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1 – 10 of over 1000This chapter reconsiders commonly held views on the ownership and management of private property, contrasting capitalist and simple property, particularly in relation to how a…
Abstract
Purpose
This chapter reconsiders commonly held views on the ownership and management of private property, contrasting capitalist and simple property, particularly in relation to how a firm shareholder governance model has shaped society. This consideration is motivated by the scale and scope of the modern global crisis, which has combined financial, economic, social and cultural dimensions to produce world disenchantment.
Methodology/approach
By contrasting an exchange value standpoint with a use value perspective, this chapter explicates current conditions in which neither the state nor the market prevail in organising economic activity (i.e. cooperative forms of governance and community-created brand value).
Findings
This chapter offers recommendations related to formalised conditions for collective action and definitions of common guiding principles that can facilitate new expressions of the principles of coordination. Such behaviours can support the development of common resources, which then should lead to a re-appropriation of the world.
Practical implications
It is necessary to think of enterprises outside a company or firm context when reflecting on the end purpose and means of collective, citizen action. From a methodological standpoint, current approaches or studies that view an enterprise as an organisation, without differentiating it from a company, create a deadlock in relation to entrepreneurial collective action. The absence of a legal definition of enterprise reduces understanding and evaluations of its performance to simply the performance by a company. The implicit shift thus facilitates the assimilation of one with the other, in a funnel effect that reduces collective projects to the sole projects of capital providers.
Originality/value
Because forsaking society as it stands is a radical response, this historical moment makes it necessary to revisit the ideals on which modern societies build, including the philosophy of freedom for all. This utopian concept has produced an ideology that is limited by capitalist notions of private property.
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Guillaume Delalieux and Arno Kourula
Le premier qui, ayant enclos un terrain, s'avisa de dire: “Ceci est à moi” et trouva des gens assez simples pour le croire, fut le vrai fondateur de la société civile. Que de…
Abstract
Le premier qui, ayant enclos un terrain, s'avisa de dire: “Ceci est à moi” et trouva des gens assez simples pour le croire, fut le vrai fondateur de la société civile. Que de crimes, de guerres, de meurtres, que de misères et d'horreurs n'eût point épargnés au genre humain celui qui, arrachant les pieux et comblant le fossé, eût crié à ses semblables: “Gardez-vous d’écouter cet imposteur; vous êtes perdus et vous oubliez que les fruits sont à tous, et que la terre n'est à personne!– J.J. Rousseau (Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité parmi les hommes, 1755)The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying ‘This is mine’, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this imposter; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.–J. J. Rousseau (Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité parmi les hommes, 1755, translated by G. D. H. Cole)
The main purpose of this essay is to reflect on the nature of justification. To this end, the analysis draws on Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot’s De la justification. Les…
Abstract
The main purpose of this essay is to reflect on the nature of justification. To this end, the analysis draws on Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot’s De la justification. Les économies de la grandeur 1 [On Justification: Economies of Worth 2 ]. More specifically, the article aims to examine the extent to which Boltanski and Thévenot’s conceptual framework, widely known as ‘the sociology of critical capacity’, 3 permits us to demonstrate that processes of justification 4 are vital to the symbolically mediated construction – that is, to both the conceptual and the empirical organization 5 – of social life. In order to prove the validity of this contention, the inquiry explores the meaning of ‘justification’ in relation to the following dimensions: (1) existence, (2) ethics, (3) justice, (4) perspective, (5) presuppositions, (6) agreement, (7) common worlds, (8) critique, (9) practice and (10) justification itself. By way of conclusion, the article maintains that processes of justification constitute an essential ingredient of human reality.
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Nicolas Brisset, Raphaël Fèvre and Pierre Jean
This chapter aims to address the question of the evolution of economists’s reception of Marxism in France, and thus to complete the more general history of the development of…
Abstract
This chapter aims to address the question of the evolution of economists’s reception of Marxism in France, and thus to complete the more general history of the development of Marxism among French academics. To do so, we follow the relationship to Marx’s work of the economist François Perroux, a priori typical of the reversal reception of Marxist ideas in the 1950s, moving from open hostility to enthusiasm. Indeed, an incisive critic of Marx’s writings before the war, then head of the scientific institution of the Vichy regime, Perroux became in the postwar period a leading figure in the diffusion of Marx’s ideas in France. He founded the ISMEA (Institute of Mathematical and Applied Economic Sciences) which published the journal Études de marxologie, and eventually penned the preface to Marx’s economic works in 1963 for the Pléiade. By following this sinuous path, we show that the way Perroux related to Marx’s work helps us shed light on the various shifts in Perroux’s relationship to the science and politics of his time.
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Annie Cornet and François Fatoux
The aim of this chapter is to take stock of the aspect of the social concertation in the framework of policies of diversity management. It rests in particular on the work of a…
Abstract
The aim of this chapter is to take stock of the aspect of the social concertation in the framework of policies of diversity management. It rests in particular on the work of a commission created by the AFMD (French Association of Diversity Managers), in partnership with ORSE (a French Societal Observatory). The commission has involved several larges French companies and organised meetings between the representatives of the different employers’ and workers’ organisations. Another source is the numerous actions led by the Labour Unions in Belgium in the framework of the Consortium Diversité Wallonie, which exists since 2007. This study tries to remind some objectives of social concertation in regards to policies of diversity management, to take stock of the legal constraints on concertation in regards to particular targets, to show the multiple conceptions of this notion of diversity management among social partners, to give an overview of the content of the agreements, and to present the steps of a social concertation sensible to diversity.
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Stéphane Héas and Patrice Régnier
Nowadays, several processes help organize scholarly work about sport and physical activities in France. These include professional development activities of sport and leisure…
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Nowadays, several processes help organize scholarly work about sport and physical activities in France. These include professional development activities of sport and leisure organizations; cultural innovations within sports and physical activities, which involve new spaces with new technologies; questions of public health; and questions of inclusion for marginal groups such as handicapped persons. Questions of power are important to understand each sport situation and each sport sociocultural, economic, and ecologic system. Behind the political and institutional instrumentalization of sport, the reality of social and cultural changes is rarely clear. Strong social, cultural, and economic forces continue to govern sports and seem to be more and more prominent. When sport scandals emerge, the media reveal the case, notably but not exclusively in the context of commercial interests. The possibility for a caring and respectful physical education experience and to improve inclusion for all (Gardou, C. (2012). La société inclusive, parlons-en! Toulouse: Erès) seems like an uphill battle.
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