Luc Boltanski, Laurent Thévenot: On Justification: Economies of Worth (1991/2006)

A vital and underappreciated dimension of social interaction is the way individuals justify their actions to others, instinctively drawing on their experience to appeal to principles they hope will command respect. Individuals, however, often misread situations, and many disagreements can be explained by people appealing, knowingly and unknowingly, to different principles. On Justification is the first English translation of Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot’s ambitious theoretical examination of these phenomena, a book that has already had a huge impact on French sociology and is likely to have a similar influence in the English-speaking world.

In this foundational work of post-Bourdieu sociology, the authors examine a wide range of situations where people justify their actions. The authors argue that justifications fall into six main logics exemplified by six authors: civic (Rousseau), market (Adam Smith), industrial (Saint-Simon), domestic (Bossuet), inspiration (Augustine), and fame (Hobbes). The authors show how these justifications conflict, as people compete to legitimize their views of a situation.

On Justification is likely to spark important debates across the social sciences.

Keywords and phrases
political philosophy, civic world, Saint-Simon, world of fame, Durkheim, city of God, relativism, Social Contract, market world, Rousseau, domestic world, However, different worlds, higher common principle, inspired world, sociology, Jansenist, cial, Aristotle, metaphysics

Originally published in French as De la Justification: Les Economies de la Grandeur by Editions Gallimard, Paris, 1991
Translated by Catherine Porter
Publisher Princeton University Press, 2006
ISBN 0691125163, 9780691125169
389 pages

publisher
google books

PDF (no OCR; updated on 2012-10-31)

Adrian Mackenzie: Cutting Code: Software and Sociality (2006)

“Software has often been marginalized in accounts of digital cultures and network societies. Although software is everywhere, it is hard to say what it actually is. Cutting Code: Software and Sociality is one of the first books to treat software seriously as a full-blown cultural process, and as a subtly powerful material in contemporary communication. From deCSS to Java, from Linux to Extreme Programming, this book analyses software artworks, operating systems, commercial products, infrastructures and programming practices. It explores social forms, identities, materialities and power relations associated with software, and it asks how software provokes the re-thinking of production, consumption and distribution as entwined cultural processes. Cutting Code argues that analysis of code as a mosaic of algorithms, protocols, infrastructures, and programming conventions offers valuable insights into how contemporary social formations invent new kinds of personhood and new ways of acting.”

Publisher Peter Lang, 2006
ISBN 0820478237, 9780820478234
215 pages

Keywords and phrases
bioinformatics, Linux kernel, Java Virtual Machine, deCSS, extreme programming, JUnit, operating system, Sun Microsystems, CORBA, open-source software, software art, Java programming language, ontology, software development, unit tests, Linus Torvalds, RAMOSS, source code, Perl poetry, Unix philosophy

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2019-12-16)

Manuel DeLanda: A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity (2006)

Manuel DeLanda is a distinguished writer, artist and philosopher. In his new book, he offers a fascinating look at how the contemporary world is characterized by an extraordinary social complexity. Since most social entitles, from small communities to large nation-states, would disappear altogether if human minds ceased to exist, Delanda proposes a novel approach to social ontology that asserts the autonomy of social entities from the conceptions we have of them. This highly original and important book takes the reader on a journey that starts with personal relations and climbs up one scale at a time all the way to territorial states and beyond. Only by experiencing this upward movement can we get a sense of the irreducible social complexity that characterizes the contemporary world.

Publisher Continuum International Publishing Group, 2006
ISBN 0826491693, 9780826491695
142 pages

Keywords and phrases
deterritorialization, Gilles Deleuze, Fernand Braudel, Manuel DeLanda, Thousand Plateaus, Felix Guattari, Anthony Giddens, Charles Tilly, causal, Max Weber, Ian Hacking, emergent properties, Pierre Bourdieu, nation-states, assemblage theory, economies of agglomeration, interac, phase space, linguistic, Michel Foucault

review (Steven Shaviro)
commentary from DeLanda reading group: Introduction (Levi Bryant); Chapter I (Levi Bryant); Chapter II (Alex Reid); Chapter III (Michael~); Chapter IV, part 1 & part 2 (Mark Edward); Chapter V

wikipedia
google books

PDF (no OCR; updated on 2012-7-17)