Bøker av Luc Boltanski

A vital and underappreciated dimension of social interaction is the way individuals justify their actions to others, instinctively drawing on their experience to appeal to principles they hope will command respect. Individuals, however, often misread situations, and many disagreements can be explained by people appealing, knowingly and unknowingly, to different principles. On Justification is the first English translation of Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thevenot's ambitious theoretical examination of these phenomena, a book that has already had a huge impact on French sociology and is likely to have a similar influence in the English-speaking world. In this foundational work of post-Bourdieu sociology, the authors examine a wide range of situations where people justify their actions. The authors argue that justifications fall into six main logics exemplified by six authors: civic (Rousseau), market (Adam Smith), industrial (Saint-Simon), domestic (Bossuet), inspiration (Augustine), and fame (Hobbes). The authors show how these justifications conflict, as people compete to legitimize their views of a situation.On Justification is likely to spark important debates across the social sciences.

A melancholy defeatism has become a hallmark of critical thought and leftist politics. A consequence of this has been an exaggerated focus on domination among critical theorists, leaving emancipation-along with questions of political organization and strategy-undertheorized at best, or disregarded as delusional, at worst. If emancipation still plays a role in critical reflection, it is most often in a "domesticated" form, made into a bedfellow of centrist liberalism. Recent events necessitate a different outlook, especially since the financial collapse of 2008 and the myriad movements-emancipatory as much as reactionary-it has spawned throughout the world. Through a series of dialogues and reflections by leading thinkers, scholars, and activists, Domination and Emancipation: Remaking Critique seeks to rebuild the emancipatory pole of critique and bring forward theoretical work that is in step with the struggles and aspirations of the moment.

Under what conditions can political philosophy and sociology open up new spaces of freedom? In a globalized world, how can we both ensure individual autonomy and guarantee greater levels of social justice? How can we effectively rearticulate a critique of domination and a philosophy of emancipation? Domination and Emancipation presents an exchange between the sociologist Luc Boltanski and the political philosopher Nancy Fraser, reorganized, revised, and introduced by Philippe Corcuff. The first part of the book is based on questions that were presented during a debate between the two at the 2012 festival ''Mode d''emploi'', an exchange that is certain to become a classic debate of critical theory. The debate is augmented by newly translated interviews that see Boltanski venturing into radical politics with Olivier Besancenot and Fraser discussing the future of feminism. The book concludes with a rethinking of individualism and alienation in order to provide the groundwork for a new social theory for the 21st Century.