Concise aspects of the French Convention Theory

The French Convention School, also known as French Convention Theory (FCT), postulates the partial autonomy of social collectives with regard to individual agents. Another way to put it is that for FCT the society cannot be understood as the sum of its individual components. This methodological position is reflected in concepts such as 'methodological hol-individualism' (on which more to come), the 'auto-externality' of rules and more (on which more to come).

Laurent Thévenot is one of the main architects of FCT. Tommaso Vitale has created a Wikipedia page on Laurent Thévenot. See here for a recent paper from L. Thévenot. More literature.

Thévenot is most known for the plurality of worths (or legitimacies) he has identified with Luc Boltanski, as ultimate references used by humans for justifying themselves (market, inspiration, industrial etc). Another dimension of this work is more vertical and relies on the plurality of engagement regimes he has distinguished (from justification to familiarity). A major interest of the engagement regime concept is that it explains how humans interact differently with their environment, according to the regime through which they engage in the world. (more to come)

FCT is close to another French school of thought, usually considered as more macro-economic and structuralist, called the régulation theory.