"not to power grounded in groups whose members occupy particular positions"

 

• Ramirez, C. (2013). ‘We are being pilloried for something, we did not even know we had done wrong!’ quality control and orders of worth in the british audit profession. Journal of Management Studies, 50(5), 845-869. doi:10.1111/joms.12011

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 Boltanski and Thévenot are not keen on characterizing social categories such as ‘social classes, blue‐collar workers, white‐collar workers, youth, women, voters and so on’ (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006, p. 1) as exemplifying or embodying a particular order of worth or logic. Instead their primary unit of analysis is the ‘situation’, which they define as the relationship between ‘person‐states and thing‐states’ (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006, p. 1).

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you also just had this idea. in Freadman, she says how context is never something that you share to begin with. it's something that has to be built, this would actually show how that takes place, by showing that there is a framework that you share. 

but then again, wouldn't ... so you share something to begin with ... oh that right, but it has to be draw out by necessity vis-à-vis the situation. because it's not like people just have these repertoire just contained in their mind all of the time and they can walk around and choose them, but then again these aren't genres...they aren't conventions...are they?

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the ‘situation’, which they define as the relationship between ‘person‐states and thing‐states’ (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006, p. 1).

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The need to criticize or justify leads to qualification of the situation through a ‘test of worth’ (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006, pp. 133–37) whose goal is to ‘agree on the relative importance of beings [animate and inanimate] that turn out to be implicated in the situation’ (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006, p. 40). Applying a principle of equivalence (Thévenot, 2001) between these beings clarifies what they have in common and facilitates establishment of a natural order. In certain circumstances, the tests themselves are open to criticism because they are unable to determine relative worth (Boltanski and Thévenot, 1999, pp. 373–74).

still not really understanding this whole principle of equivalence thing. there's a dispute. what's in question? children. can they not work because they're too young? or can they work because their dads say so? are the beings who are to be made equal the people who are doing the arguing? 

likewise, and where's the test?

The first is that ‘people need to involve things in tests in order to handle disagreements’ (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006, p. 40).

so you test the kid. how? what's another dispute? is the test the application of the OOW to the situation? producing thereby critique and justification? 

Unlike human beings, objects belong to one particular world and are considered to help define a situation by informing participants about which worlds are involved (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006, pp. 215–19).

really. so we're not dealing with a boundary object.

Situations involving things and beings from different worlds raise the difficulty of arranging them according to a common principle. 

interesting. so you have a situation. in that situation there are objects that belong to world A and world B, and in fact those objects are what is making it seem like there is that incommensurability in the first place, but an agreement has to be come to, so the people have to rearrange the whole situation, thus qualifying? all of the objects in the situation, or giving them a new order and purpose?

Compromises are one possible remedy to situations where worth is called into question (alternatively tests of worth can, for instance, be ignored out of forgiveness). Solutions to this question do not necessarily mean equalizing worth, but simply that the attribution of worth must rest on a principle of equity (which, as seen earlier, is also a principle of equivalence). The second important feature of Boltanski and Thévenot's theoretical framework for this paper is therefore the idea that common worlds are in fact hierarchies. Each of the worlds described above proposes a specific principle of equivalence, which can be implemented ‘with a view to specifying what the worth or size of the “great ones” (les grands) consists in and hence on what to base a justifiable order between persons’ (Boltanski and Thévenot, 1999, p. 367). Coexistence between these persons is never interpreted through the lens of a dominant/dominated pattern. Instead Boltanski and Thévenot consider legitimacy as the result of a process of legitimation in which autonomous individuals endowed with moral discernment are engaged. The outcome of this process is that it is impossible to define individuals in a common world merely as the victims of (symbolic or physical) violence exerted by certain fellow members. The principle of the common good allows for a hierarchy in which greatness associated with higher states also benefits lower states (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006, p. 77). The principle of the common good is thus equally a principle of justice.

does this mean that, if the domestic is the agreed upon sphere, and then if this being is seen as more worthy than another, then that being doesn't dominate the other? because it's the outcome of a process of reconciliation? is this like another framework for explaining hegemony? like don't criticize these people, sure, it can look like there's injustice there, but there's not because it's justice for them?

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Seen through the lens of Boltanski and Thévenot's situations, change that increases situations where relative worth cannot be determined and a natural order cannot emerge would appear bound to fail, or to trigger open resistance and possibly attempts at developing alternative logics (Marquis and Lounsbury, 2007).

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Examination of letters as a research method has also been used by Boltanski (1991) for his own work on the different forms of generalizing when injustice is denounced. [Boltanski, L. (1991). L'amour et la Justice Comme Compétences. Paris: Métailié.]

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A vision in terms of orders of worth helps envisaging a dynamic exchange between different levels of social life, to understand the possible implications for the upper levels of injustice felt at the lower levels. The vehicle used to travel between these levels is that of ‘the situation’.

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the levels thing was helpful I guess

it was making you think of the STC thing, and about how that was making changes across levels, at the level of the STC on the one hand and TT on the other--and I guess the situation is the thing that cuts across levels?

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2 ‘The reference to different kinds of common good makes it possible to sort out different ways of deciding on a person's state of worth. In this model, then, the different forms of equivalence are not related to different groups – as they are in classical sociology – but to different situations. It follows that a person must – in order to act in a normal way – be able to shift, during the space of one day or even one hour, between situations which are relevant in relations to different forms of equivalence’ (Boltanski and Thévenot, 1999 p. 365).

it's almost like OOW and forms of equivalence are being conflated as the same thing, or rather, how ... let's just think here.  if something is equivalent, then that word signifies a kind of translation. equivalence is not? equals. 1 euro is equivalent to 1.5 dollars. 

or, what is more likely, what you've been refereeing to an OOW is actually a principle of equivalence, a form of translation/transportation into a logic. a women is a mom in the domestic but a boss in the civic. 

Orders of worth are trinitarian conjunctions of a metaphysical good, a common good of benefit to all beyond any “self-centered pleasure” or private interest an individual may obtain from it, actors’ moral competences to justify and critique based upon the principle of equivalence this good provides, and material conventions in formatted situations by which a being’s goodness is subject to test as to its relative worth. For such tests to be justifiable, the principle of equivalence that a common good provides must be paired with “sets of objects” --- that together constitute a “coherent and self-sufficient world,” a “natural situation” (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006: 40-41, 19).  In practice, justice is a “justifiable ranking of persons and things;” justification a legitimate “ordering” and evaluation (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006: 14; Boltanski, 2012: 60). Not unlike Bourdieu’s habitus and habitat, competences and conventions are mutually constituted, but unlike Bourdieu it is a will to justice grounded in a good pertinent to a situation, not to power grounded in groups whose members occupy particular positions, that has primacy.  

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maybe the OOW is bigger, more encompassing, it's an order after all, whereas the metric that you think of often is actually the POE. 

so what can you take away from this? I think the biggest thing is the whole serious rearranging thing. these people showed how an organization was rearranged in a substantive way, and what you're studying is that change and how it stems from a injustice, or rather, how critique leads to institutional change, 

• how critique leads to institutional change
• how the introduction of this weird thing or practice causes? people to try to stabilize the situation
• how people justify this super weird thing or practice