Papers by Isabelle Darmon
Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy, 2024
Attention to inequality is increasingly taking centerstage in the fight against climate change an... more Attention to inequality is increasingly taking centerstage in the fight against climate change and environmental devastation. More and more scholars and activists emphasize the need to put the reduction of inequality at the core of environmental and climate politics, and more and more propose a (socially just) "sufficiency" approach and politics to do so. Just sufficiency is class as structured not only by exploitation, but also, crucially by dispossession and status hierarchization. Adopting a nexus approach to inequality and unsustainability offers a critical theoretical method that can hopefully shift the assessments and orientations of the sufficiency movement away from the moral terrain of self-limitation (whose self?) toward the class politics of limits on capital needed today for socio-ecological transformation.
Undisciplined Environments, 2022
Through green rankings and their strategies for sustainability and climate virtue, universities a... more Through green rankings and their strategies for sustainability and climate virtue, universities are attracting and reproducing wealth, thus driving high consumption – which paradoxically brings about more climate change and unsustainability. Only attending to inequalities can universities begin to do away with the carbon fetish and start working for actual sustainability, a message which university staff, embarked on a 10-day UK-wide strike against deteriorating employment conditions and cuts in pensions, and students, who have their own strike for education on the 2nd of March, need to make loud and clear!
Cuadernos de Teoria Social, 2020
155 sección especial r e s u m e n Esta sección abre un espacio para la reflexión en torno a dive... more 155 sección especial r e s u m e n Esta sección abre un espacio para la reflexión en torno a diversos puntos de las crisis globales y locales que nos afectan en el contexto de esta pandemia. A continuación, presentamos un grupo de textos breves abordando diferentes escenarios sociales durante y después del impacto global del Covid-19. pa l a b r a s c l av e Pandemia, Covid-19, tiempos críticos, crisis COVID-19: Tiempos críticos en tiempos de pandemia Varios autores 156 sección especial a b s t r a c t This section opens a space for reflection on various points of the global and local crises that affects us in the context of this pandemic. Below, we present a group of brief texts addressing different social scenarios during and after the global impact of Covid-19. k e y w o r d s Pandemic, Covid-19, critical times, crisis COVID-19: Critical times in pandemic time Various authors 157 sección especial
Cultural Sociology, 2021
This paper proposes a possible path for a materialist cultural sociology of art, focusing on the ... more This paper proposes a possible path for a materialist cultural sociology of art, focusing on the dynamics of art(s) domains and harnessing Adorno’s dialectical notion of material anew. I seek to establish links between dynamics of the arts domains and the fostering of specific modes of engagement with them – and, potentially, stances in other domains of life. I argue that a return to Adorno’s notion of (musical) material allows for such connections to be made: the ‘material’ is where the dynamics of the specific arts domains are inscribed; but it is also what is engaged with – by composers and artists as well as by interprets, performers and publics. A dialectical material lens seems well suited for the critical study of the dynamic of arts domains in the 20th and 21st centuries, given the multiple artistic ‘breaks’ proclaimed. Focusing on some well-known movements in music and cuisine which sought to ‘emancipate’, ‘democratise’, ‘diversify’ sounds, and flavours, I analyse the processes through which they produced sound and flavour anew. I suggest that sounds and flavours themselves have become the carriers of logics relevant to music and cuisine, and that they have come to imperiously command modes of commitment (from composers and chefs, performers, listeners and diners alike) that evince specific stances. Through this necessarily sketchy survey, I provide indications that broader, cross-cutting cultural dynamics may be at stake. Overall I seek to make clear what theoretical steps are afforded by the joint attention to materiality and the dynamic of art domains.
British Journal of Sociology, 2018
This paper examines processes of habit reshuffling and change in different contexts of household ... more This paper examines processes of habit reshuffling and change in different contexts of household formation, looking specifically at habits regarding eating and commensality. It is based on a study of 14 couples, each with one English and one French partner, half of whom live in France, half in England. We examine the interplay between partners, their determination to eat together as a couple, and the various ‘orders’ associated with their commensal pact (diets, routines, extra-marital commensality), both when they start as couples and as parents of young children. We draw on the specificity of cross-national couple experience to cast light on processes of adjustment – to one another, and to the new country of residence for the migrant partner. In particular, we explore the potential of notions of ‘split’ and ‘solid’ ‘patrimonies of incorporated habits’, ‘re-shuffling’ of habits and dispositions, and ‘habit memory’, to characterise the dynamics of habits at play in each of the orders under scrutiny. Overall, the paper contributes to the analysis of habit as the ‘stuff’ of orders of everyday life.
This article examines changes in tastes and practice in the context of establishing and maintaini... more This article examines changes in tastes and practice in the context of establishing and maintaining a new cross-national couple relationship. Interviews provided accounts of the experience of change among fourteen Anglo-French couples. We describe two processes of change which, because accentuated in cross-national couples, reveal mechanisms lying behind the transformation and stabilisation of tastes and diets. Explanation of the evolution of taste and diet can be found in the interplay between aesthetic and ethical drives, incorporated bodily practices, and social mechanisms of legitimation and integration. To make sense of gustatory and dietary change, tastes are best understood through their insertion in meaningful sequences, patterns, and series.
(2016) 'Senses and sensibilities: stabilising and changing tastes in cross-national couples', Food, Culture & Society [accepted]
This article examines changes in tastes and practice in the context of establishing and maintaini... more This article examines changes in tastes and practice in the context of establishing and maintaining a new cross-national couple relationship. Interviews provided accounts of the experience of change among fourteen Anglo-French couples. We describe two processes of change which, because accentuated in cross-national couples, reveal mechanisms lying behind the transformation and stabilisation of tastes and diets. Explanation of the evolution of taste and diet can be found in the interplay between aesthetic and ethical drives, incorporated bodily practices, and social mechanisms of legitimation and integration. To make sense of gustatory and dietary change, tastes are best understood through their insertion in meaningful sequences, patterns, and series.
In this paper we explore the merits of interviews with bi-national couples about their eating hab... more In this paper we explore the merits of interviews with bi-national couples about their eating habits for casting light on cross-national comparison between foodways. In the context of an exploratory study looking at eating habits and change in France and Britain (England), we found that the experiences of cross-cultural couples and cross-national relocation were fruitful vehicles for the comparison of practices. Generally speaking, partners seeking to form a ‘commensal unit’ (Sobal et al., 2002) respond to varying and at times contradictory demands by setting up routines, drawing e.g. in alternated ways on cultural templates from the two countries. However, tensions are not always settled in such ordered ways. The present article studies breaks, shifts and ruptures with particular regard to cooking and lunch arrangements, as they reveal of wider pressures exerted on food practices in the two countries. Our analysis suggests that disorder and ruptures are part of the experience of the French culinary and alimentary ‘order’, whereas more polarised patterns of eating in the UK and related efforts to calculate and balance out the various functions assigned to food spur searches for consistency.
Introduction to the special issue Weber, the press and sociology, then and now
Max Weber Studies, Dec 2013
Weber on music: Approaching music as a dynamic domain of action and experience
Beneath and Beyond the Fragments: The Charms of Simmel's Philosophical Path for Contemporary Subjectivities
Theory, Culture & Society, 2012
Our purpose in this article is to explore the reasons for the continued attractiveness of Simmel’... more Our purpose in this article is to explore the reasons for the continued attractiveness of Simmel’s thought today and to probe the contemporary affinities to his philosophical stance towards the world. Simmel anchored the ‘philosophical attitude’ in the philosopher’s particularly developed disposition for Erlebnis, i.e. the unified pre-conceptual experience of each moment of reality and life, as well as in a particular mode of objectivating this experience. We provide an illustration of such an approach and its implications through Simmel’s analysis of ‘remoteness from oneself’ and the restlessness it entails in The Philosophy of Money. We argue that Simmel’s attempt at phenomenologically unveiling the contours and depths of life moments and fragments, as well as his emphasis on constant movement, provide much reassurance to contemporary subjectivities. But his philosophical stance is also driven by a quasi-mystical yearning for the One that lies beneath and beyond the fragments. We propose an initial assessment of the main implications of such a stance by relating it to the philosophical path it opened up (a path directly linking to Heidegger and his followers, but also in part to Deleuze) and by placing it in what we understand to be the new philosophical situation today.
This article takes issue with Luc Boltanski and Ève Chiapello's already classic thesis according ... more This article takes issue with Luc Boltanski and Ève Chiapello's already classic thesis according to which contemporary capitalism rests on a 'new spirit', bringing to bear a reading of Weber's own account of the dynamic and spirit of the contemporary capitalism of his age, and of the way in which it mobilises workers and entrepreneurs. More specifically the article highlights Weber's idea that advanced capitalism, far from relying on any 'new spirit', simply thrives by fostering 'pure adaptation' and both adequate and active 'economic subjects'. This is shown to be due, in particular, to the dynamic of rationality and irrationality at the heart of the spirit that turned capitalism into a mass system.
‘Conduct of conduct’ or the shaping of ‘adequate dispositions’? Labour market and career guidance in four European countries
Critical Social Policy, 2011
... proper understanding of what guidance is meant to do and what it does in a context of ongoing... more ... proper understanding of what guidance is meant to do and what it does in a context of ongoing 're-commodification' of labour (Frade and Darmon, 2006 ... to go back to the roots of the notions of conduct and the 'possibility of conduct', that is to say, to the thought of Max Weber, and ...
Max Weber's science of reality: types of human being and the possibility of life conduct in contemporary culture
Drawing critically on a line of interpretation opened by Wilhelm Hennis more than 20 years ago, t... more Drawing critically on a line of interpretation opened by Wilhelm Hennis more than 20 years ago, this thesis is concerned with Max Weber's notion of'human type'(Typus Mensch, Menschentum) and the way in which it enables to pose a philosophical question-what can ...
Actualité de la Formation …, 2007
Sociological Review, 2009
Este artículo presenta una investigación realizada en tres países europeos (Bélgica, Francia y Re... more Este artículo presenta una investigación realizada en tres países europeos (Bélgica, Francia y Reino Unido) sobre la formación profesional dirigida a los parados de larga duración. En ella se analiza la transformación de los centros de formación en intermediarios del mercado de trabajo, transformación defendida por los discursos oficiales sobre la activación de la protección social y por el enfoque de las «transiciones». Concretamente, la investigación muestra las demandas contradictorias que pesan sobre los centros de formación pues, si por un lado están obligados a ayudar a los parados más vulnerables, por otro, tienen que lograr buenos resultados de reinserción laboral. Para relajar la presión que genera esta contradicción, los centros llevan a cabo una labor clasificatoria entre los parados «empleables» y los «inempleables», convirtiéndose así en una pieza importante de los dispositivos de control de la empleabilidad y de la relegación de los «inempleables» a programas de rentas mínimas asistenciales y estigmatizantes.
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Papers by Isabelle Darmon