Analysis of Boltanski and Chiapello's (2005) The New Spirit of Capitalism

Among the most remarkable economic changes taking place in France between the 1960s and 1990s are disappearance, erosion, and diminution of active social movements, involved trade unions, real wage increases, high market positioning, upward productivitiy trends, and rapport between labor and management. The period starting in 1990s witnesses minimal social movements, defensive and passive social unions, spreading precarious employment, growing income disparity, decreasing strikes and social conflicts, growing work discipline, and improvements in industrial production. Such wide-ranging transition in the economic relations taking place with unprecedented rapidity and without meeting with significant resistance has provoked ethnographic attempts (Boltanski and Chiapello [1999] 2005) to provide explanation of the underlying factors driving such historical change. Weber's sociology of capitalism has centered on the concept of the spirit of capitalism that promises to capture the dynamic economic changes of the second half of the twentieth century especially concerning the cultural implications of the transformation reflected in the economic discourse governing the corresponding practices.

The premise of multi-sited ethnography of managerial discourse is that the practices promoted by it have more influence on general economy than their direct field of application in around one fifth of leading and multinational companies usually applying best practices later adopted by other firms, governmental agencies, and other organizations (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 162). Denoting the interpenetration between culture and economy, the spirit of capitalism changes in correspondence with structural differentiation of the area of overlap between value system and economic system that has developed over last decades of the twenthieth century since the economic transformation of the period has not met with sustained value-based resistance that should have occurred in case value system had remained unaffected. The social dynamics encompassing capitalist economic organization, interpenetration of economy and culture, and value system lends itself to modeling the general relations among these components in the specific form their configuration has taken in France over the period from 1970s to 1990s to contextualize the transformation of relations between economy and culture partly shared by the developed industrial economies and partly specific to structural functional relations and their development within a single country's history (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 162).

Purely ethnographic perspective on the process of interpenetration between culture and economy cannot analytically distinguish between the integration of economic, cultural, strategic, and personal systems into more general action system and the dynamic effects of the mutual development of these systems since contradictions between personal and economic systems, between economic and cultural systems, and between strategic and economic systems threaten to undermine the collective action they give rise to given the unequal structure of distribution of economic rewards, requirements of long-term commitment, and the importance of justification in terms of each of the action systems (Munch 1982: 94). Economic system is both integrated and differentiated from such other systems as political system given its need to mobilize economic resources for collective purposes in a self-perpertuating process of effective allocation and accumulation of capital via circulation, association system given the competition for resources and demands satisfaction creating concern for meeting market standards and for economic means via accumulation, and social system given the necessity to purchase labor power for wages and the exchange of produced goods consumed according to demand within culturally defined economic relations (Munch 1982: 129, 131; Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 162).

Weber's formulation of the interpenetration between economy and culture broke the ground for historical contextualization of economic development and for exploring of its integration with other systems in view of the growing interpenetration of economic action with principles of equity and ethical responsibility in response to restitutive sanctions and organized activism, as association and goal-setting systems interpenetrate, and to universalistic ethics and rational action, as cultural and association systems interpenetrate, (Munch 1982: 94, 534) so that economic accumulation becoming increasingly affected by all segments of action system connects to norms of justice, rationality, and governmentality (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 163). Reductively Marxist approaches to economic accumulation cannot adequately account for such central characteristic of capitalism as interpenetration of culture and economy since rather than lacking restraint economic system appears to be integrated into action system that via placing restraints upon economic activity integrates it into the rest of the social system by recognition of its legitimacy and legality that personality, cultural and strategic systems have to internalize in their turn in order that lager social structure maintains its integration through discursive means of justification and normative steering of social order.

The conventional economic theory neglects its interpenetration with other systems of collective action since it restricts economy to narrowly defined links between technological progress and economic order, between enterpreneurial activity and rational economic association, and between economic market and system of rights and liberties (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 163; Munch 1982: 113). Such economistic definition of economic system does not allow for theoretical sensitivity to regional variation and historical change in the affective and cultural components of association system, in the normative and professional components of societal system, and in the justification and administrative components of the political system (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 163; Munch 1982: 113). The economic system interpenetrates with the societal system via exchange of individual commitment for possibilities offered by money, with the association system via exchange of economic security for the commitment it generates on resource markets, and with the political system via exchange of money for political power establishing rules for justice, fairness, and common good (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 163; Munch 1982: 131).

Seen in this perspective the interpenetration of economic system with the rest of the action system as a historical process has gone through such developmental stages as bourgeois capitalism stressing association system via enterpreneurial firms, bourgeois culture and morality, interest association politics, and personal assistance and charity socieities, as large corporation capitalism stressing societal system via professional management, welfare state, career development, and merit and credentials culture, and as contemporary capitalism stressing political system via executive administration, political exchange, legal system, and governmental policies (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 164; Munch 1982: 113). Business practices texts illustrate the change in the interpenetration between economy and culture occurring between 1960s and 1990s in the managerial discourse sampled with the help of two sets of representative literature composed in the respective decades largely covering the French economy so that a particular type of societal, economic, association, and political system exemplified by professional environments, work conditions, organizational forms, and management types corresponds to each period.

Thematic analysis of the two samples of professional literature has sought to uncover the prevalent formulations, problems, solutions, and negations. Additionally, for the two text samples the frequencies of usage of key terms of the analysis were computed (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 165). Among the conclusions that the analysis of the configuration of relations between economy and culture in the 1990s has arrived at are emegence of flexible organizations, project-centric work environments, networks replacing hierarchies, freely circulating flows, loose organizational intergation, horizontal firm structures, and minimization of bureaucracy (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 165-166). The problems of the 1960s' managerial literature centering on dissatisfaction with restricted decision-making, narrowly defined roles, powerful management, bureaucratic organization, and large dominating companies have become replaced in the 1990s with non-hierarchical organization, diffuse power structure, self-guiding workforce, competitive culture, and permanent organizational change. The solutions of the 1960s centered on decentralization, meritocracy, objectives-driven management, competent management, and hierarchical control, while the 1990s advised lean restructured companies, network or project organization, flexibility, innovation, competence, motivational leadership, expertise- and councel-oriented management, self-reflexivity, client-orientation, and trust. The 1960s rejected private sphere, personal judgment, nepotism, political promotions, personal ties, and privileges, while the 1990s decried old-style management, bureaucracy, and separation between private and professional spheres (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 165).

The requirements for job security have shifted from merit-based approach based on agreed-upon targets of the 1960s to project-oriented experience accumulation of the 1990s. Managerial discourse of the 1990s proposes organization models, structures, and strategies that suggest by their contrast to the organizational culture of the 1960s a different structure of relations the economic system is embedded into that has become established between the two periods. In the history of interpenetration between culture and economy the contemporary configuration of relations between them involves radical change in the type of interpenetration that obtains between the economic and the societal systems since the relations between the association and the societal systems have signficantly altered the acceptable definition of work situation, justifiable treatment of employees, and the desirable forms of entrepreneurial strategies (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 166). Correspondingly, the economic system has predominantly comprised family-owned pre-Fordist firms in the nineteenth century, large professionally managed Fordist companies from the late nineteenth to late twentieth century, and networked, start-up, financial, and niche post-Fordist companies beginning in the 1980s.

In the period of pre-Fordist capitalism, the association system emphasized independence from local communities and progress, during the phase of Fordist capitalism career development, organizational power, and industrial efficiency came to the forefront, and the transition to post-Fordist capitalism favored non-authoritarian management, fuzzy organizations, creativity and innovation, and permanent change. The societal system before Fordism consisted of domestic and market-based normative culture, during Fordism merit-based professionalism, scientific effectiveness, and objectives-oriented management gained dominance, and after demise of Fordist capitalism professional mobility, network compatibility, project-centric normative culture, and experience-based employability took center-stage. The pre-Fordist political system revolved around personal property, personal relations, charity, and paternalism, the Fordist system allowed long-term planning, career-based management, and welfare state, and the post-Fordist system is largely built around ideas of mobility, adaptability, self-reflexive aministration, self-reliance capabilities, and self-help policies (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 166; Munch 1982: 113).

For the purposes of the multi-sited ethnographic study of the management texts, the place in the social system that the normative culture occupies with respect to communities, professions, sciences, and cultural discourses has been denoted via notion of justificatory regime (Boltanski and Thevenot 1991) corresponding to normative validity of meaningful agrumentation, communal anchoring of commitment, and socially binding fairness and legitimacy (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 167; Munch 1982: 617). To bring idealist and positivist strands of sociology into common conceptual framework the changes to the normative culture as justificatory regime should be considered as a process of interpenetration among the components of social system that in the process of mutually accepted interchange correspond to the specifically involved systems thereby combining both hermeneutic understanding and causal explanation into the methodology of general theory of action that ethnography establishes corresponding parallels with standardized procedures of tests (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 167; Munch 1982: 254). Considered within the system of Weber's traditional, charismatic, legal-rational, and value-rational authority types, the justificatory regimes functionally differentiate into such areas of systemic interpenetration as inspirational area between charistmatic and value-rational authority, domestic area between traditional and charistmatic authority, renown area between traditional and legal-rational authority, civic area between traditional and value-rational athority, market area between charismatic and legal-rational athority, and industrial area between value-rational and legal-rational authority (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 167; Munch 1982: 562).

The identified justificatory regimes through evaluation, testing, categorization, and ordering generate their specific standards of comaprison that produce distributions of individuals on the legitimate scale of worth corresponding to the assessment procedure. Consequently, such regimes of justification as inspirational deriving from value specification and affective generalization emphasize spirituality and authenticity, domestic deriving from affective selection and affective bonding emphasize subordination and allegience, renown deriving from norm connection openness and normative constraint emphasize popularity and esteem, civic deriving from norm generalization and value boundedness emphasize representation and collective will, market deriving from means mobilization and goal setting emphasize competition and opportunities, and industrial deriving from rational learning and ethical control emphasize efficiency and professionalism (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 167-168; Munch 1982: 562). The justificatory regimes are specified in accordance with comparison principles encompassing human, natural, action, and symbolic systems, with scale of worth where relative positions are defined, with interpenetration among the human, action, symbolic and natural systems, with structure of social relations deriving from relations of worth, with relations of exchange reproducing the structure of worth, with standard test establishing a person's worth, and with ideal-typical social order corresponding to the distribution of worth (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 168; Munch 1982: 163).

The ethnographic study of capitalism (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005) that does not rely on highly developed theoretical framework (Munch 1982) reduces the cases of systemic interpenetration, as the justificatory regimes are shown to be, to typological procedure of identification of a "new and increasingly influential justificatory logic" (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 168) rather than recognizing it as an indicator of structural change so that mobility, availabolity, and networks are taken for a projects-oriented justificatory logic representing normative culture of network society. The projects-oriented justificatory regime is specified in terms of its assessment by activity, project involvement, and network connections, its low worth being connected to passivity, close-mindedness, authoritarianism, rigidity, and parochialism, its high worth dependent on adaptability, flexibility, sincerity, supportiveness, and leadership, its subjects being managers, mentors, and innovators, its objects being information technologies and work structures of sub-contracting, flexibility, outsourcing, autonomy, and franchises, its relations building on trust, communication, and adaptability, its worth structure enhancing employability within project organization, its exchange structure favours availability and short-term planning, its standard test measuring mobility between projects, and its ideal-typical order being network society (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 169).

The underlying argument behind the ethnographic identification of a new, network-oriented justificatory regime consists in structural functional differentiation of an autonomous agency of networking as an "art of connecting and making use of the most diverse and furtherst ties" (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 168) coming in contrast to asserting novelty of networks as such or of their wide reach achieved in the late 1970s. Activity serving as the general standard of the project-oriented justificatory regime differs from the industrial standard in its departure from steady and salaried work towards diffusion of distinctions between work and leisure, stability and unsteadiness, earning and volunteering, and productivity and performance as movement between projects increases in value, as activity becomes permanent state, and as encounters are structured around project-orientation (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 169). Duraion of projects is structured according to short-term timelines that promote, motivate, and maintain networking and contact accumulation of their participants. The project-oriented systemic logic values adaptability, flexibility, polyvalency, mobility, initiative, autonomy, risk-taking, and openness to new people, possibilities, and information (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 169).

Project-oriented justificatory regime defines personal worth in non-instrumental terms that encourage contribution to the common good, generation of trust, non-authoritarian leadership, toleran management, respect for differences, sharing of connections, and general enhancement of employability. Since each justificatory regime is represented by a specific vocabulary the content analysis of the management literature samples chosen for their ethographic study has uncovered the frequences of appearance of key terms in the respective bodies of literature (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 170). Unsurprisingly, the industrial justificatory logic dominates the textual samples both for the 1960s and for the 1990s, its criticism has increased between the two periods, its proportion to other logics of justification has decreased in the 1990s with the network logic becoming more represented, its next-ranked logic changing from domestic in the 1960s to project-oriented in the 1990s and doubling its weight in the overall ranking structure of logics of justification (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 170). Greatest discursive changes between the Fordist and post-Fordist periods are that network logic has risen to second ranking place in its frequency, that market logic has increased its presence in response to more competitive, restructured, and client-driven macro environment, that inspirational logic grew in strength as innovation, risk-taking, and personalization gain in traction, and that domestic and civic logics lost in presence to even greater degree than did industrial (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 170).

Transition of France's capitalism from Fordism to post-Fordism was accompanied by the restructuring of the systems of value, legitimacy, and relevance as people, things, and situations have become embedded into normative culture, organization types, and entrepreneurial strategies corresponding to the transformed justificatory regime that by changing standard tests alters its own systemic logic (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 171). As part of theoretical framework for analysis of normative change standard tests are subdivided into tests of strength and legitimate tests (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 171). A legitimate test is a kind of test for which the justificatory regime it belongs to supplies legitimacy by clearly stating the strength type, testing device, and test definition used for carrying out its procedure should unambiguous, qualifiable and categorizable results be obtained. In contrast, while dependent on the decision over its succes or failure, a test of strength does not prohibit mobilization of as many capabilities as possible, offers no preliminary specifications or instructions, and the possibilities of what course the test process takes are unlimited (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 171). In the economic system a legitimate test is embedded in the dominant mode of accumulation via normative culture that exerts both constraining and legitimizing influence on corporate activities, organizational models, and general management.

Within the market justificatory regime, the normative culture provides the existing mode of accumulation with legitimization by applying criteria of equality of chances, merit-based success, market opportunities, and competitive advantage while balance of power, "dominant positions, previous agreements and cartels" (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 172) prevent the income distribution in the economic system from taking form solely attributable to the market forces that are not either identical with or reducible to the normative culture. In the social system the normative culture institutionalized in its legitimate tests does not allow interpenetration among the economic, societal, associational, and political systems that constitute it as a whole even though particular enterpreneurial groups or individuals may possess strategic means to exploit opportunities where independent criteria of systemic evaluation diminish their strengths (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 172; Munch 1982: 131). There are situations in which tests of strengths and legitimate tests, without ever being completely separate, either coincide or are related to each other thus putting into question the legitimatory regime they avowedly reproduce as does the correlation between socioeconomic background and scholastic aptitude (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 172).

The legitimate test is embedded into the action system as its mode of categorization since it involves public, explicit, and institutionalized judgment that is independent of the situation of its application. The test of strength represents the mode of displacement corresponding within the action system to the entrepreneurial strategies oriented at changing macro environments in which the situational, singular, and dynamic circumstances call for entrepreneurial action rather than rule-based judgment (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 172). Systemic change usually involves institutional innovation by enterpreneurial groups or individuals that seeking to improve their structural position reduce the binding power of legitimate tests via strategic action involving risk, opportunity, and institutional innovation. Success of such enterpreneurial strategies gradually shifts the definition criteria of normative culture from legitimate tests to the tests of strength in any given institutional environment where novel, covert, and unregulated relationships consequently gain in importance (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 172). However, enterpreneurial strategies that prove to be effective in their action environment entail their institutionalization as the structural differentiation they have triggered takes form of new legitimate tests in case the change is intended to be either widely accepted or reproduced in other institutional contexts (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 173).

Actors benefiting from the enterpreneurial innovation tend to describe such institutional change in terms of a justificatory regime that puts high worth value on their structural position thereby rendering their achievement transparent, moral, and justifiable. Institutional change in the process of its legitimization employs legal regulation to draw the boundaries between acceptable and unacceptable utilization of new opportunities, resources, and strategies. In this respect, a justificatory regime appears to derive from a process of institutionalization of a wide-ranging transformation that in case of the transition to post-Fordist mode of regulation has made network- and project-oriented individual and collective action into a subject of discursive legitimization enabling and restricting the reproduction of the post-Fordist accumulation at the same time (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 173). The change of justificatory regimes depends on dual influences of the balance of power and legitimate relations that in their interplay make use of criticism of the existing system to either promote a desirable situation different from the status quo or put into question the existing normative foundations so that the discrepancies betweent the actual state of affairs and the justificatory regime constitute part of the self-reflexive dynamic of their transformation (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 173).

In the action system, criticism and testing practices are interrelated in as much as, on the one hand, enterpreneurial groups and individuals put into question the legitimacy of the social structure while, on the other hand, testing procedures legitimize the distributtion of individuals within the social structure. Corrective criticism of tests aims to maintain them within the boundaries of normative culture so that the application of tests and the strengths' distribution in the action system adequately reproduce its guiding principles that are assured via methodological, conventional, legal, and regulatory means used for the institutionalization of test coherence, openness, and improvement (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 174). Radical criticism of tests aims at their elimination or replacement on the grounds that their validity is in question. Based on the legitimacy principles of the relevant justificatory regime, corrective criticism of tests institutionalized within the action system calls for either refutation of the former by recourse to evidence or its bringing to bear on the testing procedure. Also, corrective criticism can elicit a strategic action oriented at cirucumvention of rather than direct reaction to the possible loss in legitimacy of the test so that the trade-off between test improvement and its marginalization is decided in favor of transformation of the legitimacy test into a test of strength where costs are shifted to the test-takers (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 174).

For the economic system the cost displacement strategies in response to contradictory pressures for both higher profits and increased wages can involve geographic relocation into regions with labor relations or environmental regulations favorable for the employers, redefinition of the career-management policy by dropping its expensive components, and transition to informal recroutment techniques to avoid testing and screening costs (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 174-175). These entrepreneurial strategies of displacement alter the action system as a whole so that the criticism of its justificatory regimes can no longer be waged based on previous normative culture since the configuration of interpenetration between the societal, economic, association, and political systems necessitates elaboration of new critical concepts to account for emegrent interrelationships whose "recognition, institutionalisation, codification or categorisation" (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 175) is yet to crystallize into the standard tests that the criticism can apply to. Criticism, therefore, can have bearing on testing processes by catagorizing tests by legitimacy and measured strengths in order to show their role in the structural and functional differentiation of individuals, by ensuring the conformity of tests to the precepts of normative culture via regulation, oversight, and correction, by maintaining the centrality of legitimate tests to the reproduction of the action system according to its normative culture, and by eliminating tests that are widely perceived to impede desirable social change (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 175).

The form of interpenetration characteristic of a particular action system finds its reflection the legitimate tests applied in its economic system. Interpenetration among societal, economic, association, and political systems dates to the beginning of modernity that employs justificatory regimes for its reproduction. Criticism as an integral part of a justificatory regime focuses on indequality, exploitation, and individualism when it is oriented qua social criticism at the association system where it calls labor movements to life. Criticism of the economic system takes the form of artistic criticism (Chiapello 1998) deriving from aesthetic critique of oppressive discipline, mass society, standardization, and commodification in defence of ideals of liberation, autonomy, originality, and authenticy (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 175-176). The transition from Fordism to post-Fordism has as its underpinning the changing configuration of interpenetration within the action system going beyond the impact of globalization, economic development, or technological change that on the example of France exemplifies the dynamics common to industrial economies. In France, the transition to post-Fordism began with the crisis in its normative culture in 1960s, when the criticism of its justificatory regimes reached its peak of labor strikes and violent confrontations, with the disorganization of industrial production when product quality fell and labor costs rose, and with the pervasive loss of legitimacy of standard tests establishing distribution of wages and profits, justifying power relations and social hierarchies, and reproducing educational, economic, and social institutions (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 176).

The criticisms raised at the Fordist action system centered on the crisis of its normative culture, as reflected in the corruption of the standard tests since both legitimate tests were growing more marginal to the actual reproduction of social structure and tests of steength were gaining in centrality within the action system. Institution leaders within the economic system have imputed responsibility for the crisis of the normative culture to the labor force failing to uphold discipline and common goals and to the inadequate socialization of younger entrants into the job market (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 176). For the crisis of 1968 in France both artistic and social criticism played equally important role as in the previous decade cultural capital stopped being restricted to narrow social circles to become available to rapidly increasing student numbers who subsequently filled managerial, professional, and technological positions it the economic system. In France the artisitic criticism demanding self-management, personal autonomy, and creativity was supported by holders of executive, professional, and technical eduication while the social criticism had its primary base of support among skilled and manual workers (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 176-177).

The first stage of the transition to post-Fordism taking place between 1968 and 1973 has responded to social criticism only by reliance on established procedures of collective bargaining involving state, unions, and employer organizations with improvements in minimum wage, reduction of income disparities, and improvement in job security as a result at the same time as allocation of authority was brought into closer alignment with normative culture of meritocracy (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 177). Thereby the centrality of the legitimate tests to the action system was restored by increasing penalties for undue advantages. The second stage of post-Fordist transition commenced in 1975 after the crisis of Fordism has continued to deepen as its justificatory regimes failed to regain legitimacy, as profits of industrial production continued to fall, and as Fordist normative culture started to be abandonded. By the late 1970s large companies have changed labor relations and working conditions based on best practices developed by sociologists and consultants that together with employer organizations have implemented a post-Fordist mode of regulation emerging out of crises of the previous decade (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 177).

In the economic system the disintegration of the Fordist mode of regulation into "autonomous teams, flexible schedules, bonuses, efficiency-related salaries" (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 177) has spread across economic structure from the management to the production organization broken down into a network of small, contract-connected, project-oriented units on the periphery of company's core activities. In the economic system the second stage of the transition to post-Fordism has involved replacing legitimate tests with tests of strength less amenable to criticism due to the incapacity of the Fordist normative culture of their "qualification, categorisation, and regulation" (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 178). In the 1980s, the post-Fordist mode of regulation has consolidated around networks discourse, effective labor force control, and reinvigorated economic expansion. Since post-Fordist normative culture has failed to form, the transition to post-Fordism was not met with criticism. Moreover, the post-Fordist interpenetration among economic, societal, association, and political systems has left the social criticism by labor unions without an independent object because the worker movement has lost its "isomorphic relationship to its opponent, the large integrated firm" (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 178).

There was no artistic criticism of post-Fordism because it has achieved its economic, social, and cultural goals, its frame of reference cannot account for systemic interpenetration replacing structures of Fordism, and its proponents have become integrated into dominant positions across social structure in France (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 178). The economic growth of 1980s stems from the overcoming of limitations of Fordism, the systemic interpenetration of diverse macro environment, and the transformation of normative culture that with tests of strength at its center has led to rising inequality, precarious employment, and worker impoverishment. In the economic system, the negative effects of post-Fordism brought social criticism and labor strikes of the 1990s to bear upon the efforts to introduce legitimate tests into the project-based normative culture by new regulatory means seeking to governmentally structure the flexibility, to stabilize the precarious work conditions, and to integrate profit and non-profit organization of labor relations (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 178). While the configuration of the action system in France is defined by the network-oriented transformation led by socialist governments responsive to the artistic criticism of the economic system, in other countries, as in the Great Britain where Thatcher government implemented market-oriented reforms, the models of systemic interpenetration depending on the outcome of collective struggles, dominant normative cultures, and legitimate justificatory regimes vary according to historical interrelationships among these components of their respectively constitutive systems (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 178-179).

On the basis of the ethnographic study of France's transition to post-Fordism, I have tentatively demonstrated applicability of the action theory (Munch 1982) and structural functionalist approach (Colomy and Rhoades 1994) to the ethnographic and multi-sited data exploring the crisis of French Fordism and systemic dymensions of its post-Fordist change (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005) within the framework of systemic interpenetration dynamically articulating action system and interpenetration among its differentiating subsystems. Within the proposed theoretical framework I placed the emphasis on the entrepreneurial strategies that collective and individual agents undertake within the specific macro environments they confront, on the effects that collective struggles have on the historical change in the configuration of systemic interpenetration, and on the empirical application of more general theoretical specifications of action theory, structural functionalism, and micro-macro link.

The ethnographic and multi-sited reasearch of social and economic change (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005) when decoupled from detailed theoretical frameworks (Munch 1982, 1992) exemplifies insufficiences that include lack of conceptualization of individual and collective action as strategic agency oriented at systemic environments, inability to construct capitalism as subject of theoretical reflection and to embed discussion of economic change into framework of systematically related concepts leading to their substitution by such artifacts of ethnographic methodology as tests, regimes, capitalisms, and criticisms, and weakness of explanatory models as applied to ideal-typical relations that characterize one historical configuration of systemic interpenetration from another. Nevertheless, France's example of the more general phenomenon of transition to post-Fordism has served to outline an analysis of the structure of systemic relations of interpenetration that an economic system can enter in the process of historical change that in order to avoid a macro-analytical bias has brought the theory of action (Munch 1982) to bear upon systemic relations in which individual and collective enterepreneurial strategies are deployed by active agents facing particular national traditions, political situations, economic practices, and ideological expressions (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005: 179-180).