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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 December 2017
The social sciences have much to gain by paying particular attention to the place that dispositifs occupy in social life. The utility of such a perspective is clear from an examination of the research that has made use of this notion since the end of the 1970s. Yet in addition to the wide variety of definitions and objectives relating to the concept of dispositif, a reading of these works also reveals some of the difficulties that have been encountered along the way. An effort to clarify and renew the discussion on both the conceptual and methodological levels is thus worthwhile, and this article is a contribution to that end. The first section sets out the results of our conceptual inquiry into the notion of dispositif. The second puts forward a series of propositions designed to develop a “processual” approach to dispositifs. Finally, we return to several studies that we have conducted from this perspective relating to the dispositifs of redress, looking at the doctrinal work of jurists around a criminal trial, the practices of lawyers in the courtroom, the reactions of victims of a medical scandal to a compensation fund, and the historical transformation of dispositifs of redress for medical accidents since the beginning of the nineteenth century. This enables us to clarify the approach we propose and to suggest new avenues for the future.
This article was translated from the French by Michael C. Behrent and edited by Chloe Morgan and Nicolas Barreyre.
We would like to thank the participants of the interuniversity program “Social Studies of Institutions” (Washington University in St. Louis, the University of Amsterdam, the EHESS), as well as Michel Grossetti, Liora Israël, and Christian Licoppe for their comments on early versions of this article.
1. For a first overview of this research, see Beuscart, Jean-Samuel and Peerbaye, Ashveen, “Histoires de dispositifs,” Terrains et travaux 11, no. 2 (2006): 3–15 Google Scholar; Laura Silva-Castañeda, “Revisiter le concept de dispositif. À partir d'un dialogue entre la sociologie pragmatique et la pensée foucaldienne,” Revue de l'Institut de sociologie (2012): 91–107. [The term dispositif is notoriously difficult to render into English, and a variety of not always satisfactory solutions have been adopted in translations of works dealing with the concept. To avoid adding to this confusion or to the list of lengthy translator's notes justifying particular choices, we have adopted the simplest solution and kept the French word. In the context of this article it should be understood as the most neutral choice possible in relation to the issues outlined on pages 303–4—Les Annales.]
2. Dodier, Nicolas, L'expertise médicale. Essai de sociologie sur l'exercice du jugement (Paris: Éd. Métailié, 1993)Google Scholar; Dodier, Les hommes et les machines. La conscience collective dans les sociétés technicisées (Paris: Éd. Métailié, 1995); Dodier, Leçons politiques de l’épidémie de sida (Paris: Éd. de l'Ehess, 2003); Barbot, Janine, Les malades en mouvements. La médecine et la science à l’épreuve du sida (Paris: Balland, 2002)Google Scholar.
3. Barbot, Janine and Dodier, Nicolas, “Rethinking the Role of Victims in Criminal Proceedings: Lawyers’ Normative Repertoire in France and the United States,” Revue française de science politique (English Edition) 64, no. 3 (2014): 23–49 Google Scholar; Barbot and Dodier, “Dealing with Compassion at Work: Strategic Reflexivity among Court Lawyers,” Sociologie du travail 57/English Supplement 1 (2015): e43–e62; Barbot and Dodier, “Victims’ Normative Repertoire of Financial Compensation: The Tainted hGH Case,” Human Studies 38, no. 1 (2015): 81–96; Barbot and Dodier, “Face à l'extension des indemnisations non judiciaires. Le cas des victimes d'un drame de santé publique,” Droit et société 89, no. 1 (2015): 89–103; Barbot, “La médecine en procès. Contribution sociologique à l'histoire de la réparation des accidents médicaux” (habilitation thesis, Université Pierre Mendès-France, Grenoble, 2016).
4. Our study explores different uses of the concept of dispositif in French-language social science research where authors conceptualize their use of the word.
5. This can mean taking a wide variety of elements into consideration. For “non-discursive” elements, see Foucault, Michel, “The Confession of the Flesh,” in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, ed. Gordon, Colin, trans. Gordon, Colin et al. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), 194–228 Google Scholar, here p. 197. For “material and machine-based” elements, see Naepels, Michel, “L’épiement sans trêve et la curiosité de tout,” L'homme 203/204 (2012): 77–102 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here p. 91. For “objects” (in the sense of material objects), see Boltanski, Luc and Thévenot, Laurent, On Justification: Economies of Worth [1991], trans. Porter, Catherine (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 16 Google Scholar. For “material devices,” see Callon, Michel and Muniesa, Fabien, “Economic Markets as Calculative Collective Devices,” Organization Studies 26, no. 8 (2005): 1229–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For “technologies,” see Weller, Jean-Marc, “Pourquoi parler de ‘dispositifs’ ? Le cas d'un centre d'accueil de personnes séropositives,” in Du politique dans les organisations. Sociologies des dispositifs de gestion, ed. Boussard, Valérie and Maugeri, Salvatore (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2003), 249–62Google Scholar, here p. 251. For “techniques” (such as measurements, calculations, the rule of law, and procedures) as they relate to the “social,” see Lascoumes, Pierre and Le Galès, Patrick, “Understanding Public Policy through its Instruments: From the Nature of Instruments to the Sociology of Public Policy Instrumentation,” Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration and Institutions 20, no. 1 (2007): 1–21 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here p. 4.
6. Callon, Michel, “Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen of St. Brieuc Bay,” in “Power, Action and Belief: A New Sociology of Knowledge?” ed. Law, John, Sociological Review Monograph Series 32/S1 (1986): 196–223 Google Scholar; Latour, Bruno, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers though Society (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987)Google Scholar.
7. One might recall Foucault's often-quoted formulation: “What I'm trying to pick out with this term is, firstly, a thoroughly heterogeneous ensemble consisting of discourses, institutions, architectural forms, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientific statements, philosophical, moral and philanthropic propositions—in short, the said as much as the unsaid. Such are the elements of the [dispositif].” Foucault, “The Confession of the Flesh,” 194.
8. Bernard Conein, Nicolas Dodier, and Laurent Thévenot, eds., Les objets dans l'action. De la maison au laboratoire (Paris: Éd. de l'Ehess, 1993).
9. Peeters, Hugues and Charlier, Philippe, “Contributions à une théorie du dispositif,” Hermès 25, no. 3 (1999): 15–23 Google Scholar.
10. Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977).
11. See, for example, the way Jacques Ion and Bertrand Ravon incorporate into the idea of dispositif the new forms of intervention that have developed in French social work since the 1980s: Ion and Ravon, “Institutions et dispositifs,” in Le travail social en débat[s], ed. Jacques Ion (Paris: La Découverte, 2005), 71–85.
12. Latour, Bruno, The Pasteurization of France, trans. Sheridan, Alan and Law, John (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988)Google Scholar.
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14. Bessy, Christian and Chateauraynaud, Francis, Experts et faussaires. Pour une sociologie de la perception (Paris: Éd. Métailié, 1995)Google Scholar.
15. Suchman, Lucy A., Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human-Machine Communication (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987)Google Scholar; de Fornel, Michel and Verdier, Maud, Aux prises avec la douleur. Analyse conversationnelle des consultations d'analgésie (Paris: Éd. de l'Ehess, 2014)Google Scholar.
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17. Gibson, James J., The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979)Google Scholar.
18. We would like to thank Christian Licoppe for suggesting this concept.
19. Dodier, Leçons politiques.
20. Dodier, Les hommes et les machines.
21. The term “ideals” is used here to refer to aims that are both value-laden and general. These aims can take the form of values, models, principles, universals, and so on. In some cases, these different ways of expressing ideals must be carefully distinguished. They can however be grouped together under a single term for the purpose of examining this second property of dispositfs.
22. Thévenot, Laurent, “Rules and Implements: Investments in Forms,” Social Science Information 23, no. 1 (1984): 1–45 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Boltanski and Thévenot, On Justification.
23. Lascoumes and Le Galès, “Understanding Public Policy,” 4.
24. Deleuze, Gilles, “What is a Dispositif?” in Michel Foucault Philosopher, trans. Armstrong, Timothy J. (New York: Routledge, 1992), 159–68Google Scholar.
25. Ibid., 62.
26. Callon and Muniesa, “Economic Markets,” 1229.
27. Dodier, Les hommes et les machines.
28. On their ability to bring actors into agreement, see Eymard-Duvernay, François and Marchal, Emmanuelle, “Les règles en action : entre une organisation et ses usagers,” Revue française de sociologie 35, no. 1 (1994): 5–36 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here p. 10. On their limiting of power relations, see Boltanski, Luc and Chiapello, Ève, The New Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Elliott, Gregory (London: Verso, 2005)Google Scholar. On their role in gathering evidence, see Chateauraynaud, Francis, “L’épreuve du tangible. Expériences de l'enquête et surgissements de la preuve,” in La croyance et l'enquête. Aux sources du pragmatisme, ed. Karsenti, Bruno and Quéré, Louis (Paris: Éd. de l'Ehess, 2004), 167–94Google Scholar. Finally, on their capacity to ensure the durability of the market, see Karpik, Lucien, “L’économie de la qualité,” Revue française de sociologie 30, no. 2 (1989): 187–210 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
29. Such as allowing the “inspection of the gaze” (through “inscription devices”): see Latour, Bruno, “Visualization and cognition,” Knowledge and Society 6, no. 1 (1986): 1–40 Google Scholar. For the production of “forces” that support scientific or technological innovation (through “interessement devices”), see Akrich, Madeleine, Callon, Michel, and Latour, Bruno, “The Key of Success in Innovation, Part I: The Art of Interessement,” International Journal of Innovation Management 6, no. 2 (2002): 187–206 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here p. 205. On the requirement for “keep[ing] together beings whose justification would entail their separation into different worlds subscribing to different orders of generality,” see Boltanski and Thévenot, On Justification, 18.
30. This is the criticism we have raised against the “language of order” in the social sciences, which has generally been characterized by a concern for evaluating how and to what point actors’ practices contribute to a particular social order. See Dodier, Nicolas, “Transformations des langages et du travail critique des sciences sociales. Quelques propositions à partir de l'exemple des questions médicales,” Raisons politiques 55, no. 3 (2014): 7–46 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
31. Foucault, “The Confession of the Flesh,” 196.
32. Ibid., 206.
33. This is a limitation of work that subscribes in general terms to the “language of force,” characterized by its efforts to connect human actions to underlying social forces that distance actors from the ideals or values they set or claim for themselves. See Dodier, “Transformations des langages.”
34. Favereau, Olivier, “Organisation et marché,” Revue française d’économie 4, no. 1 (1989): 65–96 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
35. Deleuze, “What is a Dispositif?”; Naepels, “L’épiement sans trêve et la curiosité de tout”; Karpik, Lucien, “Dispositifs de confiance et engagements crédibles,” Sociologie du travail 38, no. 4 (1996): 527–50Google Scholar, here pp. 538–39.
36. Desrosières, Alain, The Politics of Large Numbers: A History of Statistical Reasoning, trans. Naish, Camille (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Lascoumes and Le Galès, “Understanding Public Policy.”
37. Gomart, Émilie and Hennion, Antoine, “A Sociology of Attachment: Music Amateurs, Drug Users,” in “Actor Network Theory and After,” ed. Law, John and Hassard, John, special issue, Sociological Review Monograph Series 47/S1 (1999): 220–47Google Scholar.
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41. Barbot, Les malades en mouvements; Dodier, Leçons politiques.
42. For more specific methodological suggestions relating to the examination in a “state of rest” of the components of the dispositif employed in workplace doctor consultations (medical clinic textbooks, charts of occupational illnesses, protocols for statistical inquiries into professional risks, and so on), see Dodier, L'expertise médicale, 47–50.
43. Agamben, Giorgio, “What Is an Apparatus?” and Other Essays, trans. Kishik, David and Pedatella, Stefan (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009)Google Scholar.
44. For an approach that seeks to identify the “practical schemas” that are combined in moments of evaluation, see John R. Bowen et al., eds., European States and their Muslim Citizens: The Impact of Institutions on Perceptions and Boundaries (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014).
45. Tilly, Charles, “Contentious Repertoires in Great Britain, 1758–1834,” Social Science History 17, no. 2 (1993): 253–80Google Scholar, here p. 265.
46. Swidler, Ann, “Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies,” American Sociological Review 51, no. 2 (1986): 273–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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48. A foundational analysis of normativity is also developed by Boltanski and Thévenot in On Justification, though here the concept of a “common world” founded on a “principle of order” tends to replace that of “repertoire.”
49. For a usage that is close to this concept of repertoire, see Dupret, Baudouin on the various repertoires that become connected to one another in legal judgments: Dupret, Au nom de quel droit (Paris: Maison des Sciences de l'Homme/Lgdj, 2000)Google Scholar. On the repertoires that citizens use in their judgements of politicians, see Lascoumes, Pierre and Bezes, Philippe, “Les formes de jugement du politique. Principes moraux, principes d'action et registre légal,” L'année sociologique 59, no. 1 (2009): 109–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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51. Ibid., 27.
52. Ibid., 73.
53. Ibid., 261.
54. Normative expectation is thus situated between the aim and the ideal. It refers to aims characterized by an accompanying claim to legitimacy, but the scope of these aims can be less general or less intensely value-laden than an ideal. In an earlier study we used the concept of “good per se” to describe aims that, because they have value in their own right, are assumed by their proponents to end debate (health, for instance, is treated this way in certain arenas). See Dodier, Nicolas, “L'espace et le mouvement du sens critique,” Annales HSS 60, no. 1 (2005): 7–31 Google Scholar. The concept of normative expectation expands this perspective by taking into consideration aims that come with claims to legitimacy that are vaguer than those of goods per se.
55. This approach to temporality overlaps with the method developed by Cosandey, Fanny in Le rang. Hiérarchies d'Ancien Régime (Paris: Gallimard, 2016)Google Scholar. In a first stage, Cosandey outlines what she calls the “grammar of rank,” from which proceeded, over a long period of time, the judgments of courtiers concerning the hierarchies established by the ceremonial dispositif at the court of the French king. Only then, from this (in a sense) static basis, does she show the interplay of relationships between actors and the transformations they underwent within this grammar. The concept of “grammar” is part of a more foundational approach than that of normative repertoires, but the idea that the analysis requires these two moments is formulated in an analogous way.
56. Silva-Castañeda, “Revisiter le concept de dispositif,” 102; Foucault, “The Confession of the Flesh,” 195–96.
57. Barbot and Dodier, “Rethinking the Role of Victims in Criminal Proceedings.” For a definition of “doctrinal work” in this legal context, see ibid., 3–4: “When speaking of a ‘doctrinal arena,’ we posit the existence of an arena where jurists respond to each other as specialists with regard to evolutions in the law. A sociologist may define the contours of such an arena and undertake the study of the ‘doctrinal work’ that takes place therein.”
58. For a reminder of the purposes that legal specialists usually attribute to criminal trials, see Henderson, Lynne, “The Wrongs of Victim's Rights,” Stanford Law Review 37, no. 4 (1985): 937–1021 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the debates surrounding the birth of the code pénal in France and the major forms of punishment that have shaped these debates, see Lascoumes, Pierre, Poncela, Pierrette, and Lenoël, Pierre, Au nom de l'ordre. Une histoire politique du code pénal (Paris: Hachette, 1989)Google Scholar. For a reconsideration of the purposes that philosophers have generally attributed to the criminal trial (and punishment), see Gros, Frédéric, “Les quatre foyers de sens de la peine,” in Garapon, Antoine, Gros, Frédéric, and Pech, Thierry, Et ce sera justice. Punir en démocratie (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2001), 13–138 Google Scholar; Guillarme, Bertrand, Penser la peine (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
59. This confrontation between opposed conceptions of objectivity lies at the heart of the struggles surrounding many dispositifs. But these struggles over objectivity take specific forms depending on the dispositif in question. One might compare the criminal trial, for instance, with the struggles in medicine around clinical trials as analyzed in Dodier, Nicolas and Barbot, Janine, “Autonomy and Objectivity as Political Operators in the Medical World: Twenty Years of Public Controversy about AIDS Treatments in France,” Science in Context 21, no. 3 (2008): 403–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
60. Stéphane Latté, “Les ‘victimes.’ La formation d'une catégorie sociale improbable et ses usages dans l'action collective” (PhD diss., Ehess, 2008); Enguéléguélé, Stéphane, Les politiques pénales, 1958–1995 (Paris: L'Harmattan, 1989)Google Scholar.
61. Barbot and Dodier, “Dealing with Compassion at Work.”
62. More than a hundred children have now died due to the contamination of their medication by prion, the agent responsible for Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
63. An “arena” can be defined as a dispositif that organizes a form of reflexivity in relation to another dispositif. An arena can be internal to a dispositif when the latter predicts and organizes the conditions under which reflexivity loops can be associated with its own implementation. This is the case with the sequence of lawyer's speeches during a trial.
64. Barbot and Dodier, “Victims’ Normative Repertoire of Financial Compensation”; Barbot and Dodier, “Face à l'extension des indemnisations non judiciaires.”
65. The first criminal complaint was lodged in 1991, the first indictments were announced in July 1993, and the compensation fund was created in October 1993.
66. On these forms of incommensurability, see Zelizer, Viviana A., Morals and Markets: The Development of Life Insurance in the United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979)Google Scholar; Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children (New York: Basic Books, 1985).
67. For similar insight into the way that disaster victims position themselves in relation to dispositifs, see Sandrine Revet and Julien Langumier, eds., Governing Disasters: Beyond Risk Culture, trans. Ethan Rundell (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), which focuses on dispositifs of coordination and commemoration.
68. Barbot, “La médecine en procès.”
69. This dispositif has been the object of several specific investigations: Barbot, Janine, Parizot, Isabelle, and Winance, Myriam, “‘No-Fault’ Compensation for Victims of Medical Injuries: Ten Years of Implementing the French Model,” Health Policy 114, no. 2/3 (2014): 236–45CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Barbot, Janine, Winance, Myriam, and Parizot, Isabelle, “Imputer, reprocher, demander réparation. Une sociologie de la plainte en matière médicale,” Sciences sociales et santé 33, no. 2 (2015): 77–105 Google Scholar.
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This is a translation of: La force des dispositifs
