This post will be the first of many expositing On Justification. I plan to produce one per chapter.
What are they responding to? What is the problem from which they begin? While the text's exigence could certainly be framed in other ways, one way to frame it would be vis-à-vis a Bourdieusian style of sociology:
What are they responding to? What is the problem from which they begin? While the text's exigence could certainly be framed in other ways, one way to frame it would be vis-à-vis a Bourdieusian style of sociology:
... Boltanski opposes “critical sociology” and “sociology of critique”. Critical sociology can be said to correspond to the work of Bourdieu and his followers. If we describe this sociology in a very sketchy way, as Boltanski himself does in his polemical texts, we can say that the purpose of the sociologist is to explain to people the real meaning of what they do. Or better still, because it is not really a question of “meaning” from this point of view, the task of the sociologist is to explain to people the causal mechanisms that make sense of what they do. Those mechanisms are structured fields and habitus produced through socialization. The rules that govern the fields organize competition for symbolic retributions and the “habitus” could perhaps be described (in my formulation) as some kind of unconscious weapon that will be used differently by the dominant and the dominated. One could even say that it will decide who will be in a dominant position or otherwise.
In this kind of sociology, at least in the way it is seen by Boltanski (and I tend to share his view), the sociologist knows more about the actors than the actors themselves. Indeed when the actors think they behave on the basis of authentic desires, preferences, evaluations, the sociologist can always trace those mental states back to some habitus formation, to unconscious strategies, and ultimately to the structures of the field. For instance, I am quite sure that I like Beethoven because his music is very powerful, lying somewhere between the classical harmonies of Mozart and Haydn and the sometimes tiring excesses of romanticism. But in reality I like Beethoven because I am driven by my desire for distinction which tells me that, in the “petit bourgeois” academic world where I live, liking Beethoven is a necessity to be valuable. I just try unconsciously to follow the rules of the field. But as my semiproletarian habitus did not prepare me to naturally appreciate Beethoven, I cannot feel that the metallic sound of Herbert von Karajan – that was much favoured when I was young – Is now desperately out of fashion.
Naturally this example is a caricature of a Bourdieu-like analysis but we can assume that it describes accurately enough what most Bourdieu’s followers remember of his theories -- it is a rather common operationalization of his concepts. Of course we know the main objection to that description. The objection is this: if I am driven by my habitus when I think I authentically feel, reason, desire, argue, then what protects the sociologist from being be driven by his own habitus when he is describing mine? On what grounds can he claim that he has a privileged access to what unconsciously determines me? We could even go further and ask: if nothing can be authentically valued because everything is the product of a causal mechanism, then on what grounds can any critique of anything ever be justified?
But the interesting thing about Boltanski’s proposal is that it brings the question back to an empirical matter: this kind of treatment of arguments is not, as Bourdieu wrongly holds, the privilege of the sociologist. Disqualifying a belief, an argument, or a preference on the grounds it is unconsciously determined by wrong causal mechanisms, or because it is in fact a cover for some disguised interests, is a very common feature of the discourse of the actors themselves. When an atheist exchanges ideas, for instance with a religious person, he may of course try to demonstrate that the existence of an almighty god is rationally implausible. But he may just as well try to explain to his interlocutor that his own belief in god is just a wrongly caused belief. This supposed irrational belief may be caused by the fact that he is afraid of death, by a process of socialization that imposed on him things which he cannot get rid of, or by an irresistible desire to see some global meaning or some global justice in the world.
This is the subtlety of Boltanski’s position: when we carefully observe real controversies in the social word, we discover that ordinary people are perfectly able to behave like bourdieusian sociologists. They are able to recognize the interests at stake behind an argument, or even to trace it back to some habitus, naturally without invoking the term Bourdieu was giving to the mechanism. So, there is nothing especially “sociological” in the perspective of critical sociology. Boltanski’s proposal is that we should change our focus: instead of a critical sociology, what we need is a sociology of critique, in fact an empirical description of the way controversies are taking place, the way people propose justifications and criticize the justifications of others, the way some justifications “win” or “lose,” and the way people at the end agree on a result or remain in dispute. That sociology of critique is the subject of his well-known book written with Laurent Thevenot, “On Justification”.
This move form Bourdieu to Boltanski seems to me to be epistemological in nature because it changes the perspective of the sociologist. The social scientist is no longer supposed to have any kind of privileged access to some critical point of view. The critique is no longer a way of making sense of social structures and human behaviour. It is reintegrated within the social world and becomes in itself an object of empirical investigation. This is probably the core meaning of the famous sentence, “taking justifications seriously.” (Jacquemain, n.d., n.p.)
The philosopher Graham Harman has a great term for this process. I can't recall if he refers to this process as "undermining" or "overmining," but, regardless of whichever one is correct, the end result is the same. The problem is failing to treat the other's justification on its own terms. The sociologist subsumes the other's justification under a representation. In this case, the representation is a theory, which explains the justification in terms of power, class, domination, and reproduction.
So what? Why does this failure to take justifications seriously matter to sociology? For one, a sociologist would need to take justification seriously in order to have any sort of relationship with the human subjects in question. On this topic, turning to the rhetorician Catherine Chaput is instructive:
Yet, taking the man's justification seriously leaves us in a pickle. How do we explain the contradiction he embroils himself in? Chaput accomplishes this by synthesizing affect with political economic theory. Boltanski and Thévenot's answer is no less strange. I'm tempted to say that they wouldn't seek to explain the man's waffling, since any theory that sought to make sense of it would be overly simplistic. Instead, I imagine them to develop a vocabulary to describe what actors do. And what actors do is, when put to the test, travel between one of six possible worlds: "For Boltanski and Thévenot, this ability to live within worlds, and mainly to travel between the worlds, is a central competence of the actors involved in all kinds of disputes about justice" (Jacquemain, n.d., p.10). So far, though, I've only read 22 pages of Boltanski and Thévenot, and, as a result, I'm not able to spell out exactly what these worlds entail. But I can say that there are six worlds (civic, domestic, market, celebrity, industrial, and inspired), and that, while travel to all is technically permitted, certain linkages are unsustainable. For example, the argument to count women's domestic labor within a country's GDP, or that woman should be paid for their domestic or emotional labor links the domestic and the market worlds. Moreover, that link is sustainable because it aspires toward the common good, which is one of this sociology's important terms. However, other links are unsustainable because they break fundamental axioms, such as that of depending on a "common humanity." In fact, Boltanski and Thévenot argue that any argument in favor of eugenics is impossible to sustain for this reason.
I am a little confused about the role of description, though, since it would seem as though this sociology would have to explain something. For example, I can imagine applying this sociology to case studies like Caster Semenya. One question I have is: why is Caster Semenya such a big deal, when so many other intersex persons could be pointed to? What was it about her that went so viral? Out of all of the injustices to occur to so many intersex persons, why single out that one particular case for such media scrutiny? From what I've read of Boltanski and Thévenot so far, it seems like they would be able to explain why her case is so popular, which is confusing, because their whole sociology is supposed to be descriptive rather than explanatory, but I'm probably just taking a certain quote from them too seriously, or overextending an idea from one context to another. Regardless, Boltanski and Thévenot (2006) speak of "composition arrangements" (p. 10) that flatten the hierarchy of global and local scales (p. 7). Moreover, they also speak of how singularity can be made to (Bruno Latour) become general via an "investment of form" (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006, p. 7). The word "investment" is important, since the On Justification's subtitle is "Economies of Worth." But the main thing I want to point out is, cases like Semenya's make apparent a kind of symmetrical treatment of persons and things (p. 9). To be clear on that point, the International Association of Athletics Federations rules that a woman's hormones must be within in a certain acceptable level to compete. In other words, while Semenya and her lawyers argue for the Association to adjust its values and practices for the sake of justice, for the Association, it's simply not worth it. Is it worth fighting an uphill battle against an entire ideology for the sake of a few outlier cases? Again, we can see double standards and slippages just like we saw earlier with the unnamed, working-class man. The same people who justify their actions by claiming that they want all athletes to play on an equal playing field also allow people like Usain Bolt to compete, despite the fact that he, too, surely has higher than average levels of testosterone. So, why, again, does Caster Semenya's case garner so much publicity? Maybe one reason is because of the "precarious compromises" (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006, p. 9) that become possible. Or maybe even another word would be "resonates" (Casey Boyle), although that word certainly isn't in Boltanski and Thévenot. That is, given that we can't know what people can do until they are put to the test (Jacquemain, n.d., p. 5), sometimes peoples' actions give rise to many different explanations, and publicity is generated as a result of trying to settle the multiplicity of justifications that reverberates across the different worlds. Whatever the case, given Boltanski and Thévenot's attention to worth, value, evaluation, judgement, etc., I think something like resonance is at stake. How does a single runner become so saturated with weight as to become equal to an entire ideology? How does a single tweet become able to take down an entire government? I think Boltanski and Thévenot would argue that it's because that single tweet or person or whatever was able to sustain (that is, be a kind of boundary object for) a variety of justifications from a variety of different worlds all at once. By now, this is probably neither here nor there, but I'm just hung up on the role of description, since again it would seem like the six world hypothesis would have a lot of explanatory power--explanation without explaining away?
I don't know if it's a proper reading of Boltanski and Thévenot (2006) or not to claim (as I am claiming here) that "investments of form" (p. 8) occur as a result of a multiplication (or augmentation? amplification?) of justifications. It just seems to be like that's where the book might go. Who knows, though. I'm only 22 pages in.
So what? Why does this failure to take justifications seriously matter to sociology? For one, a sociologist would need to take justification seriously in order to have any sort of relationship with the human subjects in question. On this topic, turning to the rhetorician Catherine Chaput is instructive:
In neoliberalism, argues Foucault (2008, 13), political economic theory serves as the gauge for legitimate personal and state activities such that our sense of economy and its operations supersedes other logical arguments. Economic beliefs determine, for instance, who can buy a home and at what interest rate or which corporations can file for bankruptcy, which must liquidate, and which require federal bailout packages. Amid a severe decline in the economy, such political economic policies and the arguments that legitimate them may appear to rhetoricians to be situated in a sociohistorical moment specific to the economic crisis of global capitalism. Certainly this historical context and its particular manifestations in local sites like Erkhart, Indiana, where the unemployment rate has recently skyrocketed, tells us something about how to persuade the traditionally republican residents of this middle-America town to endorse various political and economic agendas. But this context falls short of explaining sentiments like the one expressed by an unnamed working-class man captured on Alexandra Pelosi’s documentary Right America Feeling Wronged (2009). In a rare moment of personal interaction with one of her interlocutors, Pelosi challenges the man’s understanding of Obama’s tax redistribution plan as unfairly burdening “the hard-working man” and benefiting “the guy that only wants to come to work two days a week.” She tells him, on the contrary, that the plan would likely increase taxes for “the richest one percent in this country and give it to you.” Although the man had initially explained his opposition to Obama in terms of his own economic self-interest, he responds to Pelosi by stating, “I don’t care what people can do for me. I only care what’s good for the economy.” This seemingly innocuous and selfless comment reveals the negative affective energies that fix this man’s opinion of Obama regardless of well-crafted appeals. He does not dislike Obama because he is thinking only of his economic self-interest, or because he’s unhappy about the way economic self-interest is discursively represented by the Obama campaign, or because he lacks information, or because he’s irrational. With a clear voice, a sincere tone, and after carefully listening to Pelosi, the man maintains his distrust of Obama because of deeply affective energies attached to notions about economic competition that literally prevent him from communicating with those who do not share his understanding of how the world works, precluding him, in fact, from connecting with others and entertaining new possibilities. (Chaput, 2010, p. 17)Shifting now to the Boltanski and Thévenot, they suggest that
The persons whom we follow in their tests and obliged by the situation in which they are involved to shift from one more of adjustment to another, from one measure of worth to another. That this plasticity constitutes a defining feature of normalcy is attested by the numerous attributions of pathology, especially of paranoia, claims that stigmatize those who resist the adjustments required when passing from one situation to another. (16)Now, if we think about this Boltanski and Thévenot quote in terms of the Chaput, we have a good example of what's at stake in On Justification. The unnamed, working-class man initially justifies his argument against Obama’s tax redistribution plan by appealing to his own economic self-interest, although when Pelosi "tests" him, he "shifts" his justification to a more selfless mode. In fact, it is here in which we can see the power of Boltanski and Thévenot's epistemological immanentism (Jacquemain, n.d., n.p.). That is, if we were to approach the unnamed, working-class man via a Bourdieusian style of sociology, the sociologist's explanation would be taken to be more real (Harman) than the man's. And, as Jacquemain had pointed out earlier, "if I am driven by my habitus when I think I authentically feel, reason, desire, argue, then what protects the sociologist from being be driven by his own habitus when he is describing mine? On what grounds can he claim that he has a privileged access to what unconsciously determines me? We could even go further and ask: if nothing can be authentically valued because everything is the product of a causal mechanism, then on what grounds can any critique of anything ever be justified?" (n.d., n.p.). In other words, given that "[d]isqualifying a belief, an argument, or a preference on the grounds it is unconsciously determined by wrong causal mechanisms, or because it is in fact a cover for some disguised interests, is a very common feature of the discourse of the actors themselves" (Jacquemain, n.d., n.p.), if we remain in the realm of Bourdieusian sociology, it becomes difficult to justify why we should take the sociologist more seriously than the man himself. But, of course, we have another option. We can take the man's justifications seriously. The benefit of doing so is that we actually have an opportunity to build a relationship with the man, which is not necessarily to say that we could try to talk him out of his beliefs via reasoned arguments, but, as Jenny Rice has speculated, maybe, if we take a more aesthetic approach oriented around magnitude, that might be more effective at changing his mind (see "The Rhetorical Aesthetics of More").
Yet, taking the man's justification seriously leaves us in a pickle. How do we explain the contradiction he embroils himself in? Chaput accomplishes this by synthesizing affect with political economic theory. Boltanski and Thévenot's answer is no less strange. I'm tempted to say that they wouldn't seek to explain the man's waffling, since any theory that sought to make sense of it would be overly simplistic. Instead, I imagine them to develop a vocabulary to describe what actors do. And what actors do is, when put to the test, travel between one of six possible worlds: "For Boltanski and Thévenot, this ability to live within worlds, and mainly to travel between the worlds, is a central competence of the actors involved in all kinds of disputes about justice" (Jacquemain, n.d., p.10). So far, though, I've only read 22 pages of Boltanski and Thévenot, and, as a result, I'm not able to spell out exactly what these worlds entail. But I can say that there are six worlds (civic, domestic, market, celebrity, industrial, and inspired), and that, while travel to all is technically permitted, certain linkages are unsustainable. For example, the argument to count women's domestic labor within a country's GDP, or that woman should be paid for their domestic or emotional labor links the domestic and the market worlds. Moreover, that link is sustainable because it aspires toward the common good, which is one of this sociology's important terms. However, other links are unsustainable because they break fundamental axioms, such as that of depending on a "common humanity." In fact, Boltanski and Thévenot argue that any argument in favor of eugenics is impossible to sustain for this reason.
I am a little confused about the role of description, though, since it would seem as though this sociology would have to explain something. For example, I can imagine applying this sociology to case studies like Caster Semenya. One question I have is: why is Caster Semenya such a big deal, when so many other intersex persons could be pointed to? What was it about her that went so viral? Out of all of the injustices to occur to so many intersex persons, why single out that one particular case for such media scrutiny? From what I've read of Boltanski and Thévenot so far, it seems like they would be able to explain why her case is so popular, which is confusing, because their whole sociology is supposed to be descriptive rather than explanatory, but I'm probably just taking a certain quote from them too seriously, or overextending an idea from one context to another. Regardless, Boltanski and Thévenot (2006) speak of "composition arrangements" (p. 10) that flatten the hierarchy of global and local scales (p. 7). Moreover, they also speak of how singularity can be made to (Bruno Latour) become general via an "investment of form" (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006, p. 7). The word "investment" is important, since the On Justification's subtitle is "Economies of Worth." But the main thing I want to point out is, cases like Semenya's make apparent a kind of symmetrical treatment of persons and things (p. 9). To be clear on that point, the International Association of Athletics Federations rules that a woman's hormones must be within in a certain acceptable level to compete. In other words, while Semenya and her lawyers argue for the Association to adjust its values and practices for the sake of justice, for the Association, it's simply not worth it. Is it worth fighting an uphill battle against an entire ideology for the sake of a few outlier cases? Again, we can see double standards and slippages just like we saw earlier with the unnamed, working-class man. The same people who justify their actions by claiming that they want all athletes to play on an equal playing field also allow people like Usain Bolt to compete, despite the fact that he, too, surely has higher than average levels of testosterone. So, why, again, does Caster Semenya's case garner so much publicity? Maybe one reason is because of the "precarious compromises" (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006, p. 9) that become possible. Or maybe even another word would be "resonates" (Casey Boyle), although that word certainly isn't in Boltanski and Thévenot. That is, given that we can't know what people can do until they are put to the test (Jacquemain, n.d., p. 5), sometimes peoples' actions give rise to many different explanations, and publicity is generated as a result of trying to settle the multiplicity of justifications that reverberates across the different worlds. Whatever the case, given Boltanski and Thévenot's attention to worth, value, evaluation, judgement, etc., I think something like resonance is at stake. How does a single runner become so saturated with weight as to become equal to an entire ideology? How does a single tweet become able to take down an entire government? I think Boltanski and Thévenot would argue that it's because that single tweet or person or whatever was able to sustain (that is, be a kind of boundary object for) a variety of justifications from a variety of different worlds all at once. By now, this is probably neither here nor there, but I'm just hung up on the role of description, since again it would seem like the six world hypothesis would have a lot of explanatory power--explanation without explaining away?
I don't know if it's a proper reading of Boltanski and Thévenot (2006) or not to claim (as I am claiming here) that "investments of form" (p. 8) occur as a result of a multiplication (or augmentation? amplification?) of justifications. It just seems to be like that's where the book might go. Who knows, though. I'm only 22 pages in.
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