REGIMES OF ENGAGEMENT WITH THE WORLD AND THE EXTENSION OF CRITIQUE

in comparison with Dewey's pragmatism and Bourdieu's critical sociology

Laurent Thévenot

Professor, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales,Groupe de Sociologie Politique et Morale (CNRS), Paris

Senior Researcher, Research Department,Institut National de la Statistique et des Etudes Economiques, Paris.

August 2008

Workshop "Pragmatism, Practice Theory and Social Change"Institute for Public Knowledge, New York University, Sept. 13-14 2008

In spite of the name "sociologie pragmatique", the sociological framework which Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot have developed after creating the Groupe de Sociologie Politique et Morale at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (1984) and writing the first version of Les économies de la grandeur [Economies of worth] (1987) was not directly influenced by Dewey. 1 Moreover, it broke with Bourdieu's sociology. Thus this sociology cannot be easily captured within the legacy of Dewey's American pragmatism (JD), nor within the wake of Bourdieu's theory of practice (PB), although it benefited from these two heritages among others. On Justification  (Boltanski and Thévenot 2006 [1991]) concentrated on a kind of social action which is more "collective" than others in so far as it is prepared for public critique and justification. It involves persons and things which are treated and shaped to effectively qualify for legitimate evaluation of their worth ["grandeur"]. Thus it tackles the kind of abusive power which Bourdieu's sociology kept on unveiling, and also the "reality test" and method of evaluating the significance of public issues, a question which Dewey's philosophy was committed to. The next development of this sociology inserts the public and collective modes of co-ordination governed by orders of worth in a larger framework to cover also other "regimes of engagement" with the world which are approached in one way or other by social scientists in terms of ‘action’, 'strategy', ‘practice’ and ‘habit’ (Thévenot 2001, 2002, 2006). Turning to relations to the world which are below the level of public evaluation, this sociology of engagements meets other aspects of Dewey and Bourdieu's work, experience and adaptation on the one hand, habituation on the other. However, the focus is not so much on the human motor for action, but rather on the dynamics of disagreement and agreement with the environment. These dynamics rest on different modes of realism and confidence, different regimes of convenience, from personal convenience to be at ease in familiar surroundings, to individual achievement of an individual plan or project in a functionally shaped environment, to collective conventions sustaining public qualifications. The regime implies both a form of evaluation and a format within which the environment is captured in order to fit evaluation (Thévenot 2002, 2007).It is my contention that this third theoretical and empirical approach to structured action might contribute to our workshop in clarifying certain common features but also strong differences

1 A wider "pragmatic turn" can be situated through the series "Raisons pratiques" published from 1990 by Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales Press, which has exemplified the renewed dialogue between the social sciences and philosophy around action and practice. Other sociologists added their force in the continuity of interactionism, ethnomethodology, and they later referred to Dewey who was poorly known before among most French sociologists.

between JD and PB which do not appear as clearly in a direct confrontation between these two main contributions to critique and acknowledgement of practical activity. Obviously a thorough comparison between these three orientations would be two broad and complex a task for my contribution to this workshop. Therefore I chose to focus on the different ways these three orientations contribute to elucidating critique, its requirements and its limits, with a view encompassing non reflexive practical relations to the world. Although limited, this focus might be reasonably considered as a key issue in our common concern with social change and the constraints which hamper it.

1. THE FIRST PLURALISM OF JUSTIFIABLE ORDERS OF WORTH : POWERS UNDER PUBLIC SCRUTINYAfter recalling the main features of the first pluralism of orders of worth in Boltanski and Thévenot's "sociology of critique and justification" (B&T), I will compare it to Dewey, Bourdieu and also to the durkheimian legacy for its contribution on symbolic forms of thought.

Structural tensions exposed by the sociology of critique and justification (Boltanski and Thévenot) The sociology of critique and justification, which was presented in On Justification (Boltanski and Thévenot 2006 [1991]) and put to the test in many empirical studies2, exposes the common model of the plurality of orders of "worth" and of their relations which are involved in everyday disputes when the level of the argument rises. I will introduce this pluralism with the case of welfare policies which I will follow in this paper since their recent transformation in Europe have raised the kind of conflicting interpretations of social change mentioned in the workshop introduction.3 This transformation is actually either viewed as "highlighting the optional character of action and giving people the opportunity to reclaim their dignity with respect to the design of their own lives", or threatening "hard won gains in social institutions", or dominated by "inequalities of power" which "foreclose creative opportunities in processes of change".In the after war France, a former transformation resulted in the Sécurité sociale (public Medicaid and Medicare). This welfare policy was based on criticism of previous organization of providence accused to be paternalist. Such criticism can be clarified by the critical matrix of crossed "denunciations" of one order of worth on the ground of another, which we systematically examined (id., part IV, chap.8). In this occurrence, the Domestic order of worth governing charitable organization is denounced, because of the kind of dependency which it develops between the beneficiary and his benefactor, personal and privileged relations supporting this beneficence. Such a critique also points to certain type of corporate power. The normative basis of this denunciation is the Civic worth. It aims at collective and anonymous solidarity for higher equality, thus strongly opposing Domestic personalized protection. Such a solidarity is equipped by public policies and supported by a "social State" ("Etat social").4 Actually, it involves another order of worth, Industrial efficiency which expand on serial and categorical treatment of beneficiaries. A "compromise" can be found between the Civic and Industrial orders of worth because of this categorical, and thus anonymous treatment. The new recent transformation introduces a completely different order of worth, Market competition. It results from the denunciations of each of the Civic and Industrial orders of worth, and also of the compromise between them which is criticized as 2 The first publication in French (Boltanski et Thévenot 1987) was rapidly followed by an edited volumes of empirically grounded research on labor, organization, education (Boltanski et Thévenot 1989).3 I have launched a collective research program which documents this transformation in France within a broader perspective on "Politiques du proche" which are policies and political actions getting closer to the person. A book is on preparation, edited with Marc Breviglieri. See also: Breviglieri Stavo-Debauge et Pattaroni, 2003.4 "Etat social" is much more appropriate that "Etat providence" which reminds inopportunely of the Domestic "providence".

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"bureaucratic". Market worth is praised for the individual choice it would allow in addition to the benefits of competition on prices. Principles or values are not only at stake, but also the material arrangements which sharply differ in order to qualify for one kind of worth or the other. And social workers' task go through considerable transformation to qualify for market services.To prepare the comparison with Dewey and Bourdieu, I will present the main features of B&T theoretical framework in relation to structural tensions weighing on social life.

Critique vs. justification reveals a first structural tension between opening and closing one's eyes

- When the level of the argument rises, participants look for the most legitimate grounds for critique and justification which would satisfy third party evaluation.- Disputes are situated within a material environment (nature and artifacts) which is grasped in the critical judgment as relevant evidence. - Arguments are thus put to the "reality test".- Analyzing the movement of critique and justification reveals a first structural tension between opening and closing one's eyes. The moment of critical and inquisitive opening leads to the dynamical revision of landmarks after the reality test. But the moment of affirmative closure is also needed for things to go on "naturally" when people are "closing their eyes to the insinuation of dubious beings" (Boltanski and Thévenot 2006), and secured with ceremonies and institutions. Calming down this first tension requires the clear-cut separation between the two moments.

The qualification for the common good reveals a second structural tension between unequal appraisal and common humanity

- Critiques and justifications require an order of relevance to selectively take into account entities in the judgment, and relevance implies both generalizing and placing value on the generalization (within an order of "worth").- During the critical test, persons and things jointly qualify for a certain state of worth.- Analyzing the shared properties of the plurality of orders of worth reveals a second structural tension between inequality of acknowledged worth (and thus capacity and power) and a sense of injustice and power abuse based on a notion of common humanity. Calming down this second tension is twofold (and unfolded in the common model to all orders of worth): 1) to single out from various evaluative orders the ones (orders of worth) which can be shown to rely on a characterization of the common good and thus benefit all and not only to most worthy persons; 2) to demonstrate that states of worth are not fixed properties of persons but submitted to the qualifying test.This last requirement of the sense of justice is the basis for first kind of critical operations which are internal to one order of worth. Persons and things are criticized for not really qualifying for theses alleged states of worth. Abusive power is the result.

The confrontation of a plurality of orders of worth generates critical denunciations while their integration requires compromising for the common good

Critical operations of a second kind are partly external to the order of worth since they result from the clash between different orders. - Since the plurality of orders of worth are competing for the common good, they generate a matrix of crossed "denunciations" which shape critical activities.- Persons have to shift from one order of worth to another depending on the arrangement ["dispositif"] of the situation.- By contrast to the reduction to a single order of worth, the pluralism allows for multiple possibilities of combination as long as critical tensions are bypassed. A variety of

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organizational structures accommodate several orders of worth locally or temporally in compromising for the common good. The task is made easier because of the shared properties of orders of worth.Critical operations of a third kind result from the combination of the two previous ones. Without explicit compromising for a locally acknowledge common good, an external order of worth unduly influences the qualification for another worth, so that the qualification test is corrupted.

An overall view over the dynamics of reality test and the grading of unequally profound revisions

The analytical framework of the plural orders of worth allows the clarification of the notion of critique, and the differentiation of unequally profound revisions ensuing the critical confrontation with reality. These revisions are unequally profound and can be graded with respect to this depth: (i) Unexpectedness is considered as irrelevant, pure noise.(ii) It is relevant within the order of worth. It leads to the revision of the state of worth of some beings involved or, otherwise, gives rise to a sentiment of injustice.(iii) It is suspected to result from the encroachment of another order of worth. If it is picked out, it leads to a denunciation of this intrusion, or to a dispute about the right worth to adopt for the qualification test. Otherwise, it is another source of the sentiment of injustice. A main source of intrusion and injustice stems from the fact that someone unduly transports a high state of worth from one order to another (privilege) or a low one (social handicap).(iv) The revision is even deeper when the creation of a new order of worth is on progress.

In comparison with Bourdieu's critical sociologyThe comparison could be drawn between the previously outlined sociology of critique and justification and Weber's orders of legitimate domination regarding political authority, or Foucault's analyses of the relations between power and knowledge in Les mots et les choses, but I shall concentrate here on differences with Bourdieu's critical sociology.

Critical sociology / sociology of critique

The first thing to say is that the two innovations in the French social sciences which followed the Bourdieu and Foucault generation, the sociology of innovation created by Latour and the sociology of critique and justification depart from the previous generation by the attention they pay to everyday critical activities (or scientific controversies in the first case) which are part of social life. In the critical sociology by contrast, the sociologist is the main character of the critical play. This makes a strong difference but does not imply that these two more recent sociologies cannot bring original contributions to critique, as critical sociology obviously did. Although they declare as a motto that the researcher should "follow the actors" in their critical activities, these sociologies do not confine themselves to description, classification or typification of their action. The theoretical modeling they propose (quite different in each of the two sociologies) reveals structural requirements or impediments to the critical activities involved in controversies and disputes. Such a theoretical and analytical detour gives new insight into the conditions of critical activities, which can be beneficial to them.Although, in many places, Bourdieu insisted that sociology should be value free in order to be scientific, he developed an overall critical theory. This might lead to contradictory statements, regarding the status of sociology in particular. But such inconsistency can be disentangled if we admit that sociologists approach critique in three different ways: #1 by analyzing laypersons' critical activities; #2 by discovering structural constraints or mechanisms which limit these activities although they are neither known nor taken into account by laypersons; #3 by being involved in such activities. Bourdieu's critical activity at the end of his career was of

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the third kind, but his critical theory was clearly of the second kind. It offered a definite and illuminating detour from laypersons critique, which was also expected to contribute to critique by its disclosure of hidden mechanisms and resulting illusions. However, the normative grounds for his unveiling frequently and deeply converged with everyday basis for critique, if we think of the attacks on the inequalities in school, particularly in relation to the parent's social position. B&T's analysis of the plurality of orders of worth allows to clarify the previously implicit basis of this convergence which relies on denunciations from the grounds of the Civic worth.

Legitimacy

A second difference is linked to the first one and concerns legitimacy. Considering the sense of injustice in critique, On Justification makes explicit the common requirements of the plurality of forms of evaluation (worth) which are considered as most legitimate in disputes. While differentiating various types of legitimate domination, Weber did not tackle the issue of such requirements, nor the resulting dynamics of each order, or the systematic relations with the others. Bourdieu neither, and he even contested the relevance of Weber's typology. He treated legitimacy in terms of "symbolic capital", another designation of Weber's notion for charisma, but excluded the possibility of identifying a specific form of power with this term since charisma is "a dimension of any power, another name for legitimacy" (Bourdieu 1980, p.243).

The pluralism of orders of worth / species of capital

A third main difference results from the previous one and from the kind of pluralism which is a key feature of critical activities in the sociology of critique (by contrast to Latour's or Dewey's conceptions of critique). Following actors in these activities, we found out that they are expected to shift from one order of worth to another, depending on the arrangement of the situation. Their remaining in a prevalent order of qualification will be considered as abnormal. Therefore we had to explore systematically an avenue of research which is "perpendicular" to the one explored by Bourdieu. Instead of being endowed with permanent dispositions actualized in different situations, the same persons are induced to change in accordance with the way situations are disposed and the way conducts are judged. This move brings more than a change in roles or social norms. It leads to a complete transformation in ways of experiencing the world. The shift among the plurality of orders of worth is the reason of actor's ability to criticize one from the viewpoint of the other, but also to compromise between them. There is also a pluralism at the core of Bourdieu's theory, perpendicular to this one in a way. It differentiates class position using a Marxist vocabulary, or habitus, which are properties durably fixed to agents as dispositions shaping behaviors, while the sociology of critique focuses on the plurality of relevant orders of qualification changing from one arrangement to the other and requiring behaviors to shift accordingly. The contrast between ways of addressing pluralism is particularly strong when we compare the species of capital with species of worth. Both concepts are dedicated to deal with kinds of capacities which are placed valued on and benefit a large validity. This is the reason why they are so central in theories which address the issue of critique, since such unequal capacities raise, when confronted to common humanity, the suspicion of abusive power. In Bourdieu's theory, this suspicion informs the sociologist's task of unveiling. In Boltanski and Thévenot's theory, it informs the critical task.The extended notion of "capital" suggests a resource possessed by the agent, which produces some individual return. The notion of "field" introduces a kind of generalized market competition where different species of capital can be valorized. On the other hand, worth for which a person qualifies governs the arrangement of relevant entities (persons and objects) when it is put to the test, and thus specifies a mode of coordination of action.

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Both theories are deeply concerned by the transformation of a capacity of one kind into a capacity of another. The concept of "conversion" or "reconversion" of one kind of capital into another points to a hidden aspect of the reproduced domination which endures in spite of apparent social changes. The concept of "transport of worth" designates a process which raises a sentiment of injustice and may arouse accusation precisely because the evaluation takes into account objects that are foreign to the world from which the test stems, and only relevant for another worth. Conversely, criticism of injustice may demonstrate that the deficiency of a person in a different qualification has followed her into the test in spite of herself, so that she suffers from a “handicap” (accusation of a "transport of deficiency"). The theoretical category of the critical sociology ("reconversion of capital") is thus part of the systematical sources of injustice and motives for critique that the sociology of critique reveals.

In comparison with Dewey's pragmatismI shall now turn to aspects of critique and justification which relate to public problems and which Bourdieu's critical sociology did not address. On these aspects, fruitful comparisons should be drawn between the model of the sense of justice that we found common to the plurality of orders of worth and political or social philosophies which theorized justice (Rawls, Walzer), or the pragmatic and normative requirements of the communicative public space (Habermas).5 Within the context of this workshop, I shall limit myself to a comparison with Dewey's pragmatist approach which fully dealt with public problems.When Boltanski and Thévenot developed the key notion of "test" (épreuve), they were not influenced by Dewey but by Latour's "trial", although they twisted it in a completely different notion, from Latour's "trial of force" (épreuve de force) to a "reality test" (épreuve de réalité) involved in the qualification for worth. But one could find a former origin to both these notions in Dewey's main concern for uncertainty and experience, for trials and tests, and his insistence on the high dependency on the surroundings, a concern which is not so strong in Bourdieu. The tests for profitable knowledge is "imposed by surroundings, which are only in part compatible and reinforcing" and "these surroundings test its strength and measure its endurance". In contrast to Latour's trials of force, Dewey praises "intelligently directed experience" against "casual and uncritical experience" (Dewey 1929 [1925], chap.III). Here is the basis for his notion of "critique", with a sense which is closer to scientific inquiry than the exposition of unjust and abusive power or domination. This kind of test grounds Dewey's critical stance and delineates his approach to public problems. Yet "to be intelligently experimental is but to be conscious of this intersection of natural conditions so as to profit by it instead of being at its mercy", so that "a fulfillment comes and is pronounced good, is judged good". The additional notion of the good is explicitly there, in contrast to Latour. Unlike Boltanski and Thévenot however, there is no consideration for the confrontation of a plurality of most legitimate species of the common good. Dewey's notion of "common interest" or "shared interest" is defined after a process of communication, when "the consequences of conversation extend beyond the two directly concerned, that they affect the welfare of many others, the act acquires a public capacity" (Dewey 1946 [1927], chap. I). Actually the process relies of the default of some good, and it is the recognition of "evil consequences" which forces to reflect upon interconnected behavior. Consequently Dewey is hostile to the notion that aggregated collective action constitutes a community. He insists on the "participation in activities and sharing in results" which "demand communication as a prerequisite", and not only the "frozen words of written speech" but "the winged [ailés] words of conversation" and dialogue as well (id., chap.V, VI). For this reason, he is constantly preoccupied by what is referred to as participative democracy. He highlights appropriate methods of education and training which are needed for such participation to prevail.

5 On the comparison with Rawls and Walzer, see: Thévenot 1995, Boltanski and Thévenot 2000.

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"Concerted action" accounts for the "becoming institutionalized" of natural events, the rule being nothing but "standardized habit" (Dewey 1929 [1925], chap.III). In this perspective, institutions and rules are to be flexible and criticized, and we shall not find in Dewey an account of their specific strength or power which actually make them distinct from habits. Yet his observation about "symbolism" reminds us of Durkheim "effervescence collective" and we should now turn to Durkheim's legacy to find another source of inspiration for a stronger notion of institution: "[symbolism is] a product of reflection upon direct phenomena", not a "cold, intellectual sign of a social organization", but the social organization "made present and visible, a center of emotionally charged behavior"  (Dewey 1929 [1925], chap.III)

In comparison with Durkheim's legacyDurkheim was not officially invited to our confrontation. Nevertheless, I feel obliged to call for him now. Considering his legacy, and the way his approach to institutions and forms of thought (formes de connaissance) was elaborated in new directions by Bourdieu and Boltanski-Thévenot, will clarify differences with Dewey's pragmatism and even sharper divergences with Dewey's sociological interactionist legacy. Another reason for summoning him now is that he has been abundantly used in the later movement of social constructivism, although he preventively distanced himself from the risk of relativism. Social constructivism is now strongly attacked for its relativism, by the tenants of the reactive wave of "Standardized factuality", if I may put it this way, which is presently invading politics and social affairs and, among other domains, the welfare policies which I chose here as an illustrative case study. This reaction is also at the background of our workshop agenda.

Bourdieu and Boltanski on classifications

The way Durkheim and Mauss related classificatory schemes to social groups, and the way the late Durkheim linked forms of thought to religion and social ties, were quite influential on Bourdieu's sociology. But the agonistic transformation of social groups into conflicting social classes gave a different thrust to Bourdieu's understanding of the "social usages of categorization". Even in his late proposal to go beyond both Cassirer's symbolic forms and Durkheim's "form on thought", the variations in the cognitive disposition towards the world remain related to social positions. By contrast, pragmatist's differentiation like James' "various type of thinking" or Hacking's "styles of reasoning" are not related to social positions but to different modes of accommodating reality depending on purposes. These two differentiations are again "perpendicular", one linked to the disposition of the person and the other to the disposition of the situation.Boltanski collaborated at length with Bourdieu and was deeply involved in the creation of the journal Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales. In relation to the former topic, they wrote together about "dominant ideology" and classification struggles as class struggles (Bourdieu et Boltanski 1974). Later he developed a proper analysis of the representation of social groups, using the case of professionals ("cadres") (1987 [1982]). It was a first contribution to understanding the way persons get "bigger" through collective representation.

The paradox of coded forms

Being ten years younger than Boltanski, I joined later Bourdieu's research group, after an initial training in mathematics and economics, and stayed for a much shorter time than he did before we engaged in collaborative work and created our own research group.6 With Bourdieu and his group, I was taught in a feeling of exhilaration the most sophisticated sociology of the time. I published in Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales a paper (Thévenot 1979) which I mention now because it was already related to the "contradictory" issue of cognitive-6 For an ironical Bildungsroman or rather short novel (in English) which plays with this itinerary in a multi-layered narration associating theoretical and very practical issues, like writing On justification with four hands while cooking in parallel boeuf en daube, see: Thévenot 2005.

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institutional forms and their critique. As such, it was my first step in exploring what I called the "paradox of coding", or the two-sided conventions which I developed later, and also to the two moments which On Justification characterized as closing/opening one's eyes. Taking "youth" as a case for a more general problem, the paper adopted a social perspective on the classical Greek Megaric school sorite paradox of the heap of grains of rice, which became an important issue in logics and philosophy of language.7 The logical paradox works for any categorization but, as social scientist, I felt concerned by its social usage and guessed that it generated specific social mechanisms when the categorization turned on human beings. During my experience in the French Institute of Statistics (INSEE) and participation to the creation of a socio-occupational classification, I was struck by a structural tension between the impetus towards drawing entities together within some equivalence form, and the equally strong impetus of suspecting this operation as arbitrary. This issue could also be related to philosophical disputes, the medieval scholastic school and Occam's Nominalism. But, again, I was and still am concerned by the relation between this tension and social life with human beings and things. Going in this direction, I have rather considered categories as codes closely linked to institutions, laws, regulations or conventions which offer guarantee to coordinate action because of their support for equivalence.Most of contemporary social science is backing the second pole of the tension, the suspicion that forms of equivalence and generality are nothing but "conventional" in the sense that they are customary and therefore conformist and unoriginal, their arbitrariness allowing masked power.8 Dewey's pragmatism and Bourdieu's theory of practice are main and influential contributions to this suspicion. Dewey is constantly critical towards generalization and Bourdieu continually underlines the difference between playing the game with the sense of the game and just following rules, an idea which has been frequently linked to Wittgenstein's skepticism about "following the rule" and his own insistence upon practice and language games. In Esquisse de la théorie de la pratique already, when writing about "symbolic stimulations, that is to say conventional and conditional" Bourdieu stated that they "tend to impose themselves unconditionally and necessarily when the inculcation of the arbitrary abolishes the arbitrary of inculcation" (Bourdieu 1979). Therefore, one needs to turn to Durkheim to find a sociologist who is deeply concerned by the first pole of the tension and institutions. This is the reason why we should call on him now. Considering retrospectively the tension in the light of our confronation, I would suggest that, whereas Dewey and Bourdieu both contribute, in quite different ways, to highlight the "opening one's eyes" moment, Durkheim's one could be helpful to clarify the "closing one's eyes" one.In fact Durkheim is almost uniquely theorizing this last moment. Consequently, it tends to cover all social life, so that institutional and symbolic forms are confused with the "social". The social collectivity is the background reason why individuals feel constrained in their forms of thought and behavior. In spite of Durkheim's genuine concern for institutions which is clearly visible in his political and moral writings, and in the attention he paid to rituals, I find a severe drawback in the confusion between institutional forms and social regularities. It leads to a considerable stretching of the notion of institution which comes to include any "social practices", as most frequently termed today, or even "social rituals". When we get to this point, the benefit of the strong first affirmative side of the institution is lost.

Boltanski and Thévenot on "montée en généralité"

Both our parallel and collaborative work with Boltanski led to the understanding of justification/critique—and two-sided conventions or engagement in my own work—which 7 If n grains of rice is not a heap, can it be the case that n+1 grains of rice is a heap? If a n days old individual is young, can it be the case that a n+1 days old individual is not?8 Although the English "conventional" is mainly critical towards an accepted generality obtained at the expense of individuality, authenticity and realism, the French "conventionnel" is more balanced. It includes both the positive notion of agreement, contract or engagement, and the negative idea of deceptive conformism. It is therefore more appropriate to the designation of the "two-sided" convention or conventional I propose.

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captures both this moments. At the beginning of this collaboration, I was elaborating the notion of "investment in form" for costly construction operations which spare actors the work of forging resemblances and crafting equivalencies in each situation and, in return, yield coordination output that varies by three characteristics: time span, spatial extension and the solidity of the related material equipment (Thévenot 1984). From my experience of going to and fro between sociological investigations based on interviews and observations and statistical surveys, I realized that these two forms of knowledge were not in the relation of particular monographs to general evidence, or qualitative to quantitative as currently stated, but that they were linked to different ways of making people and things general, either by comparing entities to a prototype or putting them in series according to criteria. I also noticed these two modes of categorization in classifying activities. I also noticed that proximity to a prototype and statistical frequency both rest on differently shaped material evidence and involvement of objects, while what counts as relevant evidence is quite different in the two cases. In the link between cognition and coordination, objects offer strong mediations: different ‘investments of forms’ generate different ‘forms of the probable’, different constraints on what can be proved and offered as relevant evidence. From experiencing the concrete support which techniques and methods bring in the way statistical codes coordinate activities, I was attentive to the role of material arrangements in equivalency-making and these orientations gave rise to a research program on the " economies of conventional forms" in organization. On his side, Boltanski was studying the process of detaching from singularity ("désingulariser") which is required to support general causes and, when it fails, provokes the "denunciative" judgment of abnormality that third parties produce (Boltanski, Darré et Schitz 1984).9 Together, we run a large experimental research program on "finding one's way in social space" (Boltanski and Thévenot 1983). It documented laymen capacity of social categorization. This boundary paper marks the turning point from Bourdieu's "sens social" perspective to studying the relation between representation and evaluation which resulted in the notion of order of worth. In our avenues of research, one can notice both Durkheim's legacy used in a quite different way from Bourdieu, and a departure from Durkheim in the analyses of the operations (and failures) of "montée en généralité", as we coined them with a phrase and notion that were largely taken up. The phrase, which is not easy to translate in English, encapsulates the formatting that allows abstraction from situated things and people, generalization and circulation. But what about characterizations which are not based on such general forms of equivalence, that Dewey and Bourdieu seems to favor and which notions of "social practice" or "practical knowledge", "tacit knowledge" are opposing to (Knorr-Cetina Schatzki Savigny, 2001)? The answer to this question led to the next step of the analytical framework which I will present now for the sake of discussing notions of practice.

2. THE SECOND PLURALISM OF REGIMES OF ENGAGEMENT: THE EXTENSION OF CRITIQUEOn Justification was dedicated to studying actions that are submitted to public judgment. It deliberately left aside other kind of actions and their appreciation. While we prepared the second edition of the book and Boltanski exposed the regime of "agapè" which he viewed as suspending judgment (Boltanski 1990), I worked on extending the analytical framework to embrace less publicly assessed activities down to proximate and personalized accommodation to the familiar world. There are hints of these new developments in the postface (Boltanski and Thévenot 2006 [1991]) and of the extension from public to non public forms of convenience—from public convention to personal convenience (Thévenot 1990). The notion of reality test, which was forged for justified qualification, is extended to a range of testing experiences (éprouvant). They relate unsatisfied expectation to identifying beings according

9 In On Justification we adopted a different concept of "denunciation" that designates the critical reduction of one order of worth on the ground of another.

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to their capacity one can count on in order to carry out an appropriate action. The snags of the testing moments reveal the relevant beings which are convenient for the coordination of appropriate action, even the action of a single person.After recalling the main features of this extension, particularly with respect to uncertainty which is dealt with quite differently by Dewey and Bourdieu, I will use the second pluralism of regimes as a support to go one step further in the comparison of the different approaches.

The two faces of the engaging with the world : confident quietude / worrying inquietude

This new step entailed wondering what is the right concept or regime to be used for such an extension. There are various competing models of action in the social and economic sciences, and no need to add a new one unless it accounts for this variety while adding some value because of a new perspective. Finally I chose "engagement" to emphasize both the reality involved—in the person’s dependence on the environment he relies on—and the good involved. Each "regimes of engagement" (Thévenot 2006, 2007) specifies the quest for a guaranteed good. The person captures the world within a certain format (publicly conventionalized, functional, familiar, etc.) to find tokens which guarantee the good. The sort of guarantee varies from one regime to the other. It specifies the capacity or power that characterizes the agent thus engaged. In this perspective, power is not an individual's possession or even an instrumental resource, but depends on the engagement. Each regime spells out the conditions of a kind of confidence in the world and in one's capacity to engage with it for the benefit of some good. Both the environment and the person are to be prepared accordingly to be enabled or empowered for such an engagement. Thus the second pluralism of the regimes of engagement accounts for a variety of regimes of confidence, and realism, from the most public to the most personal: the guarantee secured by a commonly or publicly certified conventional world; the assurance based on normal functionality; the trustful mastery in handling familiar surroundings at hand. The objective/subjective opposition is thus put into question without the risk of relativism.Confidence, in quietude, is only one face of the engagement, prima facie if I may say. The engagement has to face inquietude and worry when unearthing some snag, as mentioned before. This second phase corresponds to the critical moment in the regime of justified engagement. More generally confidence results from a judgment which closes doubt and inquiry (Thévenot 1990), and this closure is re-opened in this second phase. The opening does not only involve a cognitive revision of beliefs but also of an evaluative (and frequently emotional) move, when the possible realization of the good at stake is put into question. This second face of worrying inquietude is the source of the dynamics of each regime and thus as needed for its consistency as the first face of confident quietude. For the regimes of public engagement, I already mentioned the two-sided convention. On its institutional side, confidence in the convention is a faith in the shared and stable conformity to it, whereas, on its critical side, suspicion regards as illusory and alienating such a belief. In the less public regime of planned engagement, the confident side resembles a smooth functionning and takes for granted the effect of the decided project or promise, while doubt is raised towards the possibility of any plan to be enforced, or even any projected intention or will. In the regime of familiar engagement, the confident side leads to routine while the doubt is raised against the capacity of this routine to really accommodate to the situation.I will not present here thoroughly these regimes (Thévenot 2006, 2007) but rather develop each of them a litter further in order to carry on the comparison with Dewey and Bourdieu.

Comparing the treatment of uncertainty in Dewey and Bourdieu

The overwhelming notion of "taken for granted" in sociology, issued from Husserl via Schutz's elaboration, is confusing for two reasons. First, it leaves aside the second side of the engagement which appears in unfavorable conditions, when inquietude replaces confidence. Ethnomethodology methodologically creates such breaching conditions, but only to study the

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way order (of meaning) is recovered. Goffman also paid attention to instant of embarrassment but, again, with an insistence upon the order of interaction. Second, the "taken for granted" view fails to differentiate kinds of confidence and associates it with typification. By contrast, the second pluralism of regimes of engagement pushes further the former distinction of "forms of the probable" which I mentioned before. Each of these regimes actually characterize uncertainty as inquietude and worry with regard to the disturbance of a certain kind of good. Human being do not deal so much with uncertainty than with worry, and each regime channels uncertainty into a manageable inquietude. The same development is needed for the related notion of "information". Unfortunately, it mostly assumes "coded knowledge" and blurs the differences between a variety of formats used to "enform" relevant knowledge, an varying according to engagements (Thévenot 2006). Obviously Dewey is highly concerned by uncertainty of an "uncannily unstable" world, and opposes the certainty which is erroneously set up by theory, in particular. This major contribution contrasts with social philosophies and theories that are more inclined to assume and model orders, and have whisked change out of sight, as he writes. However he also departs from metaphysics of change or flux, as Bergson's. He accounts for "the need for security" which "compels men to fasten upon the regular in order to minimize and to control the precarious and fluctuating" (Dewey, J., 1929 [1925]). He states that "controlling persons and things so that consequences would be more assured" is a step away from "oppression by immediate things and events". Thus, the tension between settling and opening the inquiry is central in his philosophy. He takes on a critical stance himself when observing that inquiry is narrowed by "private and economic class purposes and privileges".Bourdieu would surely agree with this last statement, but he clearly does not leave the same place to uncertainty, as a logical consequence of his systemic modeling of reproduction. Thus, the agent's range of expected possibilities is reduced to a future which is objectively limited by one's social position.

Engaging in public: where is the agreement of the community?The analysis of engaging in public raises the issue of the sociological treatment of formality and formal capacities. Engaging in justifiable action implies to conventionally qualify for the species of common good at stake in the order of worth. Engaging in the liberal public also requires an aggrandizement of the person, into the state of individual-in-public who formats one's concern into individual opinions or interests with the appropriate form to be discussed and negotiated with other individuals in the same public state (Thévenot and Lamont 2000). I developed the notion of a two-sided conventions, with the formal side facing the dubious one. How can social actors, and sociologists, deal with so strongly discrepant facets which I considered part of one same engagement? Much of the time, the question is not even raised and they are carefully separated into two different moments.10 When they are not, the confrontation turns into a fierce dispute between opposing parties, which strengthens each side. But the analyst cannot be restricted to taking each party's side, successively. First, he has to display both sides as integral parts of the same engagement, with an analytical framework which account for the structural tension between them. Second, has to clarify the way the two sides can be integrated somehow. Among social sciences interested in practice, there is a broad agreement on a position which escapes this tension by referring to an integrated notion of "social practice". As I mentioned before, this idea is frequently linked to Wittgenstein's skepticism about "applying the rule" and his own insistence upon practice and language games. I don't find this purely "practical" understanding of Wittgenstein a convincing integration of the two sides of the engagement, since it leads to rather "light" notions of institution, convention or formality. In the continuation of my experience of the "paradox of coding", and my later research on conventional standard setting and enforcement, I developed another view

10 On Justification insists upon such a separation between different moments.

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of the integration. The "resolution" of the tension cannot be grasped with the notion of social practice and the solution is more complex. It relies on a high limitation of a small number of landmarks combined with a high vigilance concentrating all the control on these landmarks. I would oppose sociological (or economical) "conventionalism" which conceives conventions as tools which bring the convergence of expectancies, whether explicit in contracts, or tacit in customs, and social practices. The analyst has to go further than this prima facie side and look at the resolution of the tension between the confident and the worrying side. The "realization" of the convention is not a broad convergence of shared knowledge but cannot be anything more than a limited agreement about selected features people use to control events and entities (Thévenot 2002).11

Although this analysis of the "realization" of conventions differ from each of the two contrasted views—truthful /arbitrary—it converges with a third view which is rarely expressed in public but can be articulated by people who are deeply involved in the effective enforcement of conventions, thus in their realization, as standard setting and enforcement procedures (Thévenot 1997). Among these people, we observe the acceptance that standards do not standardize in the sense that it does not make things uniform, and that much is left aside in its enforcement to concentrate on limited landmarks. This acceptance is grounded on the common knowledge that there is no hope for a more complete alignment which has, nevertheless, to be assumed by the formal side of the convention.Dewey and Bourdieu strongly differ regarding conventions. Bourdieu is mainly suspicious towards this source of symbolic domination which comes from law, regulations or formal rules. By contrast, Dewey gives institutions his support, against their attack from a pure laissez-faire or market evaluation : "To view institutions as enemies of freedom, and all conventions as slaveries, is to deny the only means by which positive freedom in action can be secured" (Dewey 1930 [1922], II,6). Regarding the tension between the two sides of convention, he does not propose the analysis mentioned before and rather follows the mixed view of "mobile" convention, while stating that "convention and custom are necessary to carrying forward impulse to any happy conclusion". He would also be reluctant to differentiating conventions with regards to the plurality of kind of evaluation and good they support, since he saw values as the infinitely moving outcome of a constructive ongoing process. Thus, he could not account for critical tensions between them.

Engaging in a plan: where are strategies, ends and means?The regime of engagement in a plan does not simply follows models of action driven by individual will and intentional mental state, or models of rational instrumental action. It delineates a crucial mode of confidence for social life and underlines its dependence on the formatting of the environment. The kind of individual agency usually termed autonomy is here viewed as dependant on the transformation of the world into functions. The notions of resource, or means, are related to one specific regime with its proper good, the assurance of the individual's will effective accomplishment, and proper formatting of the reality as functionnal. Appeal to "practice" usually goes hand in hand with unmasking the illusions of individual and intentional agency. Characterizing this regime does not go along this view, but makes explicit the conditions of guarantee of such a capacity or power of projecting oneself in the future with the support of an appropriately prepared environment, as a set of functional options. As such, it is required for a long term strategy, or even for the notion of choice to apply, which presumes this world of options each of them being a possible plan for the future. Although not submitted to conventional qualification and thus more tolerant, this regime supports everyday coordination and the kind of disagreement which does not call for third 11 Livet's understanding of Wittgenstein's skeptical argument regarding following the rule supports this "resolution" of the tension between the two sides of the convention. Because actors are aware of the impossibility to secure the effective alignment on the convention (the skeptical argument), they accept to withdraw on limited landmarks (Livet 1994, Livet et Thévenot 2004 [1994]). I will add that this awareness is intermittent, otherwise institutions would collapse.

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party judgment. As such, this regime is widely utilized for coordination, and should not be discarded by social scientists. Attribution of responsibility assumes such an engagement, as well as the kind of mutual involvement formalized in contract.Bourdieu is one of the harshest critics of the notion of intentional action who "describes practices as strategies oriented towards ends which are explicitly stated by a free project", taking Sartre and his human subject as his favorite target, but including at times interactionnists (Bourdieu 1980). Every reader remembers that habitus generates moves that are "objectively organized as strategies" without being the product of a "genuine strategic intention" (Bourdieu 1972), and that his notion of "unconscious strategy" was largely debated and criticized as an oxymoron. One should also add that the language of interest which Bourdieu used abundantly is also congruent with the means-end relationship which is at the core of intentional action.Dewey is also critical towards the classical view of the means-end model of action with a fixed end and the force of the will as the cause of action. He rejects both spiritual and mechanistic theories, but instead of opposing an habitual mode of action to it, he states that the "in-viewness of ends" are projection of possible consequences and therefore "as much conditioned by antecedent natural conditions as is perception of contemporary objects external to the organism, trees and stones, or whatever" (Dewey 1929 [1925] II). The "terminal outcome when anticipated (as it is when a moving cause of affairs is perceived) becomes an end-in-view, an aim, purpose, a prediction usable as a plan in shaping the course of events".

Engaging in familiar surroundings: where are habits?The regime of familiar engagement does not only capture the notion of habit, or habitual and tacit knowledge, or practical skill. It links dynamics of accommodating to immediate surroundings, shaped by continual use, with the maintenance of a personalized, localized good which supports a specific kind of confidence: feeling at ease. Instead of being attributed a willful capacity for a plan, guaranteed by functionalities, human agency is highly distributed and reliant on particular points of attachment to the used milieu. In its way to tackle "practice", this notion of engagement pays full attention to the most personalized relation to the world which raises the most difficult problems of integration within any community—and personality as well. Social scientist usually neglect this level of personalization, and thus downplays these difficulties. Even the classical individual/collective opposition currently characterizes the individual with features like "interest" which are already shaped for communication and negotiation, and assumes at least the level of the engagement in a plan.Dewey's ends-in-view and plans does not prevent him from paying much attention to the less reflexive level of habits which require "the cooperation of organism and environment" leading to "working adaptations of personal capacities with environing forces". He seems to agree with Bourdieu on the place of habits when he writes  that "they constitute the self" and that, "in any intelligible sense of the word will, they are will." But he also emphasizes the restriction brought by habit which, when "made complete in routine shuts in thought" in "absentmindedness". Thus, when it "is thwarted by untoward circumstance", "observation and invention" are needed to extricate the habit from this trouble. Yet, he does not contemplate the possibility of dynamics within the habit, but rather considers the exit towards invention which, without doubt, involves a completely different relation to the world. His complete view of the dynamics is the following : "with habit alone there is a machine-like repetition" while "with conflict of habits and release of impulse there is conscious search."Viewed from the familiar engagement and from Dewey's contention about habits, there are several major differences with Bourdieu's theory of practice. Before pointing to them, one should recall that the main reasons for such differences are to be found in Bourdieu's remarkably integrated theoretical model of reproduction, in which habitus plays a central role. Considerations about improvisation cannot call into question this fixed habitus. In order to

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account for the dynamics of habitus, one need to examine dynamics of accommodation, or the variety of testing experiences depending on regimes, going in the direction of B&T framework. Then the model of systematic reproduction is lost.Thus, habit as habitus is first fixed, as Dewey's routine. There is no view of the dynamics of change in case of a testing experience of untoward circumstance. If habitus were plastic, it could not play this key role in the reproduction model. Habitus cannot be made "flexible" without severely damaging the whole theory. Again, consideration about "improvisation" in the "play" are to be placed within the strong limits of this fixity.Second habit as habitus is collective, the result of a collective enterprise of "inculcation". It does not capture the highly idiosyncratic familiarization with the world which raises such problems for life with others, nor the tensions between different modes of "mastering" the relation to the world. Dewey also mentions collective habits and customs as "convenient" and "natural" for persons, but his approach of habit focuses on one human organism adapting to her environment. However, the relevant organism can be variable. Any human being is "in one respect an association, consisting of a multitude of cells each living its own life". Thus, he strongly opposes the individual/collective opposition, considering that both terms are "unreal abstraction"  (Dewey 1946 [1927], VI).Third, habit as habitus is wide-ranging. It covers all the range of capacities that are differentiated by the plurality of engagements. It encompasses corporeal touch (doigté) as well as practical mastering or sense of honor or the symbolic of institutions (Bourdieu 1972).

Engaging in exploration: where are creativity and innovation?Our contemporary world is swamp by the imperative of innovation. Dewey places experience at the core of his theory and is currently associated to the notion of creativity in action. More recently, the "sociology of innovation" by Latour and Callon has been studying thoroughly innovative processes while assuming, as Dewey, a strong natural impetus for such creative advance. Boltanski and Thévenot identified, among the first pluralism of orders of worth, the worth of Inspiration with its proper qualification and test. In the next step of the second pluralism, we found it necessary, with Nicolas Auray's main contribution, to single out a close relation of a person to her environment which is situated below the mutual recognition of an innovation. It rests under the level of games or ludic activities equipped with rules, and is neither aggrandized into the public worth of Inspiration. Initially I considered this way of engaging with the world as a phase of trial and error which takes place in the dynamics of the familiarity regime. But actually we found that this fourth regime of explorative engagement is in high tension with the familiarity engagement since it is permanently oriented towards a good which assumes to maintain an unfamiliar relation to the world. Linked to strangeness and novelty, the good of exploration is experienced in the excitement of discovering something new. There is some apparent paradox in the idea of guaranteeing a state which seems to maintain uncertainty. How could it be possible to secure this sort of uncertainty? The formulation of this last sentence gives a hint of the centrality of this regime in our contemporary world, which is not only suffering risk, preventing it somehow but also fostering it as well and making profit out of it.

The substantialist reduction: a mechanism of exploitation disclosed by the analysis of engagementsBefore considering the extension of the domain of critique which is produced by the interplay between different regimes, let us examine a mechanism of substantialist reduction of the two-sided engagements which can also lead to a oppression and be exploited asymmetrically in a kind of domination.

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The reduction leading to alienation

This mechanism consists in three conjunct operations:(i) The two-sided engagement is reduced to only one side, that of the guarantee. We already mentioned this confident moment of quietude oriented on the prima facie, or face value of the engagement and oblivious of the trying moment of inquietude. In the mechanism I have in view, the reduction is fixed by two additional operations.(ii) Instead of being experienced as a kind of good which can be damaged, this quietude is confused with a fact, an objective state, in a substantialist reduction.(iii) The objective stance is reinforced by the attribution of substantial properties to independent entities, among the persons or environment, forgetful of the specific kind of dependency which the engagement relies on.In the last section, we shall see the importance of this mechanism to understand the social change involved by "governing with standards", and the oppression and exploitation which follow such change. It clarifies the implications of "evidence-based policy" movement of objectifying the evaluation of policies.The pluralism of engagements allows to differentiate the form taken by this reduction from one regime to another, and to catch the shared features of apparently different mechanisms, in terms of exploitation in particular.- In the regime of justifiable engagement, the conventional qualification is reduced into properties, hopefully physico-chemical ones. Certification, meant in a broad sense, transforms the problematic guarantees of some kind of good into objective and seldom measurable properties of beings. Substantiating as providing evidence leads to substantialist reduction when this good and the interdependent engagement are ignored.- In the regime of engagement in a plan, the project and its valuable achievement are reduced to mere functioning, like the working parts of a machinery. The object is expected to work independently because of its own functional physical properties while the subject's project is supposed to have a fulfilling force of its own.- In the regime of familiar engagement, the reduction transforms the trust gained by personally accommodating the world into substantial properties of objectified routines, either attributed to bodily permanent dispositions or to specific dispositions of the arranged surroundings.- In the regimes of explorative engagement, the reduction leads to the belief that entities have themselves physical endowments for alteration. These endowments are attributed to human or other beings which thus carry a "need for change".As we can see from the previous unfolding of the mechanism, it is more complex and diverse than the confusion of human beings with objects related to the notion of reification. It can even affect the treatment of the person by herself, in each of this regimes, resulting in various kinds of fallacious certitude about one's own objective force, each of them implying a different sort of alienation. The critique of the instrumental utilization of other human beings as means for one's own strategies is but a part of the reduction of the engagement in a plan. This mechanism also implies the one-sided reduction of the engagement, and the substantialist reduction of the good of achieving one's own individual plan. Sartre's concept of "bad faith" ("mauvaise foi") highlights processes involved in the substantialist reduction of the engagement in plan which are different from the instrumental subjection of another human being. He assumes as existential the "project" format i.e. a human being free to make the choice of her goal. His analysis of the "facticity" of the "being-in-itself" displays the alienation of the one who denies (bad fait) her freedom of choice and behaves as an object among constraining circumstances. Sartre does not take into account parallel reductions related to other engagement, since he sticks to the project format, the explicit reason why Bourdieu was so critical against him.

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The asymmetrical exploitation of the reduction: extending the analysis of domination

When at least two persons are involved, A can asymmetrically exploit the substantialist reduction, deliberately taking advantage of it at the expense of B. In order for the reduction to be beneficial to him, A shows "bad faith" i.e. only faith in the guaranteed side, but bad faith because of his intent to deceive. He manifests the one-sided confidence in order to induce B in the same stance. In some more or less formal agreement—depending on the regime of engagement—A communicates B, possibly implicitly, that he counts on this guaranteed side: worthy qualification, good will or little routine. In the second operation, A takes for granted this one side as a fact, assuming that it is established without any questioning. In the third operation, A makes out of it a property of B who is thus trapped in this facticity. B is assumed a fixed conventional quality without concern for the dynamics of the situation, or a fixed project without any demand for revision in its achievement, or a fixed routine ability without the slightest accommodating to the surroundings. How does A "exploits" this substantialist reduction? Quite simply, he plays on the two faces of the engagement. He remembers for his own benefit all that was forgotten in the three reductive operations. For his own sake he takes full advantage of the opening side of the engagement while relying on the entrapped other, locked in the prima facie of the engagement as if there were no opening for inquietude and dynamics of revision. A is an "exploiter", or more precisely exploiteur in a former meaning of the French term pointing to the one who abuses, for his one profit, the trust of someone else. But the notion of "trust" is considerably enriched by the approach of the dynamics of engagement and their pluralism.Exploitation can remain invisible if A, well aware of the limited landmarks of the confidence engaged, uses profitably the room for maneuver that it leaves. Or bad faith can be cynically expressed in case A reproaches B not to have properly behaved. The reproach means that B did not open her conduct to convenient revisions as "it" was expected. In fact, "it" hides A's own expectations for the benefit of his maneuver. But, because of the former reduction to the face value of the engagement, there was no way to anticipate the need for revision. At the level of mutual familiarity engagement, this bad faith reduction is a very common feature of male domination when living with a partner although the reverse can happen in the alleged feminine bad faith.The maneuver can get more complex and involve several regimes of engagement. For instance, current organizational work will imply a cascade of regimes most of them, if not all, suffering from the substantialist reduction and being used for exploitation. A "agrees" with B that, for a conventionally qualified duty (publicly justifiable engagement) to be properly done, B will act normally, through normal actions (engaging in a plan), and even behave as she is in the habit of doing it, as usual, with her own little routine (familiar engagement), and possibly be watchful and vigilant to changes and new opportunities in an ever-changing environment (exploration engagement). Exploitation comes from the limited number of engagements among this cascade which are acknowledged with their two faces and opened to dynamical evaluation and thus, to remuneration. The "culture of audit" or omnipresent evaluation is actually hiding these limitations and ensuing exploitations. By analyzing the exploitation of the substantialist reduction, we can offer an new extension of the analysis of mechanisms of domination.

The encounter of the plurality of engagements: extending to oppression the domain of critiqueJust as the first pluralism of orders of worth arouses critical tensions between them as well as efforts for compromising, the second pluralism of engagements entails pressures from one regime to another. I use the word pressure rather than the phrase critical tension which suggests publicity. Troubling pressures can lead to the expression of inconvenience, but not necessarily through criticizing and arguing since the use of language and argument is unequally appropriate for the different regimes below the public engagements.

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Structural tyranny from one regime upon another

The tyranny of one regime upon another implies that one kind of good is stifled by anoother. The differentiation of regimes allows a systematic account of this source of pressure and of the resulting oppressions. Such pressures are not adequately grasped by the collective/individual or even public/private oppositions, since strain is neither a matter of aggregation, nor of trespassing. The pressure which a regime puts on another discredits the realistic confidence engaged, and prejudices the good pursued. Moreover the public/private distinction is too dependent on the liberal architecture to capture the familiar engagement nor the pressure on it from the engagement in an individual plan which occupies an intermediary position with regard to the public. Benefiting the differentiation, we can analyze the consequences of the contemporary insistence on individual will, choice, consent or autonomy. It does not only eclipses the higher level of the common public, as Dewey rightfully noted. The format of individual project achievement relying on a functionally seized world puts also high pressure on the lower level of familiar accommodation. And since such attachments support self-confidence and has a strong part in the consistency of the person, the damage to this engagement causes more than discomfort or embarrassment, and results in humiliation. Fieldwork research based on this approach documented these pressures in a variety of domains of social change: welfare and health policies, workplace organization, life together in communities. These studies also brought to light the tyranny of most public regimes which discredit familiar attachments, as well as the reverse tyranny of close attachments which threatens the good of public engagements. The analytical framework of the second pluralism calls for an extension of current approaches to critique. Everyday critique which is explicitly oriented towards a public judgment relying on a qualified reality test, or sociological critique which leaves more implicit its normative basis, converge in assuming legitimate third party forms of evaluations of the good. By contrast with tensions stemming from the first pluralism of the orders of worth, which produce a main source of public criticism, the pressures resulting from the second pluralism of regimes do not immediately or invariably lead to such criticism since they lack a shared level of publicity. Revisions ensuing testing experience in non public regimes do not lead to a critical and argued reaction based on conventional qualification. In the engagement in plan, revision can be reported with oral, unqualified ordinary language which lacks the formal conventional control but, thanks to its embedded grammar of action, usually fits the format of planned action achieved with adjusted functionality. The material support for relevant information should be a tool or environment offering functional grip or clutch. They can be used by different actors to evaluate the achievement of the action in plan and the right functioning, without further conventional qualification. Public critique consisting in disqualification with respect to the common good is replaced by the critical assessment of dysfunction. In the familiarity engagement, the testing experience is more personalized and localized, depending on the path of familiarization. Disruption of confidence which lead to uneasiness. Embarrassment is not expressed in articulate language at first. Bodily gestures are appropriate ways of signaling the relevant information, initially for oneself, in the form of clues or indices which are spotted in the surroundings.

The art of composition in combining different regimes

The previous analysis brings to light structural pressions in social life which cannot be fully captured with the ongoing oppositions between collective and individual, or public and private. These tensions call for an extension of approaches to critique in order to grasp oppressions which are not yet ready to be expressed in public critique. The path from being affected in a familiar engagement with the world, to the engagement in public expression of critique, is arduous. It needs more transformations than the désingularisation or generalization as they are viewed from above, from the a public engagement. Viewed from below—in terms of the architecture of regimes—the succession of delicate transformations of

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engagements needed to pass from oppression to public critique is more demanding with respect to the dispositions of the world and of the person. One of the output of breaking up an architecture of regimes is to highlight the conversions which are required to shift from familiar self-trust to public guarantee, and the intermediate situation of self-assurance in the achievement of individual plan. This extension brings new light on vulnerability, capability and empowerment . It concerns also the reverse path from public and conventionalized engagements or judgments to taking care of the most familiar attachments of the person. Many different kinds of professionals working with particularly vulnerable persons have to follow successfully this equally arduous path. Thus, the structural pressures of one regime on another have to be overcome in social life which repeatedly requires human beings already engaged to move on to another engagement, the shift from one to the other demanding to combine them relatively smoothly. The watchful combination of several regimes, when careful attention is paid to the potential pressures between them, leads to what I will call the "art of composition" in putting them together in a way that locally and temporally lowers the respective pressures.

3. SOCIAL CHANGE, CRITIQUE AND THEORYTurning to the relation between social change, critique and theory, I will now question the contribution to critique and to understanding change which each of the three different frameworks brings. As mentioned before, sociologists approach critique in different ways: #1 by analyzing everyday critical activities; #2 by discovering structural constraints or mechanisms which weigh on these activities without actors being clearly aware of them; #3 by directly participating such activities. I shall here concentrate on the second kind of contribution. It participates the program of critical theory inasmuch as the return on the investment of the analytical detour is beneficial to public critique: it reveals mechanisms which remained previously outside the scope of this critique. Bourdieu underlines this detour by referring to "objective structure" and the needed break with everyday knowledge. His theory exposes mechanisms of domination which uphold illusory beliefs and thus hamper critique of abusive power. Dewey is more oriented towards improving the achievements of experimental critical judgment in human conduct and public problems, than towards unveiling structural obstacles which maintain domination. He discloses many illusory beliefs, as the one in the "naked individual" and "isolated, private consciousness" and the ensuing "eclipse of the public". He finds some causal mechanism in the fact that the public "does not stay in place", the "accelerate mobility" disturbing "abiding attachment". This difference with Bourdieu suggests splitting the #2 approach of critique which discovers structural constraints or mechanisms into two variants: #2.1 exposing hidden obstacles to critique without relating them to the perpetuation of abusive power and #2.2 demonstrating also this last relation. One of the outcomes of the comparison between the three theoretical frameworks is to offer a broader perspective on social change and oppression which benefits from an enlarged view on critique. It should include a variety of critical tension and troubles of trying experiences or testing times which remain mute and below the public, resolve in various kinds of alterations, lead to search and creative problem-solving, or find their path to public criticism. It should also embrace mechanism which can be exploited to maintain unquestioned asymmetries of power.We can sketch out this comparison reefing to broad domains of social, political and economic change on which the three considered social theories inspired a large amount of research, and on which I also have run empirical collective research program. The first one deals with welfare and education policies in action or practice, together with participative democracy dynamics The second deals with the regulation of policies and politics including economical ones, and the investments in standardization and evaluation tools which are implemented for the coordination of action. We have studied both theses domain in France but also in a comparative perspective with other European countries, and with the US in some cases,

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aiming at a view on differences and global changes. Each domain undergoes massive changes and questions social theories about their ability to deal with them.

Welfare and educational policies, participative democracyA lot of research inspired by Bourdieu's theory has been devoted to educational and social work. The reason is that professionals occupied in these domains have been particularly targeted by the unveiling of the symbolic violence they exert. Inculcating the values of the dominant class and bringing discredit on working-class culture, they are pointed out as unconscious agents of the reproduction of domination. As such, they are considered as members of a specific socio-occupational category, "professions intermediaries". As a matter of fact, Alain Desrosières and Laurent Thévenot created a new category with this design when they were revising the French socio-occupational classification (Desrosières et Thévenot 1988). This unveiling would certainly challenge Dewey's claim that professions of education and social work actively contribute to educating for a more participative democracy. More generally, Bourdieu's critical sociology is highly suspicious towards claims for democracy and, as a result, discloses strong limitations on these pretensions. For example he stated that the democratization of the French educational system did not change significantly the reproduction of domination because of the devaluation of diplomas and reorientation on selective curricula. With the analysis of the "noblesse d'Etat", he points to the reproduction of an elite class through socialization from their milieu to personal bonds forged in grandes écoles. Actually this unveiling converges with the actors' denunciation of the hidden transportation of Domestic worth into the realm of Civic worth. More generally this critical sociology points to the monopolizing of representative positions by the same persons which consequently do not represent their constituency. In addition, intellectuals, political experts and intermediaries involved in the promoters of participative democracy are frequently members of the dominated fraction of the dominant class and their activity has few impact on the "overall field of power", by contrast to those who have in their possession economic capital. This critical sociology is mainly dedicated to debunking claims of democratization or of social change which hides conversion of capital and perpetuation of domination. With this specialization, it is highly valuable in pushing further the critical stance.Dewey's contribution to this domain is completely different. It might even seem, at first sight, opposed to the previous one and certainly is, in some aspects. Dewey's developments on non authoritarian relationships and learning have had large influence on research, training courses and practice in the domains of education, social work and participative democracy. These are the key domains to which he expects his philosophy to contribute, in fostering the critical construction of options and values within the process of inquiry and search. As mentioned before, his notion of critique is mainly issued from the scientific and experimental method. As such, it does not directly relate to critical tensions coming from the denunciation of abusive powers, and the interplay between different orders in particular. In terms of orders of worth, his contribution has a strong bias in favor of the Industrial worth because of the way he conceives the reality test in the process of inquiry and investigation, and even the contribution of the social sciences. The Civic worth is also a main reference for his politics, in a combination with an additional impetus that we can refer to Inspiration worth and explorative engagement below the public judgment. One can still find this combination in contemporary social work, cared-giving organization and participative democracy with the imperative of "stretching one's comfort zone".12

12 I am indebted to Nina Eliasoph for this suggestion and the remarkable ethnography and analysis that she has conducted on one of these social work and educational programs in a care-giving organization (Eliasoph forthcoming). For a comparative perspective with French welfare policies, based on the sociology of engagement regimes, see: Thévenot 2008.

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Without coming again to what was previously stated on Boltanski and Thévenot' sociology of critique, I would concentrate on the second pluralism which brings new light on the domain here at stake. Regarding welfare policies, empirical research based on the differentiation of engagements shows that professional have to deal with the whole range of regimes, in their effective task of accompanying the path of vulnerable persons, from the familiar confidence and attachments that have to be maintained, to the engagement in a plan supporting projects, to the public requirement of qualification tests following different orders of worth (Market, Industrial, Civic). The most delicate, trying and skillful aspect of their work consists in their "art of composition" mentioned before which implies to integrate these different engagements while preventing the tyranny of one of them and the oppressions on another (Breviglieri, Stavo-Debauge, Pattaroni 2003; Breviglieri, Stavo-Debauge 2006). Social workers who come at home face the same complex situation. They have the duty to enforce regulations and standards and refer to legal officers in case of infringement. But they do not stick to these public and conventional engagements. They usually also implement "contractual" agreements relying on individual "projects" through which attended persons are suppose to empower and gain autonomy, and which involve the formalization of an engagement in plan. Although these two regimes are mostly the only ones to be taken into account in the professional assignments, a good professional has to integrate the third regime of familiar engagement. Obviously the social worker should not mutually engage in such a regime and become intimate or close friend with the attended person. But he has to asymmetrically take into account the required familiar accommodation to surroundings which supports the primordial ease and self-confidence of the person, and usually infringes for this purpose some of the regulations or even contractual engagements. "Care" is the category to deal with such a relation. The feminist literature on the subject has fruitfully brought to the fore this poorly recognized relation. But efforts to blur the public/private boundary for the right cause of care recognition bears the risk to ignore tensions between regimes that result from integrating familiar engagement within professional and highly regulated duties. The institutionalization of care raises such tensions (Pattaroni 2005).Dewey's main focus on the individual freedom of choice and its enrichment by participating to the public does not account for such an intricate composition. The requirement of the liberal public made of autonomous individuals can produce hard critiques towards the behaviors of social workers or educators because of their "mothering" which hampers this autonomy. And yet these professional might appear to be much more successful than volunteers who better fit the project format (Eliasoph forthcoming). The structural tension between engagement in plan an familiar engagement is here again at stake. In addition to this, the need for measurement and accounting, which is part of Dewey's inquiry requirements and involves heavy instruments of Industrial qualification, puts high pressure on the engagements which are crucial in care-giving organizations. The quoted research demonstrates such oppressions.Research done in France and Belgium on arenas prepared for local participative democracy also demonstrates the centrality of this art of composition. The unequal access to public speech which undermines participative democracy, and which Bourdieu's critical sociology rightly underlines, is also the consequence of these structural pressions between different regimes and information formats. In order to make place to and welcome non expert voices, both the material and human dispositions involved in participative democracy should be carefully prepared to accommodate familiar format without bringing discredit upon them or, conversely, corrupting the needed publicity of the debate. "Translations" or "transformations" from a familiar format to a public one are currently far too reductive to prevent oppressions. Again the profession of "mediator" has to develop a refined art of composition.If I come back now to the issue of socio-occupational categorization tackled before, I would now suggest to adopt another design and to partially reconfigure the "Professions intermediaries" category. Instead of exclusively focusing on the "intermediary" position

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between dominant and dominated classes and the role of intermediary in the reproduction of domination, I would rather bring together all the professions who confront the most delicate task of artfully combining these different engagements, from conventional qualifications to close proximity. Skills required for these professions are needed to cope with difficulties which are not circumstantial, but part of the most challenging requirement of living together in a democratic community of diversely attached persons.

Regulations and standards, changing loci and forms of powerWhile the previous issues would currently be named social and political, the ones I turn now to would rather be viewed as economical. However, one of the challenges to research that recent societal changes raise is precisely the connection between these different domains owing to the spread of transversal regulative tools, which I called "governing with standards" (Thévenot 1997). These instruments of governance build equivalences and evaluations and belong to the family of investments in forms and conventions, the reason why I have paid attention to them for a long time. Their development can be factually related to the expansion of markets and to globalization which require coordination devices more transversal than are national regulations. In addition, the velocity of technical change is supposed to lead firms to agree on such standards for reasons of compatibility, in the continuation of the ones they already established internally. These tools are part of alleged "horizontal" coordination between firms, and between firms and customers. These devices are currently conceived as mostly technical. This view is misleading since they entail significant displacement of loci of power which thus remain largely invisible, and broadly escape the requirements of public democratic deliberation. Standardizing conventions continue the regulatory framework provided by law but by other means, down to the level of locally enforced good practices.Bourdieu's social theory is highly concerned by the place of symbolic tools in domination, from classifications to law. Because of its anchoring in French society, it allows a central place to the State in upholding these tools. Bourdieu encapsulates his argument in one of his condensed formula: the State is the central bank of the symbolic capital. His critical analysis of symbolic forms can extend to international regulations and the analysis of law professionals with their international links accounts for the homogenization of legal features used in domination. The disclosure of professional interests and specific struggle in their field offers an alternative picture which departs from the impersonal form. However, it does not account for the specific characters of standard based government.I mentioned before that Dewey is much less suspicious than Bourdieu towards conventions. He defends them against accusations of their being enemies of freedom and finds in them means to secure freedom in action. One can read in Dewey a remarkable motto for a research program on our subject : "It is not the facts which have changed, but the methods of insurance, regulation and acknowledgment" (Dewey 1929 [1925]). However such a research program demands additional analytical tools to characterize precisely these changes and the resulting metamorphoses of guarantees and associated powers. To put it shortly, here are a few significant characteristics which can be clarified by a pluralistic approach of engagements.(i) Although standard-setting procedures and committees offer the opportunity to contrast and confront different specifications of the common good and orders of worth (Industrial, Market, Civic, Renown and Inspiration), the outcome is a quality, qualification or certification. This encapsulation of a plurality of engagements in the thing in itself is a requirement for the extension of Market coordination which assumes that goods (merchandises) and their quality are common knowledge. As a consequence the Market worth is placed in a superordinate position with regards to other orders of worth which are reduced to qualities of the market goods and not conflicting claims for the common good, on the same level as the Market worth

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of competition. Thus market convention of coordination integrates a plurality of other conventions at a lower level and in the reduced form of objective qualities.This reduction of engagement into the measurable properties of separated entities is a clear case of the "substantialist reduction" that I analyzed before, disclosing the exploitation mechanism associated with it.(ii) The "governing with standards" move is not only market-worthy and market-driven. It can be positively evaluated with respect to the construction of the public (good) according to political liberalism. Then the issue is not market competition which requires the common knowledge identification—quality—of market goods, but freedom of individual choice. The change in the domain of regulations marked by the expansion of standardization and certification can thus be presented as some sort of individual "liberation", and be supported by the critique against abusive power of centralized and hierarchical regulations. We reach here the paradoxical aspect of the ongoing change : more standardization for more individualization.13 In fact "choice" requires the preliminary consolidation of options, the formatting of a range of plans in between which one is chosen: the prerequisite of individual choice is engagement in a plan. This liberal political construction necessitates the infrastructure of well formatted autonomous options. When applied to welfare, educational or health policies, this formatted options are hard to obtain since professional services are to include care for familiar attachments, as we have seen before. When studying safety standards, I could already analyze the difficulty raised by familiar uses to the standardization process which demands, at least, functional engagement in a plan, in order to devise the testing procedures. Consequently, standardization dramatically downplays and oppresses the familiarity engagement, or relies on routine (Breviglieri 2004), the result of substantialist reduction of this engagement.(iii) Since it privileges the level of engaging in a plan, governing with standard reduces both the appeal to, an debate on, the upper level of the plurality of orders of worth or specifications of the common good, and the opening to the lower level of familiar engagement and attachments. This limitation corresponds to a general move in the way policies are evaluated nowadays by targeted "objectives" and functional factors. Public critique as a disqualification with respect to the common good is replaced by critical assessment of dysfunction. Even European law has undergone a similar transformation with the expansion of the notion of "directive" which targets an objective.This limitation fosters the confusion between a guarantee—always dependant to the specification of some kind of good and open to inquietude—and a fact. Certification is becoming pure measurement. The deep movement of "evidence-based policy" now reaching Europe after the US is typical of this confusion. And the ensuing "hard facts" orientation is striving to shroud all the benefits brought to the understanding of measurement, quantification and qualification by the non relativist constructivist approaches here considered, and the science studies.

CONCLUSIONFor the sake of the comparison between the three approaches I contrasted one with another. In conclusion, I would rather point to what they share in spite of their differences, and to the reasons why they could effectively join their forces, particularly in the present hostile context of naturalistic and scientist reductionism.(i) The three orientations undoubtedly bring to the fore "practice". They stress the primordial significance of habituation in our experience of the material as well as social world. Dewey bases his theory on the dynamical adaptation of organisms "interacting" with the environment

13 In contradiction to Arendt's diagnoses of simple mass standardization. I ironically coined the paradoxical conjunction of standardization and individualization, "les standards de la liberté" playing with the phrase "l'étendard de la liberté" (standard of liberty) which reminds us that a standard is, originally, the flag raised as a rallying point

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(and not only with other human beings). Bourdieu bases his theory on habituated practice, habitus, which encapsulates fundamental knowledge and ethos. In Boltanski and Thévenot even the critical and justificatory involvement in actions submitted to public judgment and argumentation are viewed, by contrast to Habermas, in their practicalities i.e. the actual experience of the situation instead of purely discursive debates about normative ideals. The most personalized and localized aspects of a dynamic habituation are capture by the regime of familiar engagement.Thus the three approaches oppose the reduction to rational choice theory and, all the more, to the homo œconomicus optimization calculus. However, none of them ignores the place of rationality in human action under certain conditions, and the place of calculus once appropriate tools have been made available for it.(ii) The three orientations are strongly constructivists, without being relativists for different reasons. Dewey claims a naturalist ground for the whole process of reflexively constructing facts and values, Bourdieu has a strong "positivist" tendency which counterbalances the relativist aspects of his constructivism. Boltanski and Thévenot's notion of qualification integrates the reality test with the construction of worthy equivalences, while regimes of engagement differentiates kinds of realism, or confidence in reality.Thus, they offer together, and with their mixed descendants, the strongest critical tools to unveil the naturalistic or evidence-based simplistic reductions that spread again nowadays in a kind of fundamentalist comeback of Purified and Standardized Factuality. (iii) The three approaches bear a strong political and critical stance. Again they differ in their contribution to critique and I tried to show. Dewey primarily refers to the scientific and methodical model of critical experience and proposes to extend it to issues of politics and values. In addition to this method, he actually promotes a political model of the community which, although clearly liberal with regard to the place of individual freedom, requires a demanding participative stance with the idea that this participation should be enriching to the individual and the community simultaneously. This demanding political credo was not always transmitted in his legacy among sociologists (Stavo-Debauge et Trom 2004). Dewey has been deeply committed to he enforcement of such a model, particularly by means of education during all lifetime. Bourdieu's critical sociology is certainly less confident about human nature and critical capacities. Its suspicion against power abuse arouses the repeated debunking of illusory beliefs, and encourages a radical resistance to dominant ideologies. Bourdieu would certainly allow more place to rebellion than Dewey who has severe words about it, limiting his evaluation to learning, which is characteristic of his philosophy: "[Rebellion] contains the possibility of learning something. Yet learning by this method is immensely expensive. The costs are incalculable" (Dewey 1930 [1922])Boltanski and Thévenot's sociology addresses everyday critique and makes explicit the grounds for criticizing a variety of power abuse. It takes seriously the requirements of a public critical debate and its realist ground, while pointing to abuses. It is more inclined than the other two to contrast the institutional or conventional "closing one's eyes" with the "opening one's eyes" of critical doubt. With Thévenot's extension of the "second pluralism", public critique can be situated within a range of reactions to the feeling of oppression, from mute humiliation to the outburst of violence, from words of anger to argued statements. I also indicated that, as Bourdieu's critical theory, this sociology of engagements disclose mechanism of substantive reduction which can lead to an extended approach to domination and exploitation.

Although the three approaches are grounded in different footings, their political implications converge to oppose the evolution of social sciences into a division of specialized and limited expert labor which would discard their contribution to critique and the analysis of its limitations.

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There are good reasons for disagreement between the tenants of these different approaches: generational, cultural and, obviously, theoretical. Some reasons are actually bad reason, as the lack of explicit and open discussion and bad faith added to it. But after all, time might have come to carry on a fair, informed and argued discussion in order to rally converging forces in a moment when the sciences of human behavior are threaten by backward movements and strong attacks against the legacies of these constructivist and non relativist theories.

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