interviews & ethnography; cf. the graffiti one

Oldenhof, L., Postma, J., & Putters, K. (2014). On justification work: How compromising enables public managers to deal with conflicting values. Public Administration Review, 74(1), 52-63. doi:10.1111/puar.12153

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This one did a good job explaining objects. 

It also dealt with the fact that a compromise can take place within the same OOW? Or rather, that conflict can arise within the same OOW. See the graffiti article I think.

You kept thinking of Ahmed and "diversity work."

Sustainability. This one also has a so what? answer. 

Although previous research has shown that value conflicts can be avoided by creating a separation or "firewall" (Jacobs 1994; Stewart 2006; Thacher and Rein 2004), it is questionable whether decoupling mechanisms are sustainable in the long run (Haack, Schoeneborn and Wickert 2012; Sandholtz 2012; Steenhuisen 2009). The empirical analysis suggests that public managers can use compromises as a more durable strategy to cope with value conflicts, which broadens the scope of the strategies described so far in the literature, such as cycling, firewalls, and bias (Stewart 2006; Thacher and Rein 2004). 

Very Spinuzzi-ish, in a way in the qualitative research sense. 

You keep coming back to how clunky this framework is. It gives the research a task, gives him something to look for (it's a schema), but you end up reading what you started with. It's like you're closely reading yourself. 

You seriously said this in an email to Spinuzzi. 

However, Boltanski and Thévenot note that "the competence to make an agreement is not a uniquely linguistic competence" (2000, 212). People also make compromises with the construction and arrangement of objects. Objects are important as "every principle of justice is associ ated with a universe of objects that constitute a coherent world" (Boltanski and Thévenot 2000, 213). They have the potential to tie ill-suited elements together and solidify compromises. For example, Thévenot (2002) shows that compromises between market, civic, and domestic justifications can be incorporated in the design and construction of a new road.

Their interview questions weren't too intense. They seemed to be reading justifications out of normal language. 

Objects. 

When justifying, people "extract themselves from the immediate situation and rise to a level of generality' (Boltanski and Thévenot 2000, 213). In this process, people attach certain worth to persons and objects. For example, an object such as a house can be endowed a different worth in each justification. The justification of the market sees a house as a good that can be traded for money, whereas the domestic justification sees it as a place where family life takes place. Similarly, people can be endowed with different values, such as consumers, citizens, or producers.