Paul DU GAY & Glenn MORGAN (2013) New Spirits of Capitalism? Crises, Justifications and Dynamics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Abstract

Du Gay and Morgan’s edited collection offers a thorough volume focusing on The New Spirit of Capitalism (NSC), a book published in France in 1999 and translated into English in 2005. There is no doubt that New Spirits of Capitalism? Crises, Justifications and Dynamics is a timely landmark work among the growing body of organization studies inspired by approaches developed in the field of French pragmatist sociology (Jagd, 2011; Patriotta, Gond & Schultz, 2011; Cloutier & Langley, 2013; see also the M@n@gement special issue with Dansou & Langley, 2012; Taupin, 2012). This is particularly due to the fact that, as noted by the editors, Boltanski and Chiapello’s seminal work is a weighty tome that presents several complex contributions to domains as diverse as sociology, political economy, social history, social critique etc. Whilst elucidating one theoretical approach stemming from that articulated in Boltanski and Thévenot’s On Justification (published in France in 1991, eight years before NSC but translated into English in 2006), Du Gay and Morgan also take the opportunity to clarify the approach of the French pragmatist sociology (also termed sociology of critical practices or sociology of critique), which is often misunderstood. With New Spirits of Capitalism?