever new exchange processes between art and politics, art and science, art and economics that seem to have become established in recent years. It asks to what extent these may indicate a change in the function of the arts that assigns them a central social role. For artistic research, artistic-political activism and an increasingly culturalized economy are increasingly raising the question of the extent to which this artistic self-delimitation can perhaps also be interpreted as an attempt by the arts to achieve social relevance under the conditions of a comprehensively aestheticized society. What is certain is that the increasingly permeable boundaries between art, science, politics, economics and aesthetics produce a wide variety of blurs and ambivalences that need to be discussed with regard to the danger of neutralizing the critical potential of art as well as with regard to its contribution to more democracy. With this in mind, the anthology examines the effects, dynamics and evaluations of reciprocal delimitation processes between art, politics, science and business and discusses their theoretical and practical research implications for sociology. In this context, the role of the sociology of the arts also appears to be changing: Is the sociological perspective of the arts now increasingly becoming that of a new kind of general sociology?
Extract: “At present, art and its perception of the world appear to be becoming increasingly involved in other spheres of social value. In the form of ‘artistic activism’ (Marchart 2019; Rosenkranz 2022, 2023; van den Berg 2015, 2019), ‘artistic research’ (Badura et al. 2015; Bippus 2009; Busch 2007, 2016) and ‘art as a form of value creation’ (Boltanski and Esquerre 2018), practices are currently booming that can hardly be assigned to the field of art alone.” (Introduction, p. 1)
Journal of Cultural Management and Cultural Policy, 2: 13-31
Abstract. Cultural organizations must address issues related to equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI). In this perspective, we used the critical theory On Justification Economies of Worth of Boltanski and Thévenot (1991; 2006) to understand the role of cultural organizations in relation to these EDI issues. We found during a reflective methodology exercise that the way researchers use this theoretical framework to code their interviews perpetuates oppositions and fosters group conflicts. We reevaluated the coding strategy for our data, leading us to adopt the compromises between worlds. Our contribution is to propose a novel coding strategy for EDI research when using this framework. With this strategy, researchers can foster collaboration in existing group dynamics to transcend internal oppositions and establish inclusive practices.
In Denise Thwaites, Bethaney Turner, Tracy Ireland (eds.), Alternative Economies of Heritage. Sustainable, Anti-Colonial and Creative Approaches to Cultural Inheritance. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 103-113
Abstract. Drawing on discussions that challenge the perception that heritage and economics are distinct discourses and separate social regimes, this chapter argues that contemporary heritage values, and protection and management systems, are not just entangled in the market but are an effect of it. Using the concepts of the ‘enrichment economy’ and ‘everyday heritage’, it is argued that heritage management mechanisms such as listing and significance thresholds seek to maintain heritage as a scarce commodity to limit the ‘amount’ of heritage that any local or national economy should support.
Extract: “The Enrichment Economy To promote a more integrated approach to understanding contemporary relationships between economy and society, French sociologists, Luc Boltanski and Arnaud Esquerre (2020, p. 338), argue for what they term a ‘pragmatic structuralism’ that endeavours to move beyond the dichotomy of critiques grounded in either constructionism (common in sociology) or in forms of positivism (common in economics). As they first argued in their 2017 study, Enrichissement (later published in translation as Enrichment: A Critique of Commodities), a wholly structuralist approach can risk losing sight of what motivates and gives meaning to the actions of specific actors, while a wholly pragmatic approach, focusing closely on practice and action, can lose sight of the constraints that surround the field of action (Boltanski & Esquerre 2020, p. 338). Pragmatic structuralism thus seems particularly well suited to help bridge accounts of heritage that emphasise either systemic structures and discourse, or the field of practice, and for better examining the relationship between heritage and the economy.” (p. 107)
A managerial reading of entrepreneurship – The value, the organization, the entrepreneur
Thierry Verstraete (2025)
Bordeaux: Les Editions de l’Adreg. Open access
Extrait: “La convention offre de la coordination composant l’organisation que l’institution stabilise. Convention et institution sont les deux faces d’une même pièce (l’organisation). Une définition de l’organisation est également requise car l’entrepreneur impulse une organisation. La difficulté à la formuler réside dans ce qui fait la force du concept : sa polysémie . L’organisation réfère à l’action d’organiser et/ou à son 1 résultat (en notant qu’autant la dynamique que le résultat produisent eux-mêmes d’autres acceptions de l’organisation, souvent selon le périmètre de leur emploi). L’étude de l’entrepreneuriat englobe cette ambivalence (a minima) car l’entrepreneur impulse une dynamique organisationnelle dont émerge une entité finalisée (laquelle peut poursuivre la dynamique initiale, ou une autre ayant pris le relais). Plusieurs sections précédentes conduisent à définir cette organisation comme la combinaison d’une coordination et d’une structuration. La convention est le pendant théorique de la pratique de coordination. L’institution est le pendant théorique de la pratique de structuration. La convention est coordonnatrice, l’institution est structurante.” ( p. 255)
Excerpt: “The convention provides the coordination that makes up the organization, while the institution stabilizes it. Convention and institution are two sides of the same coin (organization). A definition of organization is also required, as the entrepreneur drives organization. The difficulty lies in the concept’s strength: its polysemy. Organization refers to the action of organizing and/or its 1 result (noting that both the dynamic and the result themselves produce other meanings of organization, often depending on the scope of their use). The study of entrepreneurship embraces this ambivalence (a minima), as the entrepreneur initiates an organizational dynamic from which a finalized entity emerges (which may continue the initial dynamic, or another that has taken over). Several of the preceding sections lead us to define this organization as a combination of coordination and structuring. The convention is the theoretical counterpart to the practice of coordination. The institution is the theoretical counterpart to the practice of structuring. The convention is coordinating, the institution is structuring.” ( p. 255)