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"INSTITUTIONS AND AGENCY: DIFFERENTIATING REGIMES OF ENGAGEMENT" Laurent Thvenot

A fruitful dialogue between economic sociology and political economy, and more generally among other disciplines including the sociological, economic and political sciences, is hindered by strong discrepancies in the ways each discipline deals with action, on the one hand, and politics or institutions on the other. The purpose of this paper is to relate both problems and make some propositions. The issue is not only a theoretical one but societal as well. I am thinking here of the deep structural transformation in politics and institutions which resulted from the development of the European Union and the correlative weakening of its individual nation-state members. These changes call into uestion disciplinary tools and their respective reductions of institutional phenomena. I will thus set my thinking about models of action against the backdrop of certain significant changes in government institutional arrangements related to the economy. I shall consider such changes in two contrasted domains of market economy ! labor "markets" and product markets. I will use different cases to compare a variety of regulatory devices that constitute the main support for government, some focusing on law and #udicial authority seated in the nation-state, others on European Union directives and "independent" authorities whose governance procedures are assumed to be more hori$ontal and neutral. I would rather not define the research ob#ect in terms of the influence of politics on economic outcomes, or vice versa, since we have to account for a #oint transformation of both domains, and develop an analysis which encompasses both. %ithout dreaming of the unification of disciplines my aim has been to develop a limited framework which would overlap the boundaries between disciplines for the purpose of action and coordination analysis. The disciplinary combination implied by economic sociology, or institutionalist economics, which have long borrowed models from
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'(partement de la )echerche, Institut *ational de la +tatisti ue et des Etudes Economi ues ,-)E+T. /aris 0 1roupe de +ociologie /oliti ue et 2orale ,Ecole des 3autes Etudes en +ciences +ociales et -entre *ational de la )echerche +cientifi ue.. A first version of this paper was presented and discussed at the -onference "Economic +ociology and /olitical Economy", 4irst 2a5 /lanck +ummer -onference on Economy and +ociety, 6uly &7-&8 9::;, <illa <igoni, =ago di -omo, Italy.

9. sociology, suggest possibilities of cooperation ,Th(venot 9::;c.. The very real converging concerns of these disciplines mean there are good reasons for such cooperation. >ut we need to go beyond a mere interdisciplinary collage of heterogeneous lines of reasoning and ground analytical tools on what can be seen as a common-core concern for coordination demonstrated by different disciplines-coordination with oneself, with others and with the material world. This approach encounters strong resistance since it contrasts with the usual contrary attempt to reduce the contribution of competing disciplines, an attempt that becomes particularly spectacular in the way non-institutional neoclassical economics is trying to reduce law and politics. >ut it is an approach worth trying. It corresponds to the orientation of the research program on "-onvention theory," which has brought together contributions from institutional economics, sociology and political philosophy in developing a theoretical framework and an empirical research agenda on the plurality of coordination modes and the conventions that support them.
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This paper proceeds as follows. 4irst, I will introduce a view on action as engagement with the world, and offer a first insight into the architecture of regimes that empower agency. This plurality of regimes of engagement helps us to analy$e institutions and policies in action and avoid detrimental reductions. -urrent pressures on 4rench labor law, which is being attacked for leading to inefficiency, offer a good opportunity to reflect upon such reductions and how ade uate or not certain models of action are for analysis of law in action. The e5pansion of standardi$ed market government offers a case of institutional change through standards that strongly departs from law and involves a wider range of models of agency. After recapitulating the analytical framework of regimes of engagement introduced earlier step by step, the concluding section is dedicated to structural changes in capitalism and politics, which I address in the dual perspective of the composition of the community and of the person. Intro u!"n# the ar!h"te!ture o$ en#a#e%ent& '"th the 'or( that e%)o'er a#en!* -oordination usually involves the idea of successfully ordered actions. >ut it is preferable to think of coordination as problematic. -oordination is doubtful not only in government of numerous actions in comple5 organi$ations or states but in the very first step of action itself, when an actor has to figure out events in terms of action in order to take those events into account. This interpretation of events modeled as actions is needed in order for a person to integrate other actors and form e5pectations in governing her action. >ut this interpretative stance is also involved in coordinating the course of one?s own action over a period of time and in various circumstances, for the sake of
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4or a large presentation of empirical research and theoretical debates in this domain of research, see Eymard-'uvernay ,ed.. 9::;. 4or a recent presentation of the theoretical program, see Eymard-'uvernay et alii 9::;a, and for its political economy implications, see Eymard-'uvernay et alii 9::;b. 4or a short introduction in English, see Th(venot 9::;b.

@. directing oneAs own behavior. 2y contention is that prior to apprehending the substance of some action, the agent orients his grasp of relevant information according to different possible "regimes of engagement" with the world ,Th(venot 9::;a..
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)egimes differ with the kind of confidence which is looked for in an action. -onfidence e5pected depends on the relation between a kind of power or capacity attributed to the agent, and the kind of support recogni$ed in the environment. To put it briefly, regimes strongly differ according to the possible e5tension of this confidence, in the sense of une ual degrees of openness to the other agent?s participation and therefore to large-scale coordination. 4or the analysis of politics and institutions, we need to contrast the conventional guarantee provided by the involvement of publicly ualified beings, with confidence in the willed e5ecution of an individual plan, or reliance on personali$ed use of familiar surroundings that one has accommodated oneself to. Engagements of une ual e5tension compose an architecture of the community and this in turn allows us to situate most public engagements. +ince engagements orient recognition of a person?s capacity or power, they also offer an architectural view of the personality and help to situate more formal rights and obligations, or legitimate recogni$ed capacities. To fully acknowledge the a5iological orientations of politics and institutions while accounting for their actuali$ation in effective actions on the world, we need to renew our approach to action and agency. In a first step of our research program, =uc >oltanski and I analy$ed most legitimate ualifications ,"orders of worth". which are re uired when coordination meets public criti ue and #ustification ,>oltanski and Th(venot 9::; B&CC&D, 9:::.. This paper rests on a ne5t step where I have analy$ed an architecture of regimes that empower agency. -onfidence in the power of politics and institutions is relevant for the public regime wherein agency ualifies as public esteem and which, as such, significantly contributes to the consistency of the personality. Although this public regime of action is strongly involved in institutions and politics, other regimes are needed to analy$e the institution in action. Economists, political scientists and sociologists are likely to set selfinterested strategies or habitual practices against orientations towards the common good or fairness, the former kind being presented as more realistic than the latter, in turn characteri$ed as idealistic. 2y line of research is different since I intend to encompass in a single theoretical framework a variety of relations to the world. +uch a comprehensive framework should pay attention to the role played by evaluation in shaping the dynamics of action in the world and delineating regimes of valued engagement between a human agent and her counterpart in the material environment ,Th(venot 9::;a.. This notion of engagement suggests the uest for a certain kind of insurance in the relation with the world, and draws attention to the correspondence between a capacity or power of the agent and the appropriate preparation of the environment.
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ualifications, among other less conventionali$ed and yet commonly

4or an introduction in English, see Th(venot 9::&, 9::9.

E. Institutions in action involve regimes of engagement with the world which are far less prepared for public coordination than legitimately ualified actions, and in that sense far "below" this highest level of commonality. The architecture of engagements sheds light on the strain that a generali$ed 0 or "commonali$ed" I would sayF#ustifiable ualification of agency puts on the most personali$ed and intimate way of e5periencing attachments with surroundings. 4ar from the polity and its institutions, the regime of familiar engagement plays also a crucial role in the constitution of the personality. Although socially shared and identified, this regime should not be confused with social practices, which are assumed to be collective. /ersonal familiari$ation is not collective and it is therefore left aside by most sociologists. >eing uite demanding of coordination with others, personal familiari$ation supports the most intimate ties, those of love or friendship. The engaged evaluation here is a kind of ease associated with the capacity or power reached through familiari$ed dependency. The third regime occupies an intermediary position between the two previous ones, offering an elementary architecture of life together. It helps to clarify the re uirements of the notion of autonomous individual which is at the core of the liberal political grammar and its elaboration of freedom. In this regime of engagement, which refers to a plan, the agency of the individual will is engaged with a functional world which offers the possibility of fulfilling the plan and choosing among a set of optional pro#ects. The engaged evaluation of the achieved plan is associated with the capacity or power of the will, which also plays a ma#or role in the composition of personality. Fren!h (a+or (a' un er atta!,: "e$$"!"en!*" an the h" an eva(uat"on The way 4rench labor law has recently come under attack prompts us to pay close attention to the use of different models of agency and action in analysis of institutions and politics. In these attacks, one can see attempts to push forward the employers? interests at the e5pense of the employees? interests, and to change the balance of power between them. >ut we need to go beyond an analysis in terms of power struggle to capture the role played by institutional arrangements. A series of e5pert reports commissioned by the 4rench government ,>lanchard et Tirole 9::@, -ahuc et Gramar$ 9::E. present the following line of argument. =abor laws produce uncertainty because of their comple5ity and changes, and even more fundamentally because of the interpretation of the #udge. Instead of a posteriori control, the reports recommend a priori calculating of a ta5 corresponding to the "social cost" of laying off an employee. +ubstituting dismissalHterminationHlayoff ta5es for labor regulations which imply the intervention of #udges would prevent uncertainty. +uch reforms are said to improve "the efficacyHefficiency of labor law". Although this claim may be echoed by some #urists since the notion of "#uridical security" B scurit juridiqueD is already used in en a#en a on a!t"on !oor "nat"on

7. law, we observe that the argument in favor of such policy reform is actually grounded in a certain model of action that is uite reductive with respect to legal norms and the normative grounding of institutions in general. =et me be more precise on this point. %hile the notion of "#uridical security" involves an evaluation of coherence and effectiveness that is internal to the order of law, the general thrust of the previous argument addresses instead the efficiency of law, following a mode of evaluation which is e5ternal to this order and grounded on economic rationale ,+achs 9::7. +ince these e5pert reports were either directly written, or highly influenced, by neoclassical economists, the assumed basic model of action is an optimi$ed individual choice among a predetermined set of options. *ormative and institutional features are reduced to the same state as technical constraints, or partly inserted as individual preferences in the utility function. In either case, nothing is left of the main property of normative or institutional conventions, which is to support coordination between various actions through shared modes of evaluation. Therefore, this trend of economic thinking would more appropriately be designated "non institutionalistI than "standard" or "orthodo5" or "neoclassical". They go so far as to ignore or downplay the key institutional artifacts of the coordination mode that is de facto at the core of their concern! market competition. 2oney, goods or services ualifications, prices and auction or ad#udication systems, constitute institutional pillars for market competition, and all of them rely on a shared mode of price evaluation. 3owever, since =eo %alras, who e5plicitly stated that economics is not related to coordination ,%alras &C79 B&8JED., these evaluative and coordinative devices are commonly ignored for the sake of conceiving market economics as a science of natural phenomena. This naturali$ation is e5tremely corrosive to politics since it makes it impossible to balance the common good of market competition with other specifications of the common good. This naturali$ation leads to conceiving incentives as a set of efficient value-free mechanisms which are appropriate for implementing any policy and even for conceiving how the state functions. The inner workings of principal-agent "mechanisms", #ust like those of market "mechanisms", remain hidden. The normative and institutional features sustaining market coordination are not ade uately acknowledged and other coordination modes are reduced to e5ternalities. +uch denial of the coordinative role of institutions and norms 0including market onesFfollows from the model of action used. The problem of "choice" is "solved" by reducing personality integration to an assumed utility function, without taking coordination issues into account at all,. +imilarly, the problem of communal coordination of actions is "solved" by reducing community integration to shared confidence in money, a shared mode of price evaluation and a shared identification of market and services. This shared knowledge and evaluation carry with them strong assumptions about common beliefs and the specification of the common good that stand opposed to the idea of value-free individualistic mechanisms.

;. La' "n a!t"on: 'hat %o e(& o$ hu%an a#en!* are nee e =aw can be presented as a coherent formal system of constraints on #udicial choices and, as such, it would resemble economics. The deontological procedural system of law, with its claim of abstraction from substantial goods, is nonetheless embedded in teleological references to specification of the good involved, in the dynamic situations of passing a law or applying it. =aw in action is thus inherently two-sided! deontological and teleological. -ontrary to non-institutionalist economics statements, law e5plicitly deals with a variety of evaluative notions and openly relates them to coordination issues, offering e uipment that constitutes a last resort to coordination failures in general, not only market failures. %hat models of action and agency would ade uately respond to these coordinative and evaluative issuesK 4ormalism is an fundamental intrinsic feature of law, while formal mathematical modeling is only an option chosen in certain trends of economics. Let, in both cases, formalism may conceal the variety of models of agency involved. =egal theorists would favor coded deeds ,"acts". #ust as economists concentrate on decision and choosing from among a set of coded options. +ome theorists, following *iklas =uhmann and focusing on the systematic and formal interconnections which constitute one of the most outstanding characteristics of law, are inclined to reduce action to a coded format. This converges with a certain tendency among social scientists to conceive human actions as coded practices. This conception only mechanically entails coordination and therefore fails to grasp its uncertainty. *onetheless law in action involves various models of human agency. Mne of the most striking features, when looked at from the outside, is its central model of an individual endowed with an autonomous will and a capacity to successfully e5ercise it. =aw rests on this kind of agency when determining both obligations and rights. This agency is needed to build legal responsibility, a key notion for handling coordination failures. =egal responsibility formali$es a non-legal model of agency viewed as engagement in a plan, which supports everyday coordination of normal action, whether it be that of the same individual at different moments, or of several individuals. In this common view, the agent is engaged in performing her plan and, as such, she is accountable for reali$ing it. =egal e5ceptions are closely akin to ordinary ones, such as that corresponding to illness, where no longer see the human being as e5cercising this kind of planning agency. =aw also attributes value to this type of agency, which is protected by rights concerning freedom and implied in free will, a condition of validity for contracts. The good of this capacity to draw up a plan and to perform it thus #ustifies many legal devices. =aw grants room to other kinds of evaluations and goods related not to the engagement of individual planning agency of the sort that sustains responsibility and contractual links, but to largerscope engagements implying the public and involving the most legitimate ualifications in terms of

J. common good. 'isputes which lead parties to court fre uently refer to the most legitimate #ustifications and rely on a plurality of specifications of the common goodN these specifications are all good candidates for orienting a coordination mode involving issues that have been universali$ed in reference to the common humanity. 2arket competition has been crafted into such a common good, and is now referred to as such in many #udgments, reinforced by its constitutive place in the EU. >ut nation-statesA constitutional rights are more diverse, including the common good of solidarity for e ual civic treatment. In addition to enforcing market competition, labor law also includes insurance to protect the employee in his subordinate state whereas contracts assume agreement between two autonomous wills. In the dynamics of law, two loci allow for the deliberative confrontation of the plurality of utmost legitimate ualifications and the crafting of "compromises" between them. 3ere, the term compromise does not mean concession, or quid pro quo negotiation between stakeholders. It implies an e uipped and relatively stabili$ed arrangement which allows for an area of compatibility between two otherwise opposing specifications of the common good ,>oltanski and Th(venot 9::;, chapt. C, &:.. The first place for such a compromise is political deliberation between representatives who are assumed to govern the balance between the civic solidarity for e uality and a plurality of other common goods. 4rench labor law and specifications with regard to the public-sector companies are based on such nation-state compromises. In the making of the EU, the enforcement of market competition as the dominant common good has come to threaten such nation-state compromises. without offering the proper political community and constitutional ground for comparable arrangements at the level of the EU. I mentioned earlier that market competition #ustification put strong pressure on 4rench labor law, which sustains compromises between this #ustification and the civic protection of employees. =et me observe that, in the case of European Union antidiscriminatory regulations, the effect is the opposite ,+tavo-'ebauge 9::7.. Although the civic orientation of European regulations is strongly supported by a compromise with market competition, the civic search for e uality has been promoted from this upper EU level down to the level of 4rench law. In a comparative research study of the U+ and 4rance, we observed the considerable weight of this compromise in the U+, in contrast with 4rance ,Th(venot and =amont 9:::.. The second place for compromise is #udges? interventionN It will be remembered that noninstitutional economists recommended in their report that such legal intervention be replaced by a fi5ed a priori ta5. The #udgment involved in passing sentence is actually a dynamic creation of compromises between competing legitimate goods. The #uridical language of "balance", or "proportionality" points to these compromises between a variety of goods involved in action, that go beyond private interests. *ation-state bodies of law contain such compromises, which have been durably crafted on the basis of a given political community, paving the way to further arrangements. %e find here two main features of politics ! deliberation about a plurality of legitimate specifications

8. of the common good, and practical compromises reached on the basis of a delimited political community. Even though fundamental rights or universali$ed common goods aim at being valid for the whole of humanity, implementation of law refers to the sovereignty of a given political community. This is why analysis of structural changes in institutions and politics should take into account the variety of goods engaged, but also the compromises that variously integrate them within different political communities. Govern"n# %ar,et& '"th &tan ar & =et us now consider e5pansion of government by standards, a type of government that highly differs from law regulation and politics in the sense of representative democracy. +tandardi$ation usually remains buried under technical considerations which conceal the overwhelming advance of this form of government and its political nature, especially when we consider so-called "social standards". I wish to address this institutional and de facto political prosthesis of market coordination, which results in a standard conformed market or standardi$ed market. The phrases looks rather contradictory since market competition is a mode of coordination that is supposed to favor synchronic variety and diachronic fle5ibility, whereas compliance with standards suggests synchronic uniformity and diachronic stability. The first function fulfilled by standards is certainly not at odds with market competition coordination since, uite the contrary, it contributes to one of fundamental re uirements of commonality for such coordination ! the shared identification of a common world of things, in this case marketable goods and services. *on-institutionalist economics deal with the lack of common identity of goods in an indirect manner, as information asymmetries which bring about market failures. +uch a view of asymmetrical information, as it may be seen in AkerlofAs seminal paper on "lemons" ,&CJ:., may conceal a plurality of legitimate ualifications which can be involved in the identification of goods, ualifications relating to forms of evaluation and coordination that are e5ternal to market competition. The analysis of this plurality of legitimate ualification goes beyond the rough notion of "e5ternality," which is a biased and reductive conception of other modes of coordination from the perspective of market coordination. Thus, standardi$ation can be oriented towards technically efficient ualification ," industrial worth". demanding compatibility, or ualification grounded in fame and sustained by brand traditional ualification based on trust and reputation as supported by indications d'origine for products ,"domestic worth"., or names ,"worth of fame"., or civic ualification in terms of safety or health ," civic worth".. The heterogeneity of valuations is not ade uately captured by the notion of information, which operates as a general e uivalent and ignores the fundamental issue of relevance for action and the link

C. between relevant information format and ualification for a specific mode of coordination ,Th(venot 9::J.. -ritically comparing the plurality of legitimate orders of ualification and the needed compromises between them brings us back to the regime of engagement involved in deliberative democracy, orders of ualification which can lead to *ation-state standard-setting. In the first approach used to Europeani$e standards, standards embodied in the national regulations of influential 2ember +tates were generali$ed following intergovernmental negotiations. This e5perience brought criticism, namely from the UG, which denounced as Otoo legalisticI the approach to air pollution embodied in -ommunity proposals, for e5ample. The criticism led to using a new approach! ,a shift to European standardi$ation committees and voluntary commitment to standards. This approach has left considerable space for deliberation and compromise regarding the plurality of legitimate forms of ualification. >ut these committees are uite distant from political deliberative arenas devoted to discussion of the common good, and this distance has profound conse uences. In standardi$ation committees, political deliberation is shaped and somewhat obscured by its output! a standardi$ed market good. Instead of a legal regulation, the standard consists in a series of conventional thresholds and landmarks which entrepreneurs may conform to on a voluntary basis in making their products. And yet, when standard-setting procedures involve a broad range of specifications of the common good, as in the case of safety standards, the balance between these orders of #ustification and the work of compromise remains highly political and raises the issue of the representativeness of participants who are more than negotiating stakeholders. An interesting feature of government by standards is that, in addition to ensuring ruleenforcement by putting ob#ects to a test, it involves a refle5ive view on how they are put into practice. +afety issues in particular imply encompassing a wide variety of regimes of engagement and associated formats of relevant information. The most scientific format of physico-chemical properties is not sufficient for constructing ade uate testing and "information". 4unctional properties involved in the regime of engagement-in-a-plan have to be taken into account in the test. >ut this is still not enough. 'ocumented accidents force e5perts to go beyond the normal plan and functional utili$ation of the product and become aware of uses that move away from this normal function and may be characteri$ed as "deviant". This deviance is actually a reduction from the previous regime, or a personal use which involves another regime--that of familiar engagement. +afety standards imply investigations into the highly personali$ed familiar engagement of ob#ects. As in the case of useroriented and user-friendly design, this concern for customi$ed and personali$ed uses puts a strain on the opposite need for conventional benchmarks. -ompromises between these different engagements and relevant information formats are reached through the use of testing machinery intended to capture a wide range of "deviant", familiari$ed uses in addition to normal functional ones ,Th(venot &CCJ..

&:. In$or%at"on an eva(uat"on $or%at& o$ three re#"%e& o$ en#a#e%ent >efore the concluding section about structural institutional changes, I wish to recapitulate the analytical framework of regimes of engagement that I have introduced earlier, step by step, from the one which is the most ready to commonality to the one which the least. I chose PengagementA rather than a vocabulary of action or practice, as these focus attention e5clusively on the human agent. 2y reasons were twofold. 4irst, PengagementA emphasi$es the personAs dependence on the environment he relies on while grasping it by means of a certain cognitive format. +econd, the term refers to a uest for a guaranteed good ,as in the engagements of marriage or a contract. that makes it possible to assess what is relevant to know. )elevant things are the e uivalent of pledges and guarantee the good that fuels each regime as it follows its own dynamic. -haracteri$ing engagements enables us in turn to shed light on the figure of the agent . instead of positing it. The guarantee particular to each regime specifies a kind of mastery or power that characteri$es the agent capacity thus engaged. It is now possible to summari$e the components of a regime of engagement within its own dynamic. The good that engagement with the world aims to guarantee orients how reality is grasped and specifies the format of what constitutes information. An engagement lends itself to communication to varying scope depending on the formatN the place and use of language also vary by format. It is from his dependence on an engaged environment that the agent derives his capacity, understood as the power to maintain that engagement. 2y first ob#ective in distinguishing between engagements was to escape the confusion that results from a series of two-term oppositions! collective and individual, public and private, social norms and the lifeworld. These oppositions, often used to understand change in contemporary societies, suffer from two ma#or defects. The sciences of society tend either e5plicitly or implicitly to favor the first term over the second. 2eanwhile the second term works to perpetuate a confusion that impedes understanding social transformations of contemporary societies and the tensions they create, particularly their cognitive aspects. The unifying but ultimately confusing vocabulary of the second-term variationsFindividual, individuali$ation, individualismFencompasses ways of being an agent that are in fact very different from each other. That vocabulary works to characteri$e an individual valued for her pro#ect, plan, interests, decision-making, will, autonomy, responsibilityFall properties that are of concern to others when they seek to take the individualAs action into account. >ut the vocabulary of the individual is also used to characteri$e a personAs authenticity in his most personal life, his fundamental attachments, his particular ways of doing in a familiar environmentF all properties that others can hardly take into account if they are not close to the person. 3aving identified this confusion, I was led to a first elementary distinction between three regimes of engagement, the point being to distinguish two other smaller-scope formats, in addition to the convention format aimed at grasping common things and goods by commoni$ing them publicly.

&&. The regime of familiar engagement maintains a personali$ed, locali$ed good! feeling at ease. The well-being e5perienced in comfortable because familiar human and material surroundings is heavily dependent on the person who has come to accommodate himself in and feel comfortable in them, and on the path by which he familiari$ed himself with a milieu shaped by continued use. This good is more than a fi5ed habit because it involves a dynamic relation with an immediate milieu that is e5perienced. This type of engagement is linked to local, personal clues in the immediate surroundings. The touchstones by means of which reality is apprehended in the information format specific to familiar engagement are fragmentary and specific to a customi$ed thing and do not identify standard ob#ects in their entirety. They do not allow for grasping ob#ects integrated by a function but only specify certain access keys, particular points of attachment whose beneficial effects turn them into attachments. Mn the path of gradual familiari$ation, in the dynamics of trial-and-error learning, the way my body accommodates to the familiar environment is itself a response to prior unease. It leads me to mark out my immediate surroundings to guarantee from then on the comfort of my movements and gestures. This kind of reliance e5plains why information here hardly lends itself to e5tended communication, even through discursive language, which has in fact been replaced by the language of the body. The spoken word itself, in communicating the intimacy of the familiar, is considerably inflected. These markers serve as a kind of engagement guarantee. This regime configures the person in a kind of personality that is distributed across his immediate surroundings in accordance with a personal disposition that inclines him to act by turning to and making use of familiar, appropriated things and inhabited places. 4amiliar attachments to material surroundings are inseparable from the person at her most deeply personal N they affect whether that person is well- or ill-disposed and ensure ,or fail to ensure. that he or she has Pa good seatA in the saddle, as it were. *or can they be separated from the milieu to which they adhere. Interlaced attachments of this sort specify an e5tremely different type of engagement from private property of an alienable good. The regime of engagement in a plan corresponds to a level of engagement so fre uently used that the specificity of this means of apprehending the relation between the human being and surrounding reality may well remain invisible. This is why we can also speak here of Onormal action,I or the Onormal formatI of action. The good in this engagement also tends to get lost in the ordinary idea of an accomplished action, especially since the widely used vocabulary of PneedsA and PutilityA neutrali$es the form of evaluation specific to this engagement. The satisfaction generated by an accomplished action should be assessed in terms of a crucially important good for human social life! it refers to felicitous e5ercise of the will by an individual endowed with autonomy and capable of projecting herself successfully into the future. +uch satisfaction is very different from the feeling of ease procured by the familiar engagement, an engagement that offers no such foothold for individual, autonomous pro#ects. )eality is grasped with respect to successful reali$ation of the plan, which implies that it takes shape as a function instrumentally appropriate to the plan of action. The

&9. ordinary notion of object often presupposes this functional treatment of means, though it remains implicit unless it is the ob#ect of an action verb. The plan intention cannot be e5perienced without recognition that environmental components have a functional capacityFthis is what ensures the type of guarantee particular to this regime. The object thus grasped confers its solidity on the plan intention while facilitating agentAs control of plan e5ecution. Analysis of this regime of engagement brings out the complementarity between agentAs power as an individual engaged in realizing his project and a grasp of the ob#ect in functional terms. This complementarity brings into view a form of dependence that does not at all figure in most ideas of individual autonomy. In contrast to approaches centered on the actor and her mental states, her will, her intention and her desire, analysis of this engagement shows how recognition of the person as an individual endowed with the afore-mentioned capacities will not hold up without the pledges that support the plan engagement, without the guarantor in the form of an environment shaped into means or instrumentsFob#ects utilized in terms of functions. The justifiable action engagement regime is oriented by demands of a public order, since the evaluation must be valid for a third party and characteri$ed by generality and legitimacy. This is the level which is most demanding with regard to the e uivalency re uired by commoni$ing. =uc >oltanski and I ,>oltanski and Th(venot 9::; B&CC&D. brought to light the demands made by the sense of #ustice common to all orders of legitimate worth involving specification of a common good ,these are, as mentioned, market competition, industrial efficiency, public renown, civic solidarity, domestic trust, inspiration.. In #ustifiable action engagement, the relevant reality is grasped according to a cognitive format grounded on the conventional qualifications of persons and things. As suggested, information differs from one level of worth to another by ualification! market value, statistical measuring of performance, fame, etc. And communication is effected by means of these conventional indicators. %hen discursive language is used in this regime, it is sharply distinct from the ordinary language used to communicate planned action. It implies controlled use of reference terms that constitute so many conventional benchmarks and apprehend ob#ects in terms not of their functions but their legitimate ualities. =anguage here links together conventional beings only, in te5ts that are more like a systematic table than a narrativeN it thereby becomes conventional itself, not unlike the language of law, which is to be used to the letter. The use of conventional terms gives the language of this engagement its rigid, official uality. The agent capacity recogni$ed in this engagement is not that of an individual borne forward by a willed, autonomous plan, but of a person of qualified worth whose legitimate power derives from the fact that this ualification partakes of specification of the common good. This power, derived from social esteem for authority, does not lie in the person or any kind of capital he or she might use. )ather it inheres in the personAs engagement with a surrounding world that has been duly ualified by a good. 6ust as the personality takes support from his familiar attachments and the individual achieves autonomy by using functional

&@. supports to pro#ect herself into the future, so the human being can only be PworthyA within the community by engaging with an arrangement of duly ualified things, as this is what allows him or her to guarantee this engagement. Stru!tura( !han#e& "n !a)"ta("&% an )o("t"!& : the ua( )er&)e!t"ve o$ the !o%)o&"t"on o$ the !o%%un"t* an o$ the )er&on %hile the plurality of orders of worth distinguishes cognitive and evaluative formats which are involved in #ustifiable action engagements, the three regimes #ust outlined bring into the picture a second kind of plurality that I would designate as ?vertical? and differentiates the engagement which relies on the most familiar closeness from the one that relies on the most public guarantees. These formats specify the capacity of the person as she is engaged with her environment. 2oreover, they sustain the kind of recognition of the person which is involved in mutual engagements ! in the intimacy of friendship or love, in #oint plans or contracts, in coordination that re uires public ualifications. This ?double plurality? of recognition formats allows us to tackle the dynamic composition of both the person and the community identity, and helps to clarify the tensions that arise from the plurality of engagements that have to be integrated. This dual perspective of the composition of the person and the composition of the community might brings some additional light to two structural contemporary transformations, the first of capitalism and the second of politics, and their intertwinement. 4ormer Taylorist and 4ordist ways of organi$ing work mostly relied on two formats ! engagement in a plan and the ?industrial? worth engagement. The implementation of both these formats re uires heavy investment in functional and even standardi$ed forms. They do not allow any recognition of the familiar format which is so crucial in supporting the personality. 2oreover, in Taylorist plan engagements, the only individual agents that are fully recogni$ed are engineersN the subordinate shop floor worker is ?reified? and reduced to a kind of functional e uipment. The crisis
E

and criti ue of Taylorism led to a new kind of management which was supposed to alleviate the hierarchical constraint in favor of hori$ontal interactions and individual responsibility. The network vocabulary has been e5tensively used to account for this new way of organi$ing work, and the notion of a new ?connectionist? order of worth was proposed to designate this unifying evaluation mode based on multiple connections ,>oltanski et -hiapello &CCC.. Although the idea of network is uite helpful because it emphasi$es the intertwining of dependencies between people and even between people and things, it does not say much in itself about the formats of network relationships, which vary considerably from one use of the notion to another. Analy$ing network components in
E

4or more details on the characteri$ation of ?reification? that our framework implies, see Th(venot ,9::;! pp. 9EE-9EC..

&E. terms of cognitive formats helps us to clarify the variety of these relationships and the une ual degrees they are recogni$ed within the organi$ation. The cognitive format of market price information ,"market worth". is deeply implicated in most #ustifiable action engagements nowadays, at the e5pense of other #ustifiable action formats formerly used to evaluate work, such as the 'domestic' worth ualification, which places value on e5perience and seniority, or even the industrial worth ualification which values occupational e5pertise as operative in efficient e5ecution of a task. /ro#ect management e5plicitly points to #oint planned actions, but it pushes workers to engage in uncertain and open e5ploration in the designing of each new pro#ect. +uch e5ploration constantly reopens the dynamics of familiari$ation and deprives the person of the ease of already familiar attachments to the surroundings. 4amiliar accommodation is also implied by the kind of close mutual relationships involved in being in contact and keeping in touch with multiple connections. 3owever, none of the familiar engagements generated by the new organi$ation of work are either acknowledged or paid for by the firm, and this leads to a situation of e5ploitation. The characteri$ation of this situation as an overlapping of and confusion between private and occupational life ,3ochschild &CCJ. can be further developed if we consider the plurality of formats and the different degrees to which they are acknowledged by the firm. 4rench welfare policies concerned with social integration and housing partake of a sense of solidarity that aims to reduce the most e5treme ine ualities, and they imply treating persons and the environment in a format that is #ustifiable in terms of civic worth. This civil state presupposes grasping people and things in a categorical generality that guarantees e uality of treatment for all. -an the individuali$ation of social services, which in turn gives these policies the character of supplying services to clients, be reduced to slippage toward a cognitive format appropriate to 'market' worthK As in the earlier case of the economic organi$ation of work, analy$ing these arrangements in terms of various regimes allows us to see the more comple5 architecture of these policies. As in the case of work organi$ation, the criticism that led to welfare policy reform targeted a hierarchyF'domestic' worthFand denounced it as paternalist because it provided a kind of assistance that rendered the recipient passive. The increasingly strong in#unction to be an autonomous individual is based on engagement in a plan, which is in turn the basis for possible responsibility-taking and engaging in a contract. >ut the welfare policy system integrates more than the civic worth engagement format and the engagement format of an individual responsible for her plan or pro#ect. In the policy e5tensions aimed to ?accompany? welfare recipients, the social worker or youth guidance coach is e5pected to be e5tremely attentive to the personAs familiar attachments, including to his home, and personal convictions, as these constitute the grounding of a personality ,>eviglieri, +tavo-'ebauge and /attaroni 9::@.. Analysis of plural formats shows the delicate composition of policies and legal imperatives as they move closer to persons when implemented. This analysis allows for apprehending the movement in the opposite direction that is re uired by

&7. participatory democracy, i.e., advancing along a path that leads from one engagement to another and enables the person to make his voice heard in public. The opening up of public debating spaces, which developed particularly during disputes about the environment ,2oody and Th(venot 9:::., calls for more than compromising with stakeholders or even with persons seeking to promote a plurality of orders of worth so as to ualify the uestion to be debated. %hat is now re uired in those recently opened spaces is testimony of familiar e5periences of the world, testimony that does not lend itself immediately to a public format. >ecause the participation procedures characteristic of conventional public spaces are not receptive to the familiar format, they may prove oppressive and humiliating for persons. At the very time that the globali$ation imperative is intensifying, economic and political organi$ations are coming closer to persons, in the sense that they are mobili$ing increasingly more engagements in the local and familiar. Thus con#oining the most strongly global and the closest and most familiar increases the tensions that affect the composition of communities as well as persons .
7

1overnance structures are opening up to this kind of heterogeneity. I have mentioned participatory deliberation bodies, but standardi$ation bodies may be said themselves to be opening up to a plurality of cognitive formats when, for safety purposes, they take into account normal functionalities and personali$ed uses in addition to conventional features of things that have been #ustified by public ualification ,Th(venot &CCJ.. These arrangements cannot be reduced to negotiation between bearers of divergent interests. They e5tend to actors and e5periences of the world that are less immediately connected with the public sphere, less prepared for it. They re uire integrating a plurality of cognitive and evaluative formats, so as to integrate the moral comple5ity of an Pe uippedA humanity ,Th(venot 9::9.. As for persons, they are induced to move back and forth between that which is most personal and that which is most public. -ommunication techni ues facilitate the switch from one engagement to another by facilitating arrangements favorable to e5posing that which is most personal in public and commoni$ing customi$ed uses in user groups. The vocabulary of individuali$ation and autonomy that is often considered to capture the essence of modernity does not fully grasp this comple5ity, the tensions and demands for coping. This can only be done by situating the individual agent of plan action in relation not only to the public regime but also the familiar one, a move that leaves aside the monolith of the individual and brings to the fore the image of a person uite otherwise engaged and engaging.

Mn these tensions viewed in an biographical perspective relating to 2ay ;8 generation, see Th(venot ,9::7..

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&J. ,eds.., 'ethinking .omparative .ultural (ociology- 'epertoires of Evaluation in /rance and the 0nited (tates, -ambridge, -ambridge University /ress, pp.9J@-@:;. +achs, Tania, 9::7, "'roit du travail et rh(tori ue lib(rale ! la rXgle de droit U lA(preuve du #ugement dAefficacit(", in =yon--aen Antoine, /erulli, Adalberto ,dir.., "iberalizzazione degli scambi& integrazione dei mercati e diritto del lavoro, /adova, -E'A2, pp.YYY. +tavo-'ebauge, 6., 9::7, "2obilising statistical powers for action against discriminations ! the case of the United Gingdom", 1nternational (ocial (cience Journal, 9::7, nQ &8@, pp.E@-77. Th(venot, =., &CCJ, "Un gouvernement par les normesN prati ues et politi ues des formats d?information", in -onein, >. et Th(venot, =. ,dir.., .ognition et information en socit, /aris, Ed. de l?E3E++ ,)aisons /rati ues 8., pp.9:7-9E&. Th(venot, =., 9::&, "/ragmatic regimes governing the engagement with the world", in Gnorr-etina, G., +chat$ki, T. +avigny Eike v. ,eds.., ,he ractice ,urn in .ontemporary ,heory, =ondon, )outledge, pp.7;-J@. Th(venot, =, 9::9, O%hich road to follow K The moral comple5ity of an ?e uipped? humanityI in =aw 6ohn, 2ol Annemarie ,eds., 9::9, .omple#ities- (ocial (tudies of 2nowledge ractices, 'urham and =ondon, 'uke University /ress, pp.7@-8J. Th(venot, =, 9::;a, =?action au pluriel. +ociologie des r(gimes d?engagement, /aris, =a '(couverte. Th(venot, =., 9::;b, "-onvention school", in >eckert 6ens, Zafirovski, 2ilan, ,eds.., 1nternational Encyclopedia of Economic (ociology, =ondon, )outledge, pp.&&&-&&7. Th(venot, =., 9::;c, "=aurent Th(venot answers ten Economic (ociology, uestions about economic sociology", 8,&., pp.@;-E:,

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