Laurent Thévenot’s Sociology of Regimes of Engagement and Grammars of Commonality

As co-author of On justification (Boltanski and Thévenot 2006) and one of the founding fathers of the economics and sociology of conventions, Laurent Thévenot is a key figure throughout this handbook. However, while his texts of the 1980s and 1990s continue to be relevant, Thévenot has, since then, been developing a new distinct research program: the sociology of regimes of engagement (in short SRE). Engagement refers to the investments human beings carry out to ensure coordination with oneself and the world surrounding them and it points to the trying situations they are faced with in doing so. Regimes refers to the mapping of four formats of engagement: engaging in justification, plans, familiarity and in exploration. Later, Thévenot added an additional layer to the framework by conceptualizing three grammars of commonality coining different formats of expressing concerns and forming commonality with others. The purpose of this chapter is to provide an introduction to the complex theoretical model and its concepts. On the one hand, the chapter argues that SRE should be seen as in continuation of the program of the pragmatic sociology of critique, morality and everyday politics that he put forward together with Luc Boltanski. On the other hand, the chapter shows that SRE constitutes an original move from a specific sociology of critique to a much broader social theory of action and what it means to be human. Thus, the sociology deserves comparison with theories with similar ambitions.