strange voluntarism

• Honneth, A. (2010). Dissolutions of the social: On the social theory of luc boltanski and laurent thévenot. Constellations (Oxford, England), 17(3), 376-389. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8675.2010.00606.x

As it has become clear above, by the term “conflict,” the two authors refer to societal disputes that do not concern the appropriate interpretation of a justification order, but the possible application of different justification orders to one and the same situation. The intersubjectively equipoised acting of the participants cannot only grind to a halt because one participant calls into question the hitherto practiced interpretation of the widely accepted norm system. Such an interruption might also occur if the interaction participants call into doubt the legitimacy of the justification order itself, claiming that it seems inappropriate for the given action sphere. Based on the number of pages that Boltanski and Thévenot devote to this second type of moral disagreement,32 they seem to assume that it constitutes the predominant form of social conflict in our societies. According to them, the main subject of dispute in the democratic countries of the West is over which of the culturally available desert conceptions should apply to which sphere of social action. Leaving aside that it is highly implausible to reduce the spectrum of contemporary ideas about social justice to such a foundation in the desert principle, this picture of Western societies is certainly not wrong. Many diagnoses agree that the transformation of the capitalist welfare states that is slowly becoming apparent is essentially marked by conflicts that have to do with changes in the normative grammar of certain action spheres. But even this empirical plausibilization contains more than is compatible with the descriptions of the authors, for they do not speak of a status quo in the normative constitution of social spheres. Instead, the study seems to operate with the notion that actors always carry out their moral conflicts under conditions that leave them free to decide which justification order they use to attempt to address the action problem in question. This strange voluntarism shows that Boltanski and Thévenot suffer here, more than in all other parts of the book, from not having a concept of normatively regulated action spheres.

Yet the thus sketched inconsistency is not the only problem of the study, which comes to light in an exemplary fashion through the analysis of moral conflict. What has previously been described as a tendency to deny theory‐immanent normativity returns here in a more pointed manner and creates difficulties for which a solution cannot really be seen. In the process of their analysis, the authors seem to imply that each of the six justification models can at any time and in any place be resorted to as the normative pattern for the proposal of a change in our interactive relationships. Regardless of whether the context in question is a factory, a private household, a hospital, or a political event, the participants are always supposed to be able to challenge the hitherto accepted social order by demanding a new arrangement based on some currently unpracticed ideas of social justice. In order to clarify what this would mean empirically, one only has to imagine a father who proposes to his family one day to organize the common household in the future according to the normative pattern of a market order, or a natural scientist who attempts to overthrow the work‐sharing organization of the laboratory by suggesting the familial arrangement of paternal authority as the model for the coordination of the different tasks [yea couldn't you use the people who are trying to work less an an example of this? let's work less, or rather, give me your phones, and let's only work for 30 hours a week?]. The point here is not that such bizarre proposals and outlandish revolts do not occur in our social world. The question is whether social analysis can refer to them in a neutral way, as Boltanski and Thévenot seem to suggest. The institutionalized norm systems that were previously mentioned have not randomly formed around the core of certain functional spheres. They have emerged from practical experience that has shown over time that certain norms of recognition are sensible or appropriate for the handling of central coordination problems. Social analysis cannot simply abstract from the result of such normative learning processes. It must rather include them as a theoretical component into its own set of categories: the central functional areas of society then appear as action spheres that are not consistent with any arbitrary set of norms, but only with those that have already been proven as superior and sensible. That is, of course, not to say that any social task can only be accomplished through a particular regime of moral norms. The different action spheres that we distinguish today have shown themselves to be more plastic than the functionalism of Talcott Parsons wanted to acknowledge – today the family is subject to a transformation of its moral order, as is the world of industrial labor and public welfare assistance.34 But the historical process of an iterative examination of alternatives has already limited the models of order that are available for certain action problems: within the family, we cannot anymore, without being regarded as obdurate, irrational or laughable, resort to the regime of patriarchal or charismatic leadership. In schools it would, for the same reasons, be absurd to demand a pure market order or to propose an industrial model of organization. Such limitations of the available normative options are not value judgments of the sociological observer. As normative facts, they belong to empirical conditions as much as increasing divorce rates or more individualized biographies. Hence Boltanski and Thévenot must not pretend that there are six equally available models of justice for all spheres of coordination among individual actions. Had they sufficiently acknowledged the implicit normativity of liberal‐democratic societies, they would know that certain models are out of place for certain functional tasks, and that their application would even amount to a moral regression.

why do B & T matter? to sociology that is?

how do they fit into the history of sociology? how do they depart meaningfully from that history? beyond but also including boudrieu?

and what are some problems with that departure? how is their theory inconsistent or problematic? and to whom?