Pragmatic Sociology Of Critique Research Articles

O IMPERATIVO DA OPINIÃO: UMA SOCIOLOGIA PRAGMÁTICA DA CRÍTICA NA ‘ATUALIDADE POLÍTICA’

Abstract Based on the concept of actualité politique, this essay aims to analyze the economy of opinion and critique in contemporary societies. Based on various research projects arising from our works and on a reflection concerning the pragmatic sociology of critique, we respond to a fundamental question: what are the determinants of the ‘passage’ of a critique into action; i.e., the conversion of internal indignation into an external manifestation of the social actors? The argument has three parts, one structural and two conjectural. In the first, we map the main variables determining the passage from indignation to criticism. In the second, we show how a series of historical transformations in the scarcity/abundance interplay of the elements in this matrix have made opinion and criticism more available and, in the continued evolution of their presence in contemporary life, a core mode of sociability. In the third part, we analyze three consequences of this movement: the trivialization of criticism, conflict, and the devaluation of objective truth.

Business improvement areas and the socio-cultural power of lobbying: Imposing market interests to affordable housing development

While studies have shown that Business Improvement Areas (BIAs) manage and control their physical urban spaces to generate local economic growth, little work has examined how these organizations lobby for their market interests during key decision-making processes. Drawing from the pragmatic sociology of critique, this paper develops a theoretical framework to explain how political-economic power is socio-culturally encoded during local government decision-making processes. Socio-cultural power is defined through two interrelated processes: (1) interactional settings where social actors practice their critical capacity by drawing upon socio-historically created moral orders and (2) the extent to which institutional experts limit laypersons' critical capacity and successfully construct local realities to advance their agendas. This framework is applied to London, Ontario's Old East Village to show how the local BIA influenced two separate affordable housing development plans. Based on interviews, participant observation, and document analysis, the findings show that the Old East Village BIA strategically framed and co-opted community critiques of these developments in a way that justified their own market interests (more feet on the street) over the community's civic interests (the provision of affordable housing). This paper extends the BIA literature by demonstrating BIA influence over affordable housing development, local matters that are outside the purview of their commercial jurisdiction.

Living on the margins: dumpster diving for food as a critical practice

ABSTRACT Dumpster diving for food implies using discarded edibles found in waste containers behind supermarkets, for example. People who voluntarily engage in this activity suggest that it is a form of hands-on social critique. In this article, we use interview materials to describe and conceptualize this practice. The main question we pose is: in what way is voluntary dumpster diving a ‘critical practice’? Drawing on the pragmatic sociology of critique, we show how it is a question of an entangled practice in multiple ways: first, dumpster diving is at once a means of contestation and experimentation on the limits of the contemporary form of life and yet simply a way of getting food for free or having fun with friends; second, while being a thoroughly rational endeavour for its practitioners, the activity is simultaneously rife with affect; finally, although dumpster divers are fully aware that they are dependent on the capitalistic form of food supply, the practice allows them to challenge its institutional self-evidences and distance themselves from it.

Crítica de la crítica a la sociología crítica a partir de Luc Boltanski

espanolEl articulo se inscribe en una discusion acerca del modo en que la sociologia problematiza a la cultura, especificamente, se interroga por el modus operandi para un abordaje critico de la misma. Para ello, se enfoca en la propuesta elaborada por Luc Boltanski, en tanto el hace del cuestionamiento a la “sociologia critica” una instancia central de su estudio de la cultura, sin por ello abandonar la pretension critica. Con vistas a analizar estas cuestiones, se dedica la primera seccion a la caracterizacion de la sociologia pragmatica de la critica de Boltanski. La segunda seccion sostiene que el propone un potente modus operandi para la descripcion sociologica de la normatividad de los actores, pero que no resuelve los problemas que posibilitarian el abordaje critico de dicha normatividad. Punto que se profundiza a partir de la discusion de su investigacion sobre el “espiritu del capitalismo”. Finalmente, las conclusiones plantean un sendero por el cual avanzar hacia esa sociologia critica, con eje en la reproblematizacion de las nociones de ideologia y utopia. EnglishThe article is inserted in a discussion about the way in which sociology problematizes culture, specifically, the paper analyses the modus operandi for a critical approach to the culture. For this, it focuses on the Luc Boltanski’s proposal, because he makes the discussion on the “critical sociology” a central instance of his cultural study without abandoning the critical claim. With the goal of analysing these questions, the first section is dedicated to characterizing Boltanski's pragmatic sociology of critique. The second section argues that he proposes a powerful modus operandi for the sociological description of the actors’ normativity, but that it does not solve the problems that would allow the critical research of that normativity. Topic that is developed through the discussion of his research on the “spirit of capitalism”. Finally, the conclusions propose a path through which to advance towards this critical sociology, centred on the notions of ideology and utopia

Science Blogs as Critique — Building Public Identities in the Field of Translational Research

Clinician scientists are pivotal figures in translational research. Although the discourse on translational research is favorable to clinician scientists, their role within it and their view of themselves has received little attention. In this exploratory study, we analyze the view of clinician scientists on translational research by drawing on surveillance studies and the pragmatic sociology of critique and examining the potential for critique of science blogs. From analyzing science blogs and the blogging selves they represent, we find a fundamental dilemma of being torn between the two worlds of clinic and research. Although translational research seeks to support clinician scientists, it intensifies this conflict even further. The arguments of clinician scientist-bloggers are emotionally charged with feelings of contradiction, unpredictability, and skepticism. These feelings undergird a critical agenda that shows indignation as the result of being a pivotal figure in the discourse on translational research.

The institutions and heterogeneous geographical relations of austerity

ABSTRACT There is a general consensus that austerity is variegated in nature, but that a generic feature is the construction of discursive institutions framing the necessity for austerity and guiding actors. However, what is missing from accounts within political science and related disciplines is an appreciation of how these work through heterogeneous geographical relations. This paper examines how austerity has been discursively framed, justified and articulated through ‘semantic’ spatial austerity institutions. Utilizing a ‘pragmatic sociology of critique’ approach, it examines the UK Government’s austerity program. The paper finds that austerity works through spatially configured semantic institutions, and where there has been resistance this has not developed into a substantive social movement. More broadly, the paper argues that political science and public administration need to move beyond analysis of ‘singular’ geographical relations, to understanding the role of heterogeneous geographical relations characterizing state practices.

How Does Games Critique Impact Game Design Decisions? A Case Study of Monetization and Loot Boxes

Games critics arguably influence the form games take, identities of players, and identities of game developers. However, very little work in Game Studies examines how critical games journalism, games, developers, and independent actors intersect. This article argues that pragmatic sociology of critique, developed by Luc Boltanski, can act as a theoretical framework to aid in understanding these processes of critique. Utilizing a theoretical lens such as this helps us better understand the function of games critique within the video game industry. Applying this framework to a case study of monetization and “loot boxes,” this article emphasizes the role and power of journalistic critique in shaping gaming cultures, and the consumption and production of media more generally.

Realizing responsibility. Institutional routines, critical intervention, and the “big” questions in the controversy over non-invasive prenatal testing in Germany

NIPT has become a matter of controversy in Germany over the past years, there is now a widespread concern that it raises fundamental social and ethical questions. Starting from the assumption that responsible governance requires governance actors to address these questions, the article examines how the main governance actors realized their responsibility in the sense of conceiving and performing it. Building on the pragmatic sociology of critique, we study how actors are doing responsibility within a given institutional and political context. We show that critical interventions disrupted institutional routines and caused governance actors to struggle with conflicting commitments of complying with institutional rules and exercising responsibility by taking social and ethical considerations into account. Whereas these conflicting commitments posed a predicament for political decision-makers, who solved it through shifting responsibility for social and ethical issues elsewhere, there was no such predicament for the producers; for them, routine and responsibility converged.

The institution of critique and the critique of institutions

My paper argues that Luc Boltanski’s pragmatic sociology makes an important contribution to two central concerns of critical theory: the empirical analysis of the contradictions and conflicts of capitalist societies and the reflexive clarification of the epistemological and normative grounds of critique. I show how Boltanski’s assessment of the limitations of Bourdieu’s critical sociology significantly influenced his pragmatic sociology of critique and explication of the political philosophies present in actors’ practices of dispute and justification. Although pragmatism has revealed how social life involves considerable uncertainty, Boltanski contends that critique needs to take into account how institutions generate semantic security, as well as symbolic violence. Boltanski’s endeavour to reformulate critique is compared with influential alternative conceptions, notably those of Habermas, Castoriadis, and Honneth. Despite its potential deficiencies and weaknesses, Boltanski’s reformulation of critique is found to be of considerable theoretical significance. In particular, Boltanski’s analysis of the role critique has played in the reorganization of capitalism can be extended, and his work is suggestive of how some of the intentions of critical theory can be pursued in new ways.

Post-Crisis Journalism

This article is concerned with the crisis in Greek journalism and with the potential for critiques to lead to a renewal. Drawing on the pragmatic sociology of critique and using the notion of critical juncture, it argues that the role played by critiques coming from journalists themselves has been overlooked. Such critiques, emerging organically from the field, open up new opportunities and feed into practices and new journalistic initiatives. Documenting the state of journalism in Greece, the empirical part of the article traces three critiques developed by the “rank and file” of journalism: the critique of decline, which suggests the construction of a new regulatory body that will oversee journalistic practice, ethics and standards; the critique of the creative force of the crisis, which suggests that journalism adopts the logics of new media, including collaboration, sharing and witnessing; and the radical critique, which seeks to rehabilitate journalism through placing it in the midst of society and removing it from the business of selling news. The latter critique has led to the formulation of some radical new journalistic cooperative projects. While the success of these critiques, and the ideas they contain, depends on how they become articulated with broader socio-political, economic and technological developments, their formulation and circulation in the field is crucial as it helps shape post-crisis journalism from the bottom up.

Childhood as a question of critiques and justifications: Insights into Boltanski’s sociology

In France, definitions of childhood and relations between adults (parents, professionals, public authorities, scientists, even sociologists …) and children, continue to be matters of debate in everyday life, scientific practices and political arenas. This article intends to show how these debates can be analysed as an object of research, using Boltanski’s sociological model of Justification. The presentation of this framework highlights its relations to the contributions of two other French sociologists whose works are not directly interested in childhood: Bourdieu and Latour. It is centred on two main aspects of this model: the study of operations of critiques and justifications based on a pragmatic sociology of critique and the idea of its double requirement: equality and order between human beings. It shows how this framework can be useful for thinking about childhood–adulthood relations as a moral and political order which is an object of debates. Then, from an historical example, the author proposes a short case study of what may be called an analysis of the moral sense of justice towards children.

More Publics, More Problems: The Productive Interface between the Pragmatic Sociology of Critique and Deweyan Pragmatism

1. IntroductionThe pragmatic 'sociology of critique' has been developed over the past two and a half decades by a group of French scholars collaborating within the Groupe de sociologie politique et morale at l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris. The approach seeks interpret situated communication with a critical lens, understand public disputes and political culture and practice, and propose a structure for a range of common and more nuanced understandings of the variegated socio-political landscapes in which public disputes occur. A critical pragmatic analysis of cases of disputed justice focuses not only on the dynamics of the arguments that actors use justify their engagement in the public sphere, but also on the institutional, technical, legal, and material arrangements that are mobilized support the debates. A common ontological structure and method of inquiry unites this work, oriented around the linked concepts of grammars of public disagreement and models of justice, along with justification, denunciation, and compromise, and the tests which they are put.We refer here the French school of critical pragmatism, but we should note before proceeding in this direction that the term 'critical pragmatism' and its implications have independent origins in North America apart from those in France. In North America, the term can be traced at least as far back as 1935 Alain Locke, who developed a critical pragmatic theory of valuation as a means of undergirding the evolution of cultural pluralism (Kadlec 2007). This thread of American pragmatism notwithstanding, the struggle between pragmatism per se and critical social theory dates the very origins of American pragmatism; notably, with the critique leveled, from France, by one of the fathers of the discipline of sociology, Emile Durkheim, in 1895. In no uncertain terms, Durkheim saw the notion of a pragmatic sociology as a logical contradiction; he saw pragmatism as foregoing inquiry into eternal human truths by flattening these the same plane as sporadic individual actions (Karsenti 2004; Karsenti 2012). By insisting in various ways that, when it comes justifying and judging truth claims, there exists no means to get outside our beliefs and our language so as find some test other than coherence (Rorty 1979, 178), classical pragmatists seemed, from the perspective of classical sociologists, abandon the quest for a means base social inquiry on something more enduring than contemporary human communities.From Durkheim the present, critical social theorists along with conservatives such as Walter Lippmann and Reinhold Niebuhr (MacGilvray 2010) have repeatedly confronted this lack of foundation or external reference point for the purpose of transcending, ordering, or judging individual experience as a failure of American pragmatism contest abuses of power in the real world. Pragmatists working in the American tradition respond these critiques in numerous ways. Hans Joas, for example, argued in 1993 that the stand-off constituted, primarily, an enduring misunderstanding. Richard Rorty's extensive opus draws upon Dewey build a defense and project of American democracy as an eternal project of seeking justice by the greatest number for the greatest number. A number of recent texts1 revive and further this tradition of synthesis. Among these, Torjus Midtgarden (2012, 507) has recently argued that Dewey derives immanent standards for social criticism from a sociological and historical reading of the cultural sources of normative authority. In the French language, recent work such as La Croyance et L'Enquete: aux sources du pragmatisme (Belief and Inquiry: the sources of pragmatism), a collection of essays by French philosophers and social theorists on the relevance of first generation American pragmatists - Dewey and Mead in particular - their own work, suggests a readiness for further bridge building. …