Boltasnki Reality of Moral Expectations 2009

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The reality of moral expectations: A sociology of situated judgementLuc Boltanskiab; Laurent Thévenotac

a Professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris b Founder of the Groupe deSociologie Politique et Morale, c Director of the Groupe de Sociologie Politique et Morale,

To cite this Article Boltanski, Luc and Thévenot, Laurent(2000) 'The reality of moral expectations: A sociology of situatedjudgement', Philosophical Explorations, 3: 3, 208 — 231To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/13869790008523332URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13869790008523332

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The Reality of MoralExpectations: A Sociologyof Situated Judgement

Luc Boltanski & Laurent Thévenot

Abstract

The paper offers a modelling of the sense of justice

as it is displayed in ordinary situated disputes. While

this model accounts for a plurality of legitimate

forms of evaluation which are used in the process of

critique and justification, it escapes a relativism of

values by demonstrating that all these forms satisfy a

set of common requirements. The reasonable charac-

ter of the everyday sense of justice is also anchored

in a reality test involving the engagement of objects

which qualify for a certain form of evaluation. The

paper discusses this model in relation to competing

theories of justice, and models of social action and

interaction.

Taking the sense of justice seri-ously requires breaking with thestrictly causal approaches thatare often considered essential tothe social sciences. Theseapproaches ignore the concernfor the good that persons aremoved by, and ignore the ques-tion of what is just, leaving thatto the conscientious attention ofresearchers. They will be trou-bled by the idea that persons aremoved by a concern for thegood, because it complicates thescientific task of laying bare theobjective causes of humanaction. Taking this observationas a starting point, our work has

been to construct a model in which the normative views of persons could be fullyconsidered. This meant building a bridge between the social sciences and moralphilosophy.

I .Taking the sense of justice seriously

The main goal of the model of analysis of the 'orders of worth', presented in ourbook On Justification (Boltanski & Thévenot, 1991), was to provide an instrumentwith which to analyse the operations persons perform when they resort to criti-cism, when they have to justify the criticisms they produce, when they justifythemselves in the face of criticism or collaborate in the pursuit of a justified agree-

1 For a concise presentation in English, while awaiting the forthcoming translation of the book, seeBoltanski & Thévenot 1999.

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— The Reality of Moral Expectations: A Sociology of Situated Judgement ^ ^

ment.1 The privileged object of the model consists of situations that are submit-ted to the imperative ojjustification. These situations are far from rare in ordinarylife, as is demonstrated by the empirical research accompanying the constructionof this model. The model differs in this from constructions that, in the final analy-sis, tend to reduce all social relations to relations oj power, which is often the casewith works of Marxist inspiration. It also differs from constructions that seek totreat these relations as strategies that are employed by persons in order to opti-mize their interest, as in the different forms of utilitarianism-derived sociology.These latter constructions are not capable of dealing with the demands of justiceexpressed by persons, and they reduce these demands to ideological masks, andsometimes even completely ignore them. Focusing on the moments of criticismand justification, the model we constructed does not purport to account for allthe facts and gestures that are habitually called 'social'. The type of analysis madepossible by the model does not operate via an account of the dispositions or deter-minations inscribed once and for all in the agents, and which guide their behav-iour in all situations. Instead of the dispositionalist model often adopted by con-temporary sociologies (even if this happens implicitly), we offer an analysis of theconstraints that derive from situated arrangements.2 This approach, however,does not presuppose a reduction to the local, as these situated arrangements onlymake sense, as will be seen, in reference to conventional orders.

The model does not aspire to an exhaustive comprehension, and one willvainly search here for a matrix that allows social reality to be described in all itsaspects. Persons are not constantly focused on justice, and the demand of justiceis far from necessarily present in all the situations in which they interact. Themodel of the orders of worth acknowledges, without systematically exposing it tosuspicion, the possibility that is offered to persons to ground their criticisms onthese demands of justice or to converge towards justifiable agreements. It doesnot, however, try to reduce the social to the question of justice. Not all situationsare subject to an imperative of justification to the same degree. The demand ofjustification is indeed indissolubly linked to the possibility of criticism. It is oftennecessary to support criticism or to respond to criticism. Yet, on the one hand,criticism is not always equally possible in all situations. On the other hand, crit-icized persons are not always bound to explain themselves and to return argu-ment for argument. They can, notably, impose their positions by relying on theimplicit or explicit threat of violence, or even on the justification of urgence,which practically boils down to the same. But these borderline situations cannotbe limitlessly extended, and it is clear that justice must be treated as one of theregimes that are capable of controlling the moves on which social activity isbased.3

2 For a comparison of Pierre Bourdieu's 'dispositionalist' sociology with the 'pragmatist' sociologiesof Boltanski and Thévenot, Bruno Latour and Michel Callon, see: Benatouil 1999.

3 One can find analyses of the relations between the regime of justice and other action regimes inBoltanski 1990 and Thévenot 1990; for texts in the English language, see: Boltanski 1999,Thévenot 2000a, 2000b. Peter Wagner discusses this programme in Wagner 1999.

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The modelling of competencies

To analyse the situations that are subject to the regime of justification and thekind of actions that unfold there, we start from the claims made by persons. Themodel does not posit any universals to begin with, but poses universality as ahorizon searched after by agents. This approach is able to independently startfrom persons with different grammars of justice, and aims to clarify the differ-ences and the points of convergence between these grammars. In this way, wethink we can contribute to a clarification of the question of moral universalism.Constructed as a tool for the explanation of the ordinary sense of justice, themodel of the orders of worth can be integrated in a normative orientation,because it performs, as a reflexive turn on the sense of justice, an operation ofrule-setting, of determination of different types of common good, and of legiti-mate or illegitimate relations between these common goods. This work of expla-nation is particularly normative when it is performed on the demands shared bythe different orders of worth which all acknowledge a common humanity. A ten-sion develops between this requirement of humanity and the necessity to definea legitimate order to satisfy the concerns of justice.

The model is a competence model, a formalization of the competence personsput to use when they act by referring to a sense of justice, and when they rely onarrangements in reality that support and comfort this competence, by guarantee-ing it the possibility of being efficient. Nevertheless, establishing this modelrequires us to ascend to a level of generality, and our empirical observations onlyprovide us with partial, constantly reactualized sketches. To cope with this, ourstrategy has been to confront the observations and the utterances from the fieldwith partially formalized constructions borrowed from political philosophy.

The necessity to submit the development of the model to a formal construc-tion directly derives from our will to take seriously the claims of justice made bythe actors. We had to demonstrate the solidity of these claims and prevent themfrom being too easily reduced to hypocritical moves associated with the defenceof particular interests or to unfounded illusions. To achieve this it must indeed bepossible to demonstrate in what way they will satisfy certain conditions of valid-ity which support a demand of universalization, and to make explicit the kind ofrationality on which they rely. This indispensable basis of a form of rationalitythat is defendable in all generality cannot be immediately demonstrated by a sim-ple registering of the utterances by the actors, for these actors rarely make explic-it the general principles of their actions. To correctly interpret the observations inthe field, we had to have the possibility to link the empirically observable realitywith formal models.

This, of course, is not to say that these formal models have a claim to univer-sal validity, at least not without any further examination. Born from the shapingof the competence in justice certifiable today in our society, they cannot beextended towards other societies or other periods without the careful work ofanalysis that intends to confront them with the arguments that are developed bythe persons that belong to those societies. Without any examination one cannotdetermine the area of validity of these models, nor the modifications that they

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need, to assure their extension towards other societies and other periods.4 Thedifferent commonwealths which the model has to integrate in order to account forthe competence injustice possessed by the members of our society do in fact havehistorical traits that are clearly formulated in On Justification.5

But first some remarks on the beings to be found in the model. It primarilyrecognizes the existence of persons-in-acts characterized by different positions andchances. First of all, it aims to recapture the constraints that limit the possibilitiesof action available to persons when they enter into the regime of justice. Theseconstraints, however, are not treated as internal determinations. As said before,we did not set ourselves the task of recapturing properties that determined theconduct of the agents in all circumstances, as if these were irreversibly inscribedinto them and in their corporeal habits. Indeed, these properties, which othersociological constructions necessarily bring into account, develop a tension withthe operations that persons perform when they have set their minds on justice.Actually, the persons will search for them, in order to demonstrate what weightthey add to the scales, when they intend to denounce the unjust nature of a situa-tion. The constraints we seek to illuminate are those associated with the arrange-ment of the situation in which the persons are placed. We consider the capacityto grasp them and to take them into account as part of the competence of all nor-mal members of the same society. Not unlike rules of grammar, these constraintsare not of an unconscious nature, in the sense that certain censures, connectedwith interests or prohibitions, would prevent their explicit formulation by theactors. This is so, even if, in most of the practical situations, the actors feel noneed to render them explicit and to resort to common higher principles that givemeaning to their actions. But we treat this explicit formulation as something thatis always possible under certain types of pressure, whether it involves, for exam-ple, responding to a vivid criticism by an adversary, or to the questioning by aresearcher. Outside the complete explicit formulation, however, these constraintsremain present, notably by the intermediary of the arrangement of objects thatexists in the situation: the material arrangement. The inability to take these con-straints into consideration is precisely what defines, in our model, the thing com-mon meaning intends to point to when it draws attention to the abnormal char-acter of a person considered to be insane, eccentric, or out of her wits. This alsomeans that we do not ground the possibility of an agreement on the membershipof a group, understood as a condition for sharing a set taken-for-granted culturalnorms and schemes that would be shared implicitly. In other words, the agree-ment is not based in the this-goes-without-saying of the group, whatever its ori-

4 For an examination of the place of these orders of worth in France and in the USA, and of therelations with other grammars of the public good, see the survey, supervised by Michele Lamontand Laurent Thévenot, on the repertories of evaluation in both countries: Lamont & Thévenot2000, and specifically: Thévenot, Moody &r Lafaye 2000, Moody & Thévenot 2000 and Lamont2000.

5 The formation of new orders of worth has been analysed in numerous texts following the publi-cation of On Justification. For a complete analysis and a history of the construction of the con-nectionist worth 'by project', see: Boltanski and Chiapello 1999; for insights into the constructionof a "green" worth concerning the environment, see: Lafaye & Thévenot 1993, Thévenot 1996,Thévenot, Moody & Lafaye 2000; on the emergence of a worth of information, see: Thévenot1997.

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gins: ethnic, regional, class-bound, etc. But there is even more. In the case of jus-tice, the constructions that take groups and cultures as basic units cannot reallyaccount for an agreement between members of different groups with different cul-tures and different interests, except in terms of relations of power. Although it isundoubtedly true that the existence of power relations cannot be ignored, it isexactly our aim to show that in certain situations justifiable and universalizableagreements are possible, and that these are capable of resisting their denunciationas simple power relations under the veil of relations of justice.

We do not ignore the role played by violence in political relations betweenpeople, a role that may vary according to situations, societies and epochs. Simi-larly, we do not ignore how much routines owe to the body and to corporeal inte-riorizations. But we do object to the claim that violence and routine can accountfor all situations. There are situations, and they are numerous, where persons areor could be confronted with criticism. The model of orders of worth aims toestablish that in these situations, in order to reach an agreement, one must becapable of justifying one's self by referring to a principle that is valid for all. Suchagreements are simply necessary to put an end to, or to prevent, a dispute. Ofcourse, this does not exclude the possibility that these situations will become vio-lent. Proceeding from a model of competence injustice, however, one cannot butrule out as irrelevant the situations that abstain from justifications.

The kind of agreement that we are investigating is a problematic and activeagreement. The persons are working to establish a fragile agreement. We stressthe work persons have to accomplish here and now in order to construct thesocial world, to endow it with meaning and to confer on it a minimum of firm-ness. This approach places our research close to the endeavours of phenomeno-logical sociologies who also pay much attention to the performative activities ofthe actors. But our model recognizes types of entities which the phenomenology-inspired sociologies, focusing on human persons, do not always consider rele-vant. These entities are, on the one hand, metaphysical beings—and notably whatwe call worths—and, on the other hand, objects. Ethnomethodology for example,addresses all kinds of states of the world that present themselves in the here andnow, and, by methodological decision, accepts no resources that are external to asituation. The difference from the orders of worth model is that the latter aims toaccount for justifiable states, where justification makes an appeal to commonresources that go beyond the situation. The resorting to principles of constructionthat transcend the situation enables the identification of the situations and theselection of arguments and moves that are relevant. This would be an immenseand quasi-impossible task if one were to proceed, like ethnomethodology does,from a universe in which any being can be engaged in any situation, grasped inthe absolute indetermination of a here and now which is being offered withoutany resistance to the free interpretations of the actors.

The competence to make an agreement is not a uniquely linguistic compe-tence. This competence must allow the formation of arguments that are accept-able in justice, as well as the construction of assemblies of objects, arrangementsthat hold together, the fitness of which can be demonstrated. These arrangementsare necessary in order to test the claims made by the persons. The notion of testplays a central part in our construction. In opposition to 'the linguistic turn', it

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inclines towards realism. Indeed, for persons to be able to reach an agreement inpractice, not only in principle, a reality test has to take place, accompanied by acodification or, at least, an explicit formulation of valid proof. In order to be ableto take these proofs into consideration, the model of analysis must be able toenlighten the presence not only of persons—the sole beings of political philoso-phy—but also of objects. We do consider the reality test to require the capacityof persons to take these objects at face value and to endow them with value.Therefore, every principle of justice is associated with a universe of objects thatconstitute a coherent world.

The orders of worth refer to forms of common goods that allow the establish-ing of an equivalence between entities and, in doing this, to define their relativeworth. At the heart of this competence model lies what we can call a metaphysi-cal capacity. We consider this capacity to be essential for understanding the pos-sibility of a social bond. To be able to converge towards an agreement, personsreally have to refer to something which is not of persons and which transcendsthem. This common reference we call a principle oj equivalence. To criticize or tojustify, the persons have to extract themselves from the immediate situation andrise to a level oj generality. Therefore, they turn to seeking a position by relying ona principle that is valid in all generality.

The first part of our construction involved demonstrating that this metaphys-ical capacity is presupposed by the social sciences, but that the latter never actu-ally drew all the conclusions from this. For this, we start from the debate betweenDurkheimian sociology and liberal economics, which is a form of the more gen-eral discussion between holism and individualism. The terms of this controversyare known: the movements that are connected with the tradition of liberal eco-nomics criticize Durkheimian sociology because its holism is of an unsoundmetaphysical nature. The 'groups' Durkheimian sociology talks about do notexist. Collectives are artefacts. Only individual persons, endowed with interests,exist. Durkheim, in turn, establishes the existence of collective realities in thepolemics he shares with liberal economics, a polemics the nature of which is inex-tricably ethical and scientific. The rational individual of liberal economics is anegoist (the term is Durkheim's, where he is criticizing individualism), an artefact,an abstract man, who has no country or history. We acknowledge, in the indi-vidualist tradition, that the Durkheimian scheme relies on metaphysics. But wetry to show that the construction of a just political bond on the basis of the mar-ket relation also presupposes a metaphysical stance: persons in the market are notin the particular state the use of the term 'individual' habitually implies. If theywere plunged into their particularity, they would not have a reason to pursue thesame goods, to agree on pursuing the same goods, and to find themselves in com-petition for these goods. What we are saying is that the persons in the market aremoral beings, in the sense that they are capable of taking abstraction from theirparticularity in order to agree on external goods, which are universally listed anddefined (Thévenot 1989a). We do not consider this underlying metaphysics to bea defect of the social sciences. It is exactly by resorting to conceptualizations of ametaphysical nature that the social sciences recognize the role played by thecapacity of human beings to conclude a justifiable agreement in the constructionof society.

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Legitimacy and legitimization

It is this kind of agreement, justified by referring to a principle that transcendsthe situation because it claims to be valid in all generality, that we will call a legit-imate agreement. Indeed, if a person in disagreement sets aside the possibility ofviolence and thus renounces imposing herself on others by eliminating her adver-saries, she has to express her disagreement by relying on arguments. But the argu-ments on which she relies must refer to an antecedent authority that universallyvalidates them. In the absence of such an authority, the exchange would be at riskof becoming an egoistic confirmation ("Why do you tell me this?—Because I likeit") or an ad hominem insult which can turn into a violent argument ("Why doyou tell me this?"—"Because I can't stand your face"). Neither can the argumentsbe valid for only a few persons, for example, by stabilizing an arrangementbetween the persons that are present. The arguments have to be solid enough tobe able to resist questions of an indeterminate number of new, not yet specifiedpartners. If these strangers were introduced to the situation, they, in turn, mightdemand arguments that already have been brought forward in order to stabilizethe social bond between the participants. In order to make an agreement possi-ble, attempts at justification have to rely on the hypothesis of common know-ledge on which proposed arguments and arrangements could rely.

In other words, our work also intends to make a contribution to the clarifica-tion of what is meant by "legitimacy". This concept, constituting one of the com-mon references of sociology, is used in more than one sense. Sociology sometimesconsiders legitimacy as a necessary component of social action, sometimes as alicitation after the facts of a coordination obtained by other means, which is to say,by force: in this case, one often speaks of "legitimization" (when, for example, onesays of a text of law that it is the "legitimization" of a "power relation"). The ambi-guity of the uses associated with the concept of "legitimate order" has been pre-sent since its introduction into the repertory of classical sociology by Max Weberwho, in Economy and Society (Weber, 1978), juxtaposes without any attempt atreconciliation two very different definitions of legitimacy (Corcuff & Lafaye,1989). When he defines a "legitimate order", Max Weber intends to designate firstand foremost the "validity of an order", the "stability" of which would neitherdepend on an orientation of individual actions toward the maximization of "inter-ests" ("purposive rationality"), nor on the force of "habit", and which wouldtherefore be irreducible to "simple regularity in the course of social life". This lastremark is important because it allows a clear distinction to be maintainedbetween what resorts under norm and what under ideal. Post-Weberian sociologyhas not stopped abolishing this distinction in order to take from ideals any claimto reality, bringing them back to either "ideologies" or "objective regularities". Butin the passages dedicated to "domination" in the same work, Weber alters his useof the term "legitimacy". It now means the justification a posteriori of a relation ofdomination: "All dominations seek to arouse and maintain the belief in their'legitimacy'." In Nietzsche one can find a theory of justification as deceptionexpressed in almost the same words: "Whatever his situation, man needs valuejudgements with which he can justify for his own eyes, and especially for thoseof his surroundings, his acts, his intentions and his states; in other words, it is his

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way of glorifying his own self. Every natural morality expresses the satisfactionwhich a certain kind of men feels of itself." (Nietzsche 1948, Vol. 1, p. 324). Inthe second definition, the legitimate nature of order—which is always arbitraryby essence, that is, founded in the last instance on one or the other form of vio-lence, the will to power or resentment—depends on its capacity to make peoplebelieve that it really relies on the ideal to which it appeals. Legitimacy is purely amatter of belief, and is thus a collectively held illusion. Classical sociology hasmainly remembered the second definition, and, in this case, rather speaks of"legitimization", leaving legitimacy to such reputedly naive disciplines as law andpolitical philosophy.

We intend to deal here with legitimacy as part of the competence of actors.We indeed make the hypothesis that actors are capable of distinguishing betweenlegitimate arguments and arrangements and illegitimate ones. Legitimate meansthat when arguments and arrangements are confronted with criticisms they canbe the subject of justifications that are valid in all generality, and that they can beused to support universalizable agreements. Illegitimate means that they cannotbe justified, and that they cannot support agreements that concern the generali-ty of the common good, even if they can be mobilized by the actors in certain sit-uations to support certain arrangements to the advantage of the parties.

2.The situated sense of the just and theories of justice

This question of the legitimacy of the agreement, which often remains ambiguousin the frame of sociology, lies at the heart of contemporary theories of justice. Twofigures of agreement are currently opposing each other. One is based on the ideaof a communitarian sense of belonging that draws attention to the weight, put onthe appraisal of the just, of culture or values shared by the members of the samesocial whole and forged in a common history. The other considers the agreementas the result of a liberal procedure that highlights the autonomy of individuals intheir appraisals of what would satisfy them and in their decisions. The view ofjustice here claims, above everything else, to remain independent with respect totraditions, authorities or other sources of influence that would threaten thisautonomy. The first orientation is linked to the recognition of a plurality of defi-nitions of the good, while the second is interested in defining a minimal proce-dural space permitting the management of the free and independent choices ofindividuals.

Some theories seek to overcome this opposition. This is the case with the con-structions proposed by John Rawls and Michael Walzer (Rawls, 1974; Walzer,1983). By reconsidering the requirements put forth in the first and the secondapproach, each of these theories proposes an original reconstruction. Rawls intro-duces into the individual evaluation the demands of reciprocity grasped by theoriginal position under the veil of ignorance. Walzer intends to show that the "artof separation" that characterizes liberalism must be understood as a separation ofspheres of justice, and not of individuals. Our model of the sense of justice invitesa similar reconstruction by recognizing the plurality of goods and the injusticesthat arise from their confusion, while still being concerned with the demandsresulting from an extension of the common goods to a community of reference,

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which is supposedly without limits. We will try to sketch the instances of con-vergence and the discrepancies between the model of orders of worth and the the-ories that we have just mentioned. We will illustrate our argument with examplesfrom the analysis of social policies.

A major difference stems from our investigating the situated sense oj the just.The situations that lend themselves to the explicit formulation of what is or is notthe just thing to do are situations where the decision does not impose itself,where there is no tacit cooperation between acquaintances, nor a violent clash.These are situations where the participants are driven to explain their judgementand to support it by drawing from the resources of the present situation. This sit-uated judgement, in which the concern for justice is caught between the circum-stances and the reference to principles or rules, notably corresponds to themoment of applying a regulation, or a policy measure. When the issue of justiceis raised in the theory of justice, by reference to principles or formal procedures,the moment of application is often relegated to an ulterior step in the investiga-tion, which is held to be empirical or is raised at the time of the evaluation of thepractical effects of the rule. Our method leads us, inversely, to examine from thestart such moments of putting into practice a policy measure. We would like toshow that tackling justice in practice is not simply the empirical side of a theoryof principle-driven justice. Entering the issue by the situated judgement leads tothe modification of the theoretical models and to the taking into consideration of,notably, the question of how conventional clues are developed and how commonobjects are qualified. Justification relies on these operations. Moreover, when onepays attention to the moment where a policy is put into practice, it becomes evi-dent that, beyond the application of a rule, there is a confrontation between dif-ferent forms of judgement expressed by the different actors implicated in the pol-icy. Therefore, we are led to reposition the political evaluation of a policy in thespectrum of evaluations and judgements made by the actors who are implicatedin its implementation. For example, statistical evaluation, adapted to the judge-ment of political mandataries (Desrosieres 1998), has to be situated in a largerarray of evaluation modes that engage different specifications of what is just. Inthis way, a labour inspector can doubt that the "statistical way", which establish-es equivalence in the sector of the firm, is the appropriate way to evaluate the sit-uation on a work floor. He will carefully survey other forms of evaluation andother types of relevant clues, like those that permit the apprehension of a localcustom or of a "deteriorated social climate" (Dodier 1989, p. 302).

The recognition of a diversity of specifications of the just

Is the universalizing view that is associated with the pursuit of a legitimate agree-ment compatible with the plurality of forms of judgement? Does not the estab-lishment of a plurality of specifications of the just open the gates to a relativismof values, of cultures, and even of the implicated interests?

Let us illustrate this problem by means of the social policy of the FrenchRevenu Minimal d'Insertion (RMI) (Minimal Income for Social Integration). Act-ing as a safety net, this policy could, at first sight, be interpreted as correspond-ing well to a communitarian view on justice, especially since it was conceived in

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order to prevent the dissolution of the social bond. Is not solidarity one of theideals shared in the societies that promote the welfare state? Nevertheless, eversince the drafting of the law, the arguments that have been advanced to supportthe measure appear to belong to two different orders, depending on the empha-sis laid on either the right to a minimal allowance or the need for social integra-tion. And if one examines the moment of application of this measure of social pol-icy, in accordance with our approach to the issue of justice, it appears that thediversity of judgements that are implicated in the putting into practice of policiesis even greater. Take, for example, a local integration committee gathering per-sons who have to make decisions about contracts of integration.6 We see how anindustrialist wonders if one should give RMI to a first-degree-disabled personwho is no longer suitable for employment. We see how a social worker valorizesthe trust one has to put in a man who, having a first-hand experience of a lifeassociated with alcoholism, and struggling to get out of it, can help others withthe same problems. We see how a mandatory of the Agence Nationale pour l'Em-ploi (National Agency for Employment) discriminates between an "occasionalwelfare recipient" and a "recipient in decline", a "qualified person with conversa-tional competencies" and a "qualified person sloping down to dequalification", an"offensive" and a "sharp" or a "cool" person. We see how a subprefect proposes acourse to teach an immigrant worker how to read and write, in order to promotehis successful integration into civil life, and how the industrialist sharply repliesthat this means yet another subsidized course for a socio-cultural education cen-tre, that one can do just fine without knowing how to fill in forms, that there arefunctionaries who are meant to do this sort of thing (Astier 1991).

How should we consider this diversity of points of view? Isabelle Astier invitesus to make the following pressing remark. The mentioned exchanges—which arebrief, as the committee passes around 80 dossiers in one morning—differ fromthe routine functioning of an administrative service that relies on standard pro-cedures (Astier 1991, p. 81). Is this not a case where the pragmatic constraints ofdiscussion, examined in Habermas' theory of communicative action, would besatisfied (Habermas 1986)? This theory invites us to take seriously the test insti-gated by this discussion, without, however, illuminating us about the variety ofappraisals of the examined cases made by the participants.

Even if one seeks to recognize more than individual opinions in the utteredjudgements, are we not sliding towards a relativism of value judgements, whichis characteristic of the distance vis-a-vis the notion of justice that is kept in thesocial sciences? This distance is not only relativizing, it can also enable a criticalstance. The sociologist or the scientific researcher will be able to show that underthe guise of defending the general interest, the various committee members areactually clashing with one another over individual or professional interests. If wedo not adopt this way of debunking, it is not because the criticism lacks perti-nence, but because it joins those of ordinary actors, and because we thereforeneed to examine in all generality the underlying view of justice. What is pro-claimed as an objective contribution from the social sciences bears the traces ofan operation of criticism. By this the sociologist allows indignation in the face of

6 For a more complete chronicle of such a committee, see Astier 1991.

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injustice to seep through, while at the same time placing doubt on the claims tojustice expressed by the actors. It is this sense of justice which is the object of ourresearch. In order to accomplish a successful exploration, we have to follow thearguments and criticisms of the actors, instead of doubling them with our own oper-ations of calling into question.

A pluralism without relativism

As soon as one takes seriously the arguments and the proofs presented in supportof a justification, without reducing them to an ideological mask, one needs tosearch for the constraints that weigh on justification, and that are not simply pro-cedural. This means that we have to look for the way in which people expressinjustices by engaging in substantial specifications of what is good (in the pre-ceding example: productive efficiency, or the esteem that elicits trust).

The method we propose proceeds from the observation that modern societieshave steered away from a globalizing representation which manages to integrateall differences, and have recognized the existence of a plurality of modes of legit-imate evaluation. This acknowledged pluralism puts pressure on the actors who,depending on the situation, have to come to an agreement with different princi-ples of justice. It is, for that matter, a mistake to interpret the disquiet provokedwithin the actors by the recognition of a diversity of evaluation principles as a val-idation of the reduction to interests to which the social sciences proceed, or of thenihilist conception of the world that is often associated with this.

This capacity for adjustment is not taken into account by the communitarianapproach that confers value on the social group, nor by the liberal approach thatconfers it on the individual. The capacity does not correspond to a conflict of val-ues of different groups (or to the dominance of one over the others), nor to agame which, limited to a contractual space, relinquishes values to the subjectivi-ty of the private sphere. The double observation, first of a diversity in the ways ofjustification or criticism, and simultaneously of a capacity of persons to go fromone to the other, incited us to systematically confront the forms of justificationthat are in use. Consequently, we could look for the elements of a common modelthat would explain the capacity of people to go from one justification to another.A major result of this confrontation of forms of justification was that we were ledto broaden what is commonly taken to be "justice". We could now cover a vari-ety of imperatives all of which were able to support common judgements and todetermine the relevance of the proofs that were offered in support of the judge-ments. It is not simply in the variety of moral values that one has to recognize thediversity of the specifications of the just, but also in the confrontation of techni-cal, economic, social and other imperatives. This broadening of the notion of jus-tice brings into question the asymmetry which is often observed at the heart ofpolitical debates, between the respective treatment of, on one side, the demandsof social justice, and, on the other side, the economic imperatives of efficiency andcompetition. The first go back to an ideal that can be represented in the normativeorder, the second to the material needs and constraints that are part of systemsanalysis. By wrongly associating the normative with an ideal and the systemicwith the real, this opposition creates an asymmetry, notably between politics and

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economics, which leaves little room for the normatively orientated intervention.One way of getting around this division is to set oneself the requirement to treatdifferent orders of reality which are all rooted in things, and which are orientat-ed towards justice, in a similar way. In this way, one can reinterpret the debateswithin an organization on the decisions to be taken as a dynamic effort concern-ing a settlement between the normative demands associated with the differentorders of reality (Thévenot 2001).

The exploration of the sense of justice as it is expressed in situations of injus-tice leads to highlighting the role of the common objects that are engaged in theargumentations and that serve as proofs. Argumentative and real constraints areinextricably interwoven in the regime of justification that we are examining here.A further reason is provided for a reconsideration of the relations between theimperatives of social justice and those of efficiency, and for avoiding linking upthe first with principles, while the second would have all the pressure of realismor the weight of criticism addressed to instrumental rationality (Habermas 1986).The relations between the view of a common judgement and its being tested bythe medium of things bring together both the requirement of justification andthat of realism. The study of situated justice is aimed at the investigation of therelations between judgement and action.7 It urges to reposition the demands ofjustification from the perspective of the coordination of an action with otheractions. The pursuit of a common judgement characterizes certain modes of coor-dination (Descombes, ed., 1991). The judgement that aims to be common drawssupport from relevant elements that are to be grasped in a general form that lendsitself to drawing persons and things nearer to one another. We have put this wayof grasping persons and things at the heart of our research and have called it qual-ification. The disputes over qualification take up much space in the articulationsof injustice and illuminate the links between judgement and action.

Qualifying for the test of worth

The approach to situated justice draws attention to the operation that consists oftreating persons in generality, by proceeding to bring people together, by consti-tuting classes, by characterizing positions and chances etc. This is also the oper-ation referred to in scientific evaluations that are supposed to select the relevantelements for a proof, or in the application of a law or a policy measure, whichpresupposes a formation that precedes the working of the rule.8 But these regis-ters often find themselves muddled. Asking whether or not a policy measure isjust will combine several registers: the questions raised by a measure of justicewill in this way combine a juridical qualification of the populations to which themeasure applies, a statistical qualification necessary for the evaluations of theeffects of the measure, as well as the qualification the actors themselves apply tounderstand the others in their articulation of injustice. The basis of a right to a

7 On the treatment of action and judgement in the humanities, see the issue of the journal Critiqueentitled "Sciences humaines: sens social", edited by Vincent Descombes (Critique, 529-530, June-July 1991)

8 On the relations with the juridical notion of qualification, and, more generally, on the relationsbetween ordinary justifications and juridical judgements, see Thévenot 1992, 2000a.

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social security measure will most certainly constitute a qualification that interfereswith those that persons use in their judgement. The result of this is that the effectof the stigma cannot be detached from that of the right.

In the articulation of the just, the way in which the qualification is attributedwill occupy a central position. One can distinguish between an attribution thatintends to attach the quality to a person, and an attribution that intends to attachit to a situation. A qualification that is strongly attached to the person will confersome permanency on the person, but tends to form highly substantialized enti-ties. This threatens to divide humanity into different fractions and to contradictthe idea of a common humanity that sustains the common sense of justice. Theattachment is extreme in the case of, notably, biological properties that aredeemed gifts of birth. But this kind of attachment is also found in a slightly weak-er form in the qualification in terms of character. A qualification that is stronglyattached to the situation and to events will, on the contrary, tend to detach theperson from states that, like in the case of roles, are only assumed for the occa-sion. One procedure of distributive justice that goes a long way in detaching thequalification from persons and attaching it to the situation is the allocation thathappens through queuing, for example: waiting for your turn in front of acounter. Such a qualification, which is wholly circumstantial, will be unfit tofunction in coordinations of actions with a larger reach. The debates on thenotions of person and subject and their deconstruction might be clarified by theexamination of pragmatic configurations that entail different modes of treatingbeings.

Considered improper for legitimate justifications are qualifications that arenot re-evaluated in function of the actions that are situationally realized. But doesthe ordinary sense of justice, and the qualities it relies on, and which we havenamed "worths", fit with the notion of desert?

Virtue as the excellence of people and objects

Consider now the ancient figure of virtue, understood as success in action, devel-oped in the arete of Homeric poetry and extended to actions that are no longerspecifically great acts of warriors, characteristic of an aristocratic virtue. It con-tinues to influence a communitarian approach to justice, in which the success inaction is measured in terms of different models of excellence. Alasdair Maclntyre,for example, links the notion of "standard of excellence" with that of "practice".It presupposes that I "accept the authority of those standards and the inadequa-cy of my own performance as judged by them". He emphasizes that this link rulesout "all subjectivist and emotivist analyses of judgment. De gustibus est dis-putandum" (Maclntyre 1984, p. 190).

This tradition is interesting for another reason, namely that it has put objectson the scene, of which we wish to show the position they occupy in the sense ofjustice. A conception of virtue that permits the extension to objects contributesto the dissolution of the Humean opposition between description and evaluation.Maclntyre gives the example of the watch, the concept of which cannot bedefined independently of the concept of a "good" watch (Maclntyre 1984, p. 58).If we reposition justification from the perspective of an uncertain coordination of

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collective actions, we can see more clearly the place of objects that are generallyqualified in the identification and evaluation of the actions of others. The inclu-sion of objects in the evaluation of the just distributes qualities beyond the actor.This inclusion of objects in the good does not presuppose a reference to a repre-sentational model that compares complete realizations to their ideal-types. It is aswhat is said in Plato's Gorges. (506d), i.e. that the proper quality of furniture, asof the souls, results from "a rule, a norm, an art, adapted to each of these beings".

The critical turn of social roles

Evoking the construction of excellence is useful for situating yet another con-struction of the qualification. It is widespread in the social sciences, to the pointof constituting one of the most frequent approaches to the question of judgement.Although the vocabulary of virtue, like that of excellence, is hardly valued there(except perhaps for "prestige", as excellence from reputation), there are abundantreferences to "roles" in virtue of which the action is performed. As Maclntyreremarks, one can situate this notion of role in the line of that of virtue understoodas excellence. It also has affinity with the notion of "character", anchored in liter-ature, and he considers that "characters are the masks worn by moral philoso-phies" and that they place "moral constraint on the personality of those whoinhabit them" (Maclntyre 1984, pp. 27-28). These characters are developed in thesociological literature on "occupational roles", which holds a central position in thesociology of "professions". But Maclntyre notices the difference between a "char-acter", which helps the actors to understand and evaluate the others, and a "role",which fits in an institutional frame. In this movement of moral philosophytowards the social sciences, the qualification tends to become arbitrary, as it alsois with values. Referring to Nietzsche, and calling into question the "grandiosepathos of the Christian ethics", Weber sees in the adherence to values theimplacable clashes between personal points of view (Weber 1959, pp. 93-95).

In the critical position that the social sciences hold concerning judgements,statuses and roles are qualifications that permit the forming of expectations aboutthe social interventions of others. But they are marked as arbitrary if compared toan authenticity of individuals (as in the writings of Goffman), or considered asinstruments in the hands of strategists. In opposition to the substantial identitythat attaches the quality to the person, the role tends to be assumed as a panoply,which the person would find wholly prepared when entering a situation andwhich would enable him to execute a programme of action without engaging hisresponsibility as a person. The distance from the role, which is at the same timecynical in the actor's mind and critical in the analysis of Goffman, helps to breakdown the relation between action and qualification, leading, in the oppositedirection of desert, to a complete fusion. This distance is characteristic of the sta-tus of the just in the social sciences: retracted from the disenchanted object, itremains buried in the critical gaze of the researcher.

Row/s' critique of the notion of desert

Rawls' critique of the model of excellence does not coincide with the one that has

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been forged in the social sciences, because it aims at reconstructing a positivedemand of justice. The calling into question of the notion of desert is at the heartof Rawls' construction, and undoubtedly helps to better appreciate its originalityand its differing from common sense (Rawls 1974, 48, pp. 310-315). Vigorouslyopposing the relation between justice, happiness and excellence, which is thecore of the aforementioned tradition, it intends to substitute this with the notionof legitimate expectation. The differences that help to qualify persons are broughtback to the mode of a factual judgement; the point of view of the just will bearexclusively on the distribution of benefits. He supports his criticism with anexample purporting to undermine the foundations of a notion of intrinsic value.In a market economy, he notes, the value of the productive contribution of anindividual will depend on the labour market as well as on the goods market. So,the moral value of an individual could not depend on these external elements.This illustration is interesting for our argument, because the worth that we seeoperating in justifications is also not considered as an intrinsic value.

Rawls' critique of the notion of desert leads him to draw a distinction betweenthe just character of a distribution of a good among situations, positions andchances, and differentiations of positions and chances that are, to the extent thatthey are treated as natural inequalities or as facts, in accordance with economicconstraints especially. This separation hides the fact that the worth of efficiency,on which the economic reasoning relies, is constructed on the same model as theother orders of worth. Furthermore, it cannot account for the conflicts of ordersof worth that manifest themselves in the articulations of injustice. But above all,it ruptures the link between justice and action that we are interested in sheddinglight on. It is the taking into consideration of this link which leads us to anapproach to the just via the pragmatic demands of acting with others. That is whywe pay attention to the operation of qualification that appears to us to be previousto the differentiation of the "social goods" that are to be distributed.

3.The orders of worth in legitimate criticisms and justifications

The legitimate qualifications: order and common humanity

The operation of qualification indeed is a condition for the distribution of "socialgoods", which is most often the focus of theories of justice. The qualificationcharacterizes and orders the states (situations, positions, and chances) of personsand things. Nevertheless, numerous forms of appraisal perform well-orderedcharacterizations without convening in a common judgement. Take, for instance,the above-mentioned characterization that distinguished between "offensive" and"cool" persons. Legitimate qualifications must, in addition, satisfy the demand of"common humanity". We situate this demand above and beyond the expressionof equality aimed at by the order of civic worth and the solidarity that supportsit. As Hannah Arendt noted, one of the problems posed by the application ofhuman rights is that they have been thought out in the frame of citizenship andhave been confused with the rights of the citizen. Civic solidarity transgresses thelimits of a nation (bearing witness to this is a concern for solidarity with the ThirdWorld), but its equipment is essentially limited to national institutions, with the

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exception of some elements of international law. The demand of commonhumanity has been translated by Rawls into the imaginary arrangement of the veilof ignorance. He sought to reconcile a Kantian view of universalization, or of animpartial spectator, with a notion of the interested individual.

It is clear that this main component of the idea of justice is not universal, evenif it aims at universalization. One can retrace its historical and cultural limits. Thisis in a sense what Rawls' critics have urged him to do. Consequently, he has mod-ified his initial formulations and now recognizes that he had proposed a theoryfor a modern, democratic society (Rawls 1988). The notion of reflective equilib-rium already presupposes this anchoring in the community of reading citizens towhom Rawls submitted his arguments. But this does not imply that certain com-munitarian positions are taken up, as one sees in Rawls' formulation of principles.In the same vein, our exploration of the ordinary sense of justice uncovers cer-tain demands that are common to the different orders of worth, but that areremote from mere custom or a communitarian morality.9

The two demands of order and of common humanity put limits on the qual-ifications that can constitute the orders of worth. The search for an articulationbetween these two is at the heart of the ordinary sense of justice. We have demon-strated in our work that a similar type of articulation was at the basis of differentclassical constructions of political philosophy. The disquiet about the justificationof inequalities bears witness to the constant re-actualization of the tensionbetween an order implied in the coordination of actions performed in communi-ty, and the reference to a common humanity.10

Some convergences between the model shared by the different orders of worthand the second principle of Rawls are interesting to note, because the paths wehave taken are very different. In the demands that weigh on the orders of worth,we find a figure of common good (the worth of the great benefits the small) thateliminates certain types of evaluations and ranges of positions and chances, aswell as a demand of keeping positions and chances of worth open by the possi-bility of putting them to the test. In order not to disrupt the idea of commonhumanity, the worths cannot be permanently attached to persons, but have toundergo re-evaluations in the course of actions that put them to the test. In thisway they have to re-establish the proof of benefit to the common good. A majorsource of the sentiment of injustice is caused by the existence of advantages thatare wholly detached from tests that could justify them. This is so in the case ofcriticism of power that would not be legitimated by sources of authority. Next tothe criticisms about the inequalities of worths one has to add the criticisms of thefact that they are not re-evaluated.

9 See Ronald Dworkin's critique on the communitarian moralism of Lord Devlin, and his referencesto Burke (Dworkin 1978, Chapter 10).

10 When the proof of this benefit is not given, the "less worthy" are in a (justified) position todenounce their exploitation by the "more worthy", and to invert the maxim by dedicating them-selves to demonstrating that it is the state of the "less worthy" that makes up the happiness of the"more worthy" (Boltanski & Chiapello 2000).

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Rawls' difference principle stipulates that social and economic inequalitiesmust be to the greatest benefit of the least advantageous members of society. Pro-ceeding from a situation that is unequal de facto, and without the legitimacy ofthese inequalities being able to form the object of criticism, the method thatallows calling into question the distribution of positions and chances is excludedby construction. At the same time, the question of legitimacy is reduced to a cal-culus of which one refuses to see the preceding calculations. The other principleof Rawls' theory stipulates the free access to unequal positions and chances: thesocial and economic inequalities must be attached to functions and positions thatare open to all under conditions of fair equality of chances. This generalization ofthe argument of equality of chance, however, omits to ask questions about thevalidity of the test which is, in the model of the orders of worth, the principalobject of criticisms.

The two lines of argument deviate from one another in the way that commonhumanity weighs on the range of positions and chances. In Rawls' theory, theinequalities are factual givens and the author particularly refers to the productiveinequalities in efficiency. The idea of justice does not intervene in their construc-tion. In the orders of worth, on the other hand, the range of position and chancesare not deemed to be factual and external to the question of justice. The sense ofthe just weighs on the type of quality that is taken into account in the justifica-tions, as well as on their attribution. The difference between the two models isapparent in the treatment of gifts, or talents considered as acquired by birth. ForRawls, a distribution could very well rely on such differences as long as theunequal distribution augments the endowment of "the most disadvantaged".Conversely, the justifications that we have examined cannot rely on such quali-ties. These justifications are supported by qualities that have to be changeable inthe light of actions that occur. This does not mean that these qualities are absentfrom the ordinary appraisals, but that the justifications rely on other variables thatare not so rigidly attached to the person. The sense of the just intervenes as soonas the qualities, of which the unequal distribution is called into question, are con-structed.

The demand of common humanity does not only perform a selection thatexcludes illegitimate qualifications, like those implied by eugenics (Thévenot1990a). It is again found in the request for re-actualization of the qualificationsand their being put to the test. The attention paid to this operation, which isnever taken into account in theories of justice, draws us closer to the theories ofaction and judgement. The qualification is a test that engages objects and arrange-ments that are coherent with the orders of worth and which serve in the evalua-tion of the just. Technical objects, the resources of economic activity, and marketgoods are thus reinserted into orders and modes of coordination, and our analy-sis of specifications of the just leads to an analysis of the different forms of coor-dination that constitute the tissue of organizations (Thévenot 1989, 2001).Besides the judgement in terms of efficiency (the worth of industry), or of competi-tion (the worth of market), evaluations concerning trust (the worth of home), gener-al interest (the worth of citizenship), opinion (the worth of fame) and creativity (theworth of inspiration) support a variety of modes of coordination that correspond toas many ways of specifying the just by a worth (Boltanski & Thévenot 1991).

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Critical relations and organization of compromise

Rawls' theory of justice prompts reasoning on a unified range of positions andchances, in order to define, especially, "the most disadvantaged". More generally,the examination of the inequalities tends to constitute a single scale that piles upthe inequalities of different kinds. In another sense, the liberal approach con-tributes to the integration of the subjective expressions of the just and, to avoidthe heteronomy of values, to the unification of the issue of justice in a contractu-al space. This space is in more than one respect adjusted to a principal coordina-tion by market competition.

The method of Michael Walzer constitutes a clear-cut break with theseapproaches to justice. It seeks to take into account a diversity of spheres of justice,and opposes solutions that aim at their systematic integration. This differentiationpermits him to distinguish a source of injustice that escapes the attention of othertheorists, though it occupies a very important position in the expressions of injus-tice that we ourselves have observed. This injustice is the result of a contamina-tion of one sphere of justice by another. On this important point we adopt thesame approach as Walzer,11 but we differ in the way we look at the plurality ofspecifications of the just. For Walzer, the spheres are institutions of varying size(market, educational institutions, families, etc.). These institutions are in such aplurality that one cannot see how the dispute can be framed when it involves sev-eral spheres, and how one can respond to the demand of integration of thesespheres in a society. This results in the following alternatives: either promote theisolation of one sphere in relation to the others—which would seem to be utopi-anism—or abstain from a dispute which one cannot solve, except by using force.And how can, in addition, the characterization in terms of institutions permit therecognition of the "integrity" of these specifications of the just, their "internallogic", their capacity to frame a dispute and lead to a judgement (Walzer 1984)?

Entering the matter through 'institutions' tends to limit each specification toa particular community to fellows that are caught in the same system of rules. Werather searched for an elementary unit of analysis that would not be an institu-tion, but a mode of justification. Institutions and organizations were then treatedas arrangements of different kinds that necessitate the integration of a plurality ofimperatives. We also made an effort to account for demands that were commonto all orders of worth, by formulating the common grammar of these orders, cer-tain elements of which we compared to Rawls' theory of justice.

The orders of worth find themselves in a relation of critique to one another.Transporting one onto the other is denounced as injustice. Considered as unjustis the fact that people draw advantage from one worth in the test of another: theexecutive who owes his or her position less to competence than to relations, thecreator who gets his or her worth less from the genius of the work than from amedia campaign, the candidate who owes his or her success to the advantagesthat his or her financial means gave her, etc. We have here a fundamental matrixfor very changeable expressions of injustice (corruption, inauthenticity, privi-

11 This convergence stems from a shared reference to Pascal's Pensees, which presents tyranny as adesire for domination outside of its order, in a society with several orders.

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lege), that are raised by a worth that rubs off on a test of another nature. Theunjustifiable inequalities result from the undue extension of the weight of wealth,or of opinion, or of authority. The threat is, in fact, that of a unique and rigidorder, in which all worths would be superposed and rendered inflexible, cumu-lating advantages and handicaps.

Nevertheless, none of these orders of worth can assure a coordination on itsown, and thus cannot assure a judgement that can impose itself on the others.The pursuit of compromise that allows the tensions between several orders to beovercome is at the heart of the functioning of organizations, whether economicorganizations (combining at least the orders of market and industry) or politicalones (including at least the order of citizenship). Composite arrangements orhuman intermediaries foster the crossing from one order to another (Eymard-Duvemay & Marchal 1997).

4.The limits of the demand of justice in the treatment as a person

The general treatment of persons that is implied in the idea of justice resembles,in certain aspects, the ordinary treatment of objects. When we compare the stateof different persons, as is presupposed in the idea, or when we consider one andthe same person at different moments, the situation is of the order of "memete"(sameness, under a relation that specifies the qualification), and not of "ipseite"(selfhood), to take the distinction Paul Ricoeur made in Soi-meme comme un autre(Oneself as Another, Ricoeur 1990). This treatment, close to that of objects, willcreate a tension with the understanding of a person that is involved in the main-tenance of self during a course of action or during a certain history. Although wefocus here on the regime of justification, we feel it is not possible to raise the issuewithout mentioning the limits, to which we turn in the last section. The repeat-ed judgement, albeit just, tends to disintegrate the person. Other ways of treatingpeople avoid this threat, whether they proceed from a deliberated suspension ofjudgement, like in the regime of agape (or love) (Boltanski 1990), or from a/amil-iarity of personal reasons that do not demand the generalization of the judgement(Thévenot 1990b). The attention paid to the operation of qualification has themerit of recalling this tension between persons-as-understood-from-predefined-positions-and-chances and the persons themselves.

The persons disintegrated by the judgement

The demand of justice, and in particular the concern for the putting to the test oforders of worth, leads to the multiplication of the occasions of the general judge-ment. The repeated uttering of judgements of this type runs the risk of disinte-grating the person, especially where the qualifications that support them mustavoid directly regarding the person. One can observe this in the administrativejourneys unemployed people or beneficiaries of RMI must undertake, successionsof going through tests, through assessments of health or of social and profession-al competence, diagnostic reports of the ANPE (National Agency for Employ-ment), etc. The confusion resulting from the constant prolonging of the judge-ment about the self manifests itself in the request that one be treated as a person,

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in order to be able to recognize oneself again in the tests, a request that is oftenexpressed in terms of "hospitality" or "being listened to".12 The evidence of a per-sonal identity is corroded by the repetition of the qualifications that are assumedand that threaten to harm the maintenance of the self. When a person who islooking for a job (and nowadays, even persons who have a job; Boltanski & Chi-apello 1999) is dragged from judgement to judgement, constantly summoned toprove himself or herself—even if he or she were to be offered all possiblechances—this is not likely to give stability to that person. This has to do with thefact that a lot of tests are artificial, in the sense that they are not done with realworth in mind (Boltanski 1990). Furthermore, because of the pragmatic limits ofa common judgement, the justificatory proofs are necessarily conventional.

The respect for plurality is a central element of justice, because it is one of theconditions for maintaining selfhood as a person. Completely enlocked in oneworth, it does not have any relations to itself other than those of sameness. It isexactly this plurality that is lacking with those of whom one ordinarily only seesthe faults in terms of the exclusion from labour or, more generally, from a com-munity. Associations can cover, like prostheses do, the shrinking of the knownworlds, by offering benefits to persons so that they may reintegrate themselvesinto worlds that are no longer accessible to them in the normal course of theirlives. These are places suitable for modes of treatment of others that arefavourable to the maintaining of self-esteem where this is threatened by thejudgement (Pollak 1990).

The vocabulary of the contract and the autonomy of the person

In the social policies that encounter the demands of treating someone as a per-son, the vocabulary of the contract tends to replace the one of the rule. Nowa-days, this vocabulary is extended well beyond the juridical engagement of freewills in a convention: pedagogical contract, integration contract, contract byobjective, etc. As one can see in the matrix of the market as well as in that of law,the contract constitutes a subject: the contractor. One could, of course, ask if, byputting forward the demands of such a subject, the figure of the contract does notseem to enhance the threats of an objectifying treatment that brings persons clos-er to things.

We would rather highlight the limits of this figure of contract in the treatmentof the person, limits connected with the underlying model of the contractor'saction, as it is reduced to a decision. It is such a model that is put forward by thesocial measures that seek to assure the autonomy of choice, against dependenceand subordination that would accompany a benefit. The maintaining of person-hood does not result from a model of action understood as decision or choice,because this model considers the maintaining as already acquired.

If it is extended well beyond its juridical anchoring, the vocabulary of contractmuddles the limits that separate the demand of justice from other forms of treat-ing other people. Doing so, the contract can serve to speak of an involvement (as

12 Quote from: Rapport sur Vamelioration de la vie quotidienne des demandeurs d'emploi (Report on the

improvement of the daily life of those who are looking for a job), p. 33.

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opposed to "1 have nothing to do with this") that allows another person toattribute a series of actions to the same subject. But is it not a relation of famil-iarity, totally different from the regime of contract, which is engaged with a"tutor" or a "catalyst"? One can observe this from the difficulty that social work-ers encounter in "publicly accounting for a relation that has been installed for a longtime with a person or with the family in question, and trying to translate it in terms ofintegration" (Astier 1991, p. 66). Friendship is not a way of treating the other thatis congruent with juridical forms. Daumat already claimed that "friendship is notruled by civil laws", and Carbonnier, in his exploration of "non-droif (non-law),reacts against Lacroix' formula, according to which law is organized friendship:friendship, he writes, involves a will to keep oneself out of law. Otherwise, friendswould found "an association, a fellowship according to law", and this could quitewell mean the end of their friendship (Carbonnier 1988). The demand of con-ventional clues involved in the contract is rejected as "legal mumbo jumbo" bythe social workers who seek to understand a person in her own history.

In its most radical form, this rejection is manifested in the renouncing of alljudgement, in favour of a treatment in the regime of agape (love) (Boltanski1990). In this regime of love, relations are pacified by the fact that persons setaside the need for equivalence and, by doing so, make a calculus very difficult, ifnot impossible. In the Christian tradition, the idea of agape is constructed inopposition to that of justice because the latter relies, precisely, on the possibilityof a calculus. Without a calculus, it is impossible to make the account, to bringtogether what I have given and what I have received. One of the interesting prop-erties of this regime is that persons in it manifest a preference for the present.Having put aside any form of equivalence, the past is not kept in the form of debtsand is only feebly remembered. As to the future, it will be conceived as a plan thatmust be executed, but will appear, at the moment, in the form of hope. And whyis the past only weakly remembered? Because, once the calculus is set aside, thesharp criticisms that seek to see justice rendered can no longer take form. Justiceis always retrospective. Justice looks back. In agape, persons are established in thepresent without trying to control constantly the gains or losses of each person.

5. Conclusion

The exploration of the sense of the just has not only brought to the surface a plu-ralism that a theory of justice must account for if it wants to grasp the critical rela-tions that exist between different specifications of the just. It has also demon-strated that the pluralism of the just has not led to a relativism of values. This isconnected to the fact that the justifiable, as we see it in ordinary disputes, is rea-sonable. This reasonableness is expressed not only by the argumentative con-straints tied to the view of a common judgement, but also by the fact that the rea-sonable is anchored in a reality test. The inclusion of objects that are qualified incommunity, and that are necessary to render proof, closely links discursivedemands of communication with demands of action and of coordination, whichare themselves framed by the recognition of cognitive limits.

The Weberian distinction between irrational forms of authority and a bureau-cratic authority that preserves the monopoly of reason is disappearing. What is

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also disappearing is the solidity of the opposition between values that lead to sub-jective appraisals and facts that impose themselves outside of the operation ofjudgement. Even invoking efficiency in judgements does not solely rely on thelaws of functioning of a system, but also on a form of construction of a commongood.

The appeal to a common good renders illegitimate the pursuit of causesbeyond the circumscribed space in which one can appeal to justifications and putthem to the test. But at the same time, it also limits the extending of measures onehas to take in order to put an end to an injustice. Conversely, a systemic approachallows the modelling of a chain of causes, but it excludes the taking into accountof the justifications given by persons. It also excludes from view a reference to acommon good. The tension between these two approaches reflects the dilemmapersons are confronted with in their efforts to construct interpretations of theworld that are capable of satisfying their search for justice.* Translated from the French by Jo Smets

CV Laurent Thévenot is professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris) and direc-tor of the Groupe de Sociologie Politique et Morale. His publications include: De la Justification (withLuc Boltanski, 1991), Rethinking Comparative Cultural Sociology: Repertoires of Evaluation in France and

the United States (with Michèle Lamont, 2000), Les objets dans l'action (with Bernard Conein andNicolas Dodien 1993); Cognition et information en société (with Bernard Conein, 1997). E-mail:Thé[email protected]

CV Luc Boltanski is professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris) and founder ofthe Groupe de Sociologie Politique et Morale. His publications include: L'amour et la justice commecompetences (1990), De la Justification (with Laurent Thévenot 1991), Distant suffering; Morality, mediasand politics, ([1993] 1999), Le nouvel esprit du capitalisme (with Eve Chiapello, 1999). E-mail:[email protected]

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