A vital and underappreciated dimension of social interaction is the way individuals justify their actions to others, instinctively drawing on their experience to appeal to principles they hope will command respect. Individuals, however, often misread situations, and many disagreements can be explain[...]

Abortion is a contentious issue in social life but it has rarely been subjected to careful scrutiny in the social sciences. While the legalization of abortion has brought it into the public domain, it still remains a sensitive topic in many cultures, often hidden from view and rarely spoken [...]

People care a great deal about justice. They protest and engage in confrontations with others when their sense of justice is affronted or disturbed. When they do this, they don't generally act in a strategic or calculating way but use arguments that claim a general validity. Disputes are commonly re[...]

The relationship between sociology and social critique has haunted the discipline since its origins. Does critique divert sociology from its scientific project? Or is critique the ultimate goal of sociology, without which the latter would be a futile activity disconnected from the concerns of ordina[...]

A pathbreaking new book by one of the world's leading sociologists. The book is a study of the rise of detective novels and spy novels in the 19th and 20th centuries, and Boltanski shows that these genres tell us something important about the nature of modern societies and the modern state.[...]

In this major work, sociologists Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello go to the heart of the changes in contemporary business culture. Via an unprecedented analysis of the latest management texts that have formed the thinking of employers in their reorganization of business, the authors trace the contour[...]

Lyxkonsumtion, Stureplansbrats, medelklass och överklass diskuteras allt flitigare. Samtidigt har den partipolitiska borgerligheten tagit över regeringsmakten. Men vad innebär det att tala om borgerlighet i dagens Sverige? Vilka tillhör denna sociala kategori och vad utmärker den? Och var går [...]