The economic sociology of late capitalism: The Contributions from Boltanski, Thévenot and Chiapello

Together with his colleagues Laurent Thévenot and Eve Chiapello, Luc Boltanski has written two books on the economic sociology of late capitalist society: De la justification. Les economies de la grandeur (1991; Paris: Gallimard; On Justification. The economics of worth) with the economist Thévenot from the Paris convention school and Le Nouvel Esprit du capitalism (The New Spirit of Capitalism) with Chiapello (1996; Paris: Gallimard). Together these books propose an economic sociology and analysis of the ethics of capitalism that we will briefly discuss and in this paper.