Abstract
Public controversies have attracted increasing attention in the organization studies literature. They emerge when critical issues are not defined and understood in the same way by different stakeholders, influencing the way they evaluate the worth of other actors, objects, and situations. In this paper, we show how the “orders of worth” perspective of Boltanski and Thévenot may throw light on the evolution of an evaluation process occurring during a public controversy. In particular, we study the Quebec student conflict of 2011 and 2012 that followed a proposed major increase in higher education tuition fees. We conducted an in-depth case study based on media coverage of the actions and discourses of the major actors to examine how objects and actions associated with a controversy are successively defined, redefined, and evaluated over time through a series of tests of worth. Our article contributes to the organizational literature on public controversies by drawing attention to the role of six types of evaluative moves in situations of controversy, and by offering an abductively developed model for understanding the evaluation process as it evolves over time. We suggest that actors, through these evaluative moves, may displace the object of a test, and therefore the foci for evaluation, through actions intended to bolster their positions.
Keywords
Introduction
Public controversies around social and environmental issues have attracted increasing attention in the literature of organization studies as scholars have examined how different groups of actors representing governments, firms, and civil society engage with each other to promote their perspectives, sustain their legitimacy or prevail in these disputes (Gond, Barin Cruz, Raufflet, & Charron, 2016; Guérard, Bode, & Gustafsson, 2013; Joutsenvirta & Vaara, 2015; Patriotta, Gond, & Schultz, 2011; Taupin, 2012).
We define a public controversy as a dispute between two or more actors that takes place in a setting where the activities and arguments of the protagonists are to some degree observable and can be judged by third parties with an interest in the outcome (see Patriotta et al., 2011 for a similar definition). Recent examples include debates about climate change (Ansari, Wijen, & Gray, 2013; Lefsrud & Meyer, 2012) and fracking technology (Gond et al., 2016; Nyberg, Wright, & Kirk, 2017). Another topic of controversy of interest for this paper turns around the financing or “marketization” of higher education by requiring students to contribute more to the cost of their studies (Johnstone, 2004; Jongbloed, 2003; Nickolai, Hoffman, & Trautner, 2012).
Because of their public nature, controversies of this type reveal themselves significantly, though not only, in discursive forms as protagonists defend their positions and attempt to persuade others. Thus, many studies of public controversies have drawn on various forms of “frame analysis” derived from the social movements literature (Benford & Snow, 2000; Snow, Rochford Jr, Worden, & Benford, 1986) to examine how protagonists frame issues in order to appeal to the cognitive schemas of different constituencies, and to reveal how certain frames come to dominate others (Guérard et al., 2013; Kaplan, 2008; Reinecke & Ansari, 2016).
However, while controversies raise issues concerning the rhetorical manipulation of meaning as evidenced in framing research, they also raise pragmatic issues of valuation and evaluation—i.e., a concern with determining value, establishing the criteria by which that value (or “worth”) of different actions and objects should be assessed, and determining how these actions and objects stack up against those criteria (Lamont, 2012). Yet less attention has been given in the literature to the role of the evaluative dimension in the evolution of controversies.
To better address this evaluative dimension, we draw here on the “orders of worth” perspective of Boltanski and Thévenot (2006). This framework has been mobilized by others to consider issues of legitimacy and institutional maintenance (Gond et al., 2016; Patriotta et al., 2011; Taupin, 2012). However, it also offers a highly suitable approach to investigating the evaluative dimension of controversies, because it recognizes a repertoire of common principles (represented by six worlds of worth) that actors can draw on flexibly in evaluating actions within the public sphere. Actors rely on these worlds during “tests” of worth that are seen to be critical moments when actors’ performance, discourses, objects, norms, and belief systems are questioned (Dansou & Langley, 2012). As we shall see, the notion of “test” developed by Boltanski and Thévenot (2006) provides a useful way to consider how objects and actions associated with a controversy are successively defined, redefined, and evaluated over time. Thus, we draw on this framework to ask: How do the evaluation processes produced by different actors involved in a public debate influence the evolution of a controversy?
To address this question we conducted an in-depth case study based on media coverage of the actions and discourses of the major actors in the Quebec student conflict of 2011 and 2012. This public controversy started following the announcement of an increase in tuition fees by the governing Liberal Party in March 2011. This situation created a major conflict between several actors who contested or supported this initiative: student organizations, a coalition of university rectors, employer representatives, and other political parties. The question of accessibility to higher education was immediately raised in reaction to this fee increase, reflecting a latent tension in Quebec’s higher education context. Although the monetary value of education (a 75% increase in tuition fees over five years) is a central consideration, the analysis of the dispute shows how multiple evaluation principles came into play as actors struggled to influence the process of evaluation set in motion by the proposed tuition fee increase. Moreover, the controversy shifted and broadened over time as actors became involved not just in evaluating education in the light of the tuition fee increase, but also in evaluating other actors in the debate, their actions, and the various objects created to support their positions.
Our analysis enables us to identify a set of six generic “evaluative moves” generated by the major actors within the controversy to influence the evaluation process towards their own assessments of the situation. We suggest that these moves have relevance beyond the particular case we studied. In addition, we present an overarching model of the evaluation process that emerged abductively (Dubois & Gadde, 2002) through an iterative process involving the visual mapping of successive tests of worth that arose in the controversy.
The paper contributes to the organizational literature on public controversies by drawing attention to the role of evaluative practices in these situations, and by offering a model for understanding the evaluation process as it evolves over time. The paper also contributes to enriching the conceptualization and empirical application of the notion of “test” in Boltanski and Thévenot’s (2006) orders of worth framework by showing how tests involved in an evaluation process may chain themselves together dynamically during disputes. We suggest that actors may not only shift the nature of a test by calling on new orders of worth (or evaluation criteria) as Boltanski and Thévenot (2006) suggest, but they may also displace the focal object of a test, and therefore the foci for evaluation, through actions intended to bolster their positions and influence outcomes. Finally, by being attentive to the moves through which actors try to validate particular evaluation principles, we highlight how purely economic evaluations are far from sufficient to capture the richness of evaluative moves in these debates.
We first review the organizational literature on public controversies to position our evaluation-based perspective. We then develop the elements of our preliminary analytical framework based on the notion of test, prior to presenting our methods, findings, and discussion.
Literature Review: Public Controversies as Contexts for Evaluation
As indicated above, the organizational literature on public controversies has most often drawn on forms of discourse analysis to examine how and why controversies evolve. Among the approaches commonly used is frame analysis derived from the social movements literature. Frames have both a cognitive and political connotation (Cornelissen & Werner, 2014; Kaplan, 2008; Snow et al., 1986). On the one hand, they are “schemata of interpretation” that structure people’s understanding of issues (Goffman, 1974). But on the other, frames may be mobilized strategically to influence others, leading to “framing contests” and potential shifts in dominant frames in an organizational field (Guérard et al., 2013; Kaplan, 2008; Reinecke & Ansari, 2016).
Although the framing literature provides one useful approach to understanding how meanings are constructed and influence the evolution of public controversies, it does not focus explicitly on the underlying evaluative principles that are brought to bear in these debates, nor on how they are mobilized interactively and reflexively by different individuals and groups over time, drawing on material proofs (Conley, 2015). Controversies involve deliberations in which actors who seek solutions to a problem first try to clarify their interpretation of the situation and challenge the formal definition of the problem and the stakes. These situations involve not only various interests but also multiple criteria of worth, i.e., repertoires of evaluation.
Evaluation processes are composed of practices that allow the assessment of value, or the attribution of worth to things, actions and situations (Lamont, 2012; Vatin, 2009). Scholars of the sociology of valuation and evaluation draw on Dewey’s (1916) pragmatist view to conceptualize evaluation as a practical judgment occurring relationally in action (De Munck & Zimmermann, 2015; Lamont, 2012). From this perspective, which we adopt here, value or worth is not something that an entity objectively has, and evaluation is not treated as something that occurs cognitively “inside the mind of an individual” (Lamont, 2012, p. 205). Rather, evaluation is a social process that involves, according to Lamont, establishing:
1) intersubjective agreement/disagreement on a matrix or a set of referents against which the entity (a good, a reputation, an artistic achievement, etc.) is compared; 2) negotiation about proper criteria and about who is a legitimate judge (often involving conflicts and power struggle (Bourdieu 1993)); 3) establishing value in a relational (or indexical) process involving distinguishing and comparing entities. (Lamont (2012, p. 205)
Inherent to this definition is the notion that the process is intersubjective and thus subject to the scrutiny of others and that it may involve multiple criteria or repertoires of evaluation.
Boltanski and Thévenot’s (2006) “orders of worth” framework thus seems particularly suitable for considering evaluation processes in the context of public controversies because it draws attention to a set of common principles and related orders of worth that may underlie practices of evaluation by providing a repertoire of evaluative criteria likely to be drawn on reflexively by competent actors to justify their positions (Cloutier, Gond, & Leca, 2017; Mailhot & Langley, 2017). These orders of worth or “worlds,” of which there are six in Boltanski and Thévenot’s initial formulation (inspired, domestic, civic, fame, market, and industrial worlds), were derived from both empirical research and a study of different strands of moral philosophy.
Other authors have also drawn on this framework to study public controversies, although for somewhat different purposes than in our study. For example, Patriotta et al. (2011) analyzed a controversy around a nuclear accident to examine processes of institutional maintenance. They found that despite initial grounding in a limited repertoire of justifications concerned with operational excellence, the company involved was able to restore the legitimacy of its activity through the creative embrace of multiple orders of worth over time. Similarly, Taupin (2012) studied the maintenance of the legitimacy of the credit rating industry in the face of multiple failures. They note that the compromise among three orders of worth (market, civic, and fame) that underpins the industry ensured the maintenance of the institution because critiques attacking it on the basis of one principle could always be countered by appealing to others. Both of these studies reveal the remarkable robustness of entities whose moral legitimacy (and bases for evaluation) can be established by drawing on multiple orders of worth (see also Stark, 2009). Yet, at the same time, sustaining these established compromises may require ongoing “justification work” in a cyclical process (Oldenhof, Postma, & Putters, 2014) of repeated “testing” as illustrated in these studies. Annisette, Vesty, and Amslem, (2017) further showed the surprising role that accounting schemes (traditionally associated mainly with industrial worlds of worth) may play in creating or sustaining such compromises during controversies.
While Patriotta et al. (2011), Taupin (2012), and others focused mainly on discursive struggles, Gond et al. (2016) studied a controversy concerning shale gas exploration by combining not only an analysis of repertoires of justification based on orders of worth, but also an analysis of power relations. They showed, for example, how prior use of coercive power might limit access to certain types of justifications, while collaboration with other stakeholders might enhance future repertoires. Conversely, the authors argue that prior forms of justification may enable and constrain subsequent uses of power (e.g., by undermining or enhancing the legitimacy of certain actors). This analysis is useful because it reminds us that justification and evaluation processes involve significant material as well as discursive elements (Boltanski & Thévenot, 2006). It illustrates for example how the power to produce credible evaluations based on orders of worth depends not only on the proofs mobilized to support them, but also on the perceived legitimacy (or “worth”) of the actors proposing the assessment—as implied by the second component of Lamont’s (2012) definition of evaluation practices noted above.
Building on Boltanski’s (2011) more recent work, Nyberg et al. (2017) add a critical twist to the analysis of power relations and orders of worth by arguing that the shale gas controversy in the UK was orchestrated by a dominant political regime that favored market-based evaluations to the detriment of others, while ceremonially displaying civic worth through public inquiries.
The above discussion illustrates the potential of the orders of worth framework for studying evaluation processes during a public controversy and hints at some features of these processes that may be worthy of attention. We now explain in more detail our initial analytical approach, based on the orders of worth framework, and in particular the notion of “test.”
Conceptual Background: Evaluation Processes as Constructed in Moments of “Test”
Boltanski and Thévenot (2006) provide a grammar describing the main organizing principles or “orders of worth” on which collective action relies. These orders of worth are shared conventions allowing the “qualification” of persons, objects, or events as “worthy” according to those principles. We use here the notion of “qualification” to refer to elementary moves through which actors attribute worth to things, subjects, and actions, by establishing to what common principle they belong (Boltanski & Thévenot, 2006; Taupin, 2012). In other words, qualification concerns a judgment about which order of worth is relevant to the situation. A subsequent move would involve “ordering” things, subjects and actions as more or less worthy according to the chosen common principle. Thus for example, in Lamont’s (2012) definition of the evaluation process noted above, qualification would be associated with the first two elements discussed, while ordering would be associated with the third.
As mentioned, according to Boltanski and Thévenot (2006), actors rely on six 1 different orders of worth or “worlds” that include internally consistent sets of evaluation principles coexisting in the same social universe. The six orders of worth have been described in detail in many other published sources (Boltanski & Thévenot, 2006; Cloutier & Langley, 2013; Patriotta et al., 2011), but will be briefly summarized here for reference. In the inspired world, what is considered to be worthy is a discovery that results from a burst of inspiration and creativity. The domestic world is a world of tradition, of personal bonds, of care for dependent others, and a world where respect for the hierarchy is central. The founding principle of the world of fame is public disclosure and the ultimate value is in public recognition and others’ opinions. In the civic world, collective interests override particularistic ones. Thus, this world is concerned with community wellbeing and the rule of law. The market world is a world of subjects with needs and desires for possessions acquired by buying and selling and competing freely. Finally, the industrial world emphasizes efficiency, performance, and productivity. We illustrate later how these orders of worth manifest themselves concretely in the situations studied.
Central to Boltanski and Thévenot’s (2006) orders of worth framework is the notion of “test,” referring to moments of conflict in which actors’ performance, discourses, objects, or established rule and belief systems may be questioned (Dansou & Langley, 2012). For example, Patriotta et al. (2011) defined the nuclear accident they studied as a moment of test because it placed the value of nuclear power into question. The actions and reactions of actors as the test unfolds may reorient the evaluation process as different orders of worth are invoked and evidence is brought to bear to support qualifications. Contrary to solely interpretive theories, a situation of test …
… cannot be reduced to a theoretical debate. It engages persons, in their bodily existence, in a world of things that serve as evidence, and in the absence of which the dispute does not have the material means for resolution by testing. (Boltanski & Thévenot, 2006: 131)
Indeed, objects are not understood as pure carriers of symbolic meaning but as socially constructed elements that actors mobilize as referents in contested ways (Dansou & Langley, 2012). Through tests, actors seek agreement on the worth of actors and things involved and the appropriateness of actions performed to reduce the uncertainty of a situation by determining the single or multiple worlds that should be considered in the evaluation of the situation.
Based on the elements introduced above (i.e., Boltanksi and Thévenot’s six orders of worth, the notions of “qualification,” “ordering,” and “test”), we now describe our empirical study that focuses on the evolution of an evaluation process during a public controversy surrounding higher education. Our research enabled us to build on these ideas to develop novel insights into the dynamics of the evaluation process, the distinctive evaluative moves engaged in by organizational actors, and the role of a sequence of “tests” in structuring these processes.
Methodology
Case selection
The study is based on the case of a public controversy surrounding the Quebec student conflict of 2011 and 2012 resulting from the announcement, in the 2011 government budget, of a significant increase in higher education tuition fees. According to the plans of the governing Liberal Party (see Appendix 1 for the list of key actors in the controversy), annual tuition fees were to pass, from 2012 to 2016, from $2,168 to $3,793 per annum, an increase of 75% over five years. This increase was presented by the Liberal Party as based on strictly economic reasoning. Following the announcement, several actors opposed the decision and proposed divergent visions of education to back up their critique. The public controversy surrounding this issue raged for months, with its peak occurring from February to June 2012. The increase in tuition fees was eventually canceled under pressure from student groups and citizens, who forced the Liberal Party to address the issue in an election. The opposition Parti Québécois won the election on September 4, 2012, and then changed the large increase in tuition fees as proposed by the Liberal Party to a much less radical indexation of tuition fees to inflation.
Several factors motivated our choice of this case. First, the student conflict lasted more than a year and involved intense public debates, providing a rich data source of media reports. Second, although the issue of increased tuition fees was initially proposed as a purely economic measure, it led to deeper ideological debates involving multiple sets of values, and it therefore appeared suitable for the study of the evolution of an evaluation process. Finally, unlike many controversies studied, this one did not primarily involve technical or scientific debates. The emphasis on value-based dimensions may therefore be more transparently observable.
The socio-political context of the controversy
Prior to describing the data collection and analysis, it is important to explain the historical and socio-political context for this controversy. Education in Canada is under provincial jurisdiction, which means that Quebec determines its own education policies. Its higher education system comprises two types of institutions: (1) CEGEPs (Collège d’enseignement général et professionnel), i.e., colleges where technical (three years) and pre-university (two years) training are offered; (2) universities that offer undergraduate and graduate degrees. Quebec also stands out for having the lowest tuition fees in North America for its largely public institutions. This is explained by historically strong government involvement in financing higher education through a tuition fee freeze that was maintained from 1968 to 1990 and from 1994 to 2007.
This freeze was an ideological choice following the Parent Commission Report, a major policy document in Quebec’s history establishing the principles behind education in 1968. The authors of this report described the ideology they advocated for higher education as follows:
In short, the benefits of education go beyond the individual and the locality; the progress of education serves mainly the general interests of society, so that education can now and naturally be regarded as a national enterprise. This means … that society as a whole is responsible for providing education for each student …. (Gouvernement du Québec, 1966, p. 33)
Following the report, student associations and unions called for free education to promote access to universities for any qualified student, while the universities, the Conseil du patronat (Employers Association) and the Conseil supérieur de l’éducation (Higher Education Council) preferred to diversify sources of financing. In the end, the government decreed a tuition fee freeze in 1968 to $540 per year that was maintained for over 20 years. The goal of the low tuition fee policy was to allow Quebec to recoup a deficit in post-secondary education as compared to the rest of Canada.
Since then, as budgets became tighter, there have been several contentious episodes around the financing of higher education. For example, in 1990, arguing that tuition fees were the lowest in North America and that students should share the costs given the individual benefits obtained, the governing Liberal Party ended the tuition fee freeze despite opposition from unions and student groups who launched a student strike. Tuition fees nevertheless increased from $540 in 1990 to about $1,665 in 1994–95 (Lacroix & Trahan, 2007; MEQ, 1996; MESS, 1992) when fees were again frozen. In 2005, another confrontation between the Liberal Party and student groups occurred around a change in the loan and scholarship system, reducing public investment by $103 million (Lacoursière, 2007). The student movement fought against this, culminating in a strike that lasted over six weeks. Finally, the government agreed to maintain the level of public funding. As can be seen, the 2012 controversy was embedded in a history of contention surrounding the values that should prevail with regard to higher education.
In addition, note that the controversy studied occurred close in time to successful political uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East known as the “Arab spring,” a context that was echoed in the label “printemps érable” (maple spring) used by many to refer to the crisis.
Research design
We conducted an in-depth single case study (Yin, 2014) in which multiple events were analyzed chronologically, focusing on the orders of worth mobilized by protagonists to evaluate the situation over time. Four key events stood out as particularly significant in the evolution of the controversy: the 2011 provincial budget announcing the fee increase; the first student strikes; the national demonstration in March; and the passing of Bill 78 (a law restricting demonstrations) (see Table 1 for descriptions of these events). Each of these four key events is analyzed as a specific “test” of worth according to Boltanski and Thévenot’s (2006) framework.
Chronology of the tests of worth.
These four events were selected as the main focus for analysis for two reasons. First, they were associated with peaks in the number of newspaper articles, hinting at their importance. Second, these events were associated with discontinuities in the development of the controversy because: (1) they involved the mobilization of a new “object” or focus of attention for protagonists, and (2) they were accompanied by shifts in the orders of worth mobilized. We thus sought to understand how and why each of these developments occurred. We also considered how discourses and actions of actors were linked from one moment of test to the next, drawing on the orders of worth framework as an initial guide.
Data collection
Our dataset is composed of media coverage in four major French-language newspapers in Quebec, focusing specifically on references to the positions taken by key actors. We extracted and analyzed 595 articles, of which 355 were selected for systematic coding with NVivo after filtering for redundancy across sources. We relied on media coverage for two reasons. First, the controversy studied took place mainly in the public arena and was exhaustively described by the media, with ample opportunity to collect the discourses of key actors. Second, in line with the orders of worth framework, we were particularly concerned with qualifications and evaluations that were produced in public (rather than with negotiations taking place behind closed doors), because examples from the public discourse show how actors draw on elements that might be viewed as relating to the common good, and having potential legitimacy in public debate.
It is however important to note that each newspaper has its own guidelines and political alignment that could influence the tone of reporting, and that different newspapers do not give equal access to all voices. To alleviate this concern, we pulled data from multiple newspapers representing different trends concerning the issue studied (in favour of raising tuition fees, neutral, or against). Specifically, we chose the Journal de Montreal (pro), La Presse (neutral), Le Devoir (against), and Le Soleil (pro) as key sources. We selected the main French-language newspapers as a data source as they appeared more representative of the debate. We excluded English-language media because we observed less interest in the dispute in those outlets.
Data analysis and interpretation
Our data analysis proceeded in three main steps using an abductive approach (Dubois & Gadde, 2002) that builds on the initial analytical framework to develop a novel conceptual model of the evaluation process during a controversy. First, as noted above, the overall timeline was decomposed into temporal brackets (Langley, 1999) surrounding each of the moments of “test” identified. For each test, we identified the actors involved and orders of worth mobilized in their discourses as reported in media sources, coding the articles relating to each event. The codes for orders of worth were constructed on the basis of the vocabularies described by Boltanski and Thévenot (2006) (see also Patriotta et al., 2011). Excerpts could receive one, two, or even three different codes depending on the mix of worlds referenced, reflecting the potential for pluralism in actors’ discourses. After coding, we quantified the occurrence of each world over time (see Figure 1). We coded article excerpts rather than just words or phrases, because words out of context do not allow us to properly establish which worlds are mobilized (see Appendix 2 for examples of coded excerpts).
Trends in the mobilization of worlds during the controversy.
We also developed a code list for the actors in the controversy, with more than 100 individual actors being identified. For the final analysis, we included, for each event, those groups or organizations that were cited at least twice, grouping individuals together by organizational affiliation since actors from the same organization rarely emitted conflicting perspectives. These grouped actors are also summarized in Appendix 1.
In the second step, we analyzed emerging trends in the mobilization of worlds during the controversy (see Figure 1). For example, we noted the rise of the domestic order of worth and the decrease in references to the market order of worth over time. To explain such shifts, we examined the sequence of actions undertaken by different actors, developing visual maps to represent the flow of actions for each “test of worth.” We labeled these key actions “evaluative moves” and found that similar types of moves might occur for different moments of test, suggesting that these have generic qualities. At the same time, we observed that the nature of the controversy itself shifted from one object of test to another.
Third, building on a comparison of visual maps, and the “evaluative moves” emerging from the analysis, we developed a general model that shows how a controversy plays out over multiple episodes of testing and evaluation. The model was thus constructed abductively through cross-fertilization between our preliminary analytical framework and our empirical observations.
In the next section, we present the key findings, offering a descriptive chronological account of each moment of “test,” while identifying the key evaluative moves that punctuated their development. Following this, we raise the analysis to a more abstract and interpretive level to identify the range of key evaluative moves and develop our overarching conceptual model.
Findings: Tests of Worth during an Evolving Controversy
As we mentioned, four interrelated issues—the increase in tuition fees, the general student strike, the national demonstration, and bill 78—were decisive in the development of the controversy and constitute successive tests of worth within the overall evaluation process. Table 1 shows the chronology of these issues. We now describe the actions surrounding each of these “tests,” showing the qualifications produced and the orders of worth in play based on excerpts from our data. Supplementary data are provided in Appendices 3 to 6. Following the description of each episode, we provide an analytic summary that draws out the key observations emerging from that particular episode. These analytical observations will accumulate throughout the analysis, building up towards the development of our model.
Test 1: Increase in tuition fees
The proposed increase in tuition fees in the 2011 provincial government budget was the triggering object of the controversy which gave rise to the first of a series of “tests of worth” as a variety of actors suggested competing qualifications concerning the appropriate orders of “worth” that should be used to evaluate this object.
Initial qualifications: Education as an individual investment (market world)
The increase in tuition fees was announced in the provincial budget on March 17, 2011. Governing Liberal Party politicians defined it initially by drawing on market world language. Essentially, education was qualified as an individual investment and favorable comparisons were made with tuition fees in other Canadian provinces. It was suggested that students needed to pay their “fair share” of education costs, given the benefits they would subsequently derive from this in terms of better wages in the future: “I have difficulty understanding that someone who will make hundreds of thousands of dollars more with his university degree than if he was high school graduate does not agree to invest a little for his education” (Liberal Party). More data illustrating the types of arguments used at this point is presented in Appendix 3.
Counter-qualifications: Education as a motor for social development and equality (civic world)
Reactions to the tuition fee increase from student associations and other interest groups were understandably negative. The public discourse of opponents drew on a different criterion of worth from that put forward by the government, emphasizing civic rather than market world qualifications. For example, opponents criticized the increase by saying it could have a serious impact on access to higher education: “This is the biggest attack on accessibility to education made by a government for more than 20 years” (Federation of Quebec University Students (FEUQ)). Education was qualified as a motor of social development and social equality: “If this continues, we will go back to the 50s, when there were just children from rich families who had access to the university” (Federation of single parent families and stepfamilies Quebec). In other words, instead of accepting the market order of worth as the rightful qualification for the increase in tuition fees, student associations “requalified” it through the civic world. By so doing, the student associations drew attention to a new evaluation criterion that they argued was important in the evaluation process.
Counter-counter-qualifications: Converging on civic world discourse
Yet, despite the first qualification of tuition fees drawing on the market world, the civic world emerged strongly as the main criterion of worth mobilized by all actors over time, even by those who had initially presented it as a market-based issue. Thus, the Liberal Party itself shifted towards the civic world, when it defended itself from critique by proposing that the increase would be offset by an improvement of the system of loans and grants: “A student who receives a [government] scholarship will now receive an equivalent increase in scholarship to compensate for rising tuition. This protects the less affluent students, and accessibility is then protected” (Liberal Party). After initially trying to circle around the issue of accessibility highlighted by student organizations, the Liberal Party found itself responding to this qualification directly, implicitly recognizing the legitimacy of civic criteria. Other opposition parties pushed them further in this direction by building on this argument to attack the Liberal Party and put forward their own positions. For example, the CAQ (one of the opposition parties) proposed that they would enrich “more the loans and scholarships program than has the government, to protect accessibility.” The initial test of worth was thus essentially reconfigured around the civic world.
Materializing the civic world in a new test
The tensions between the different positions continued with some student associations still demanding a complete rollback of the increase and a return to a tuition fee freeze, using civic world arguments. To solidify the civic world in the evaluation process, student organizations promoted a general student strike, giving rise to a new test of worth to be discussed below.
Summary
We see in the analysis of this first “test” three themes that will appear to be common to the evolution of evaluation processes. First, actors introducing a new object of controversy define it based on qualifications that suit their own vision. We call this first evaluative move “qualifying the object of a test.” This move aims to construct an object in such a way as to delimit the order(s) of worth that should be applied to it (represented here by the Liberal Party’s initial market world qualification of the fee increase). Second, the bringing to bear of new qualifications that draw on orders of worth different from those initially put forward can have a contagious effect, leading initiators to shift towards the newly introduced criterion, transforming the nature of the evaluation process and the qualification of the objects considered. We label this evaluative move (initiated here by student organizations) “requalifying.” Third, we see from this episode that controversies are fed not only by discourse but also by the creation of new objects that can shift the focus for qualifications and lead to new tests: in this case the student strike. This evaluative move that we label “materializing” can reinforce a given criterion by embodying it in an object that may then become the focus of a test in itself, as we now see.
Test 2: The general student strike
Initial qualifications: The strike as an affirmation of legitimate voice (civic world)
After their success in highlighting the civic world as a criterion to be taken into account in the evaluation process, the student organizations organized a general student strike that materialized their concerns. In mid-February 2012, the first strike votes occurred: some Montreal area CEGEPs entered the strike, followed by several university faculties. Among others, the three major student organizations—ASSÉ, FECQ and FEUQ—held regular general assemblies to grow awareness of the situation and widen the strike. The strike itself became the object of a new test as multiple actors proposed criteria to evaluate its worth. At first, this object was considered by its creators as part of the civic world. The students qualified the strike as an affirmation of their legitimate right to be heard, signaling the desire of student organizations to be consulted in the decision-making process. “If we want to make ourselves heard, we think it is our duty to go on a general strike to make sure we have a balance of power with the government” (ACCES, student association). However, the government countered this perspective with different criteria.
Counter-qualifications: The strike as a costly choice for students (market world) and as an infringement on the rights of non-strikers (civic world)
Initially the government’s counter-arguments drew again on the market world. For example, after a few weeks of the strike, the Minister of Education suggested that there would be “monetary losses that could result from a strike, especially because students can work less, since they will be in school longer” (Liberal Party) (see Appendix 4 for more data). According to her, these delays could affect the possibility of students being admitted to other programs as well. In concert with a group of students opposed to the strike (the MESRQ), the Liberal Party argued that students on strike would lose their investment in time and money if they pursued striking. However, this market world formulation of the strike was not taken up strongly by other key actors.
Simultaneously, other groups, such as the association of universities (CREPUQ), put forward the right of access to education for students who had voted against the strike, and questioned the right of their classmates to block access to courses: “Students have the right to speak, but students who want to go to their courses also have the right to continue their programs” (CREPUQ). This requalification based on the civic world was consistent with previous arguments made by the Liberal Party and the MESRQ that the strike would have an impact on individual benefits. Moreover, some students who did not view the voting methods used by the student associations as democratic also questioned the civic worth of the strike.
Soon, the concept of strike was questioned for its legality by the government, who noted that student associations are not regulated by labor laws. The Liberal Party and its supporters began to define it rather as a “boycott.” In other words, they essentially accepted the test of worth in the civic world put forward by the students, but reinterpreted its object: the strike was reformulated as an attack on access to education of students that did not agree with it. This can be seen as an attempt by the Liberal Party to reorder the strike as “unworthy” in the civic world and to reorder its own position as a worthy “subject” in the civic world by defending students’ right to education.
The Liberal Party also used statistics and references to the interests of taxpayers to characterize the student movement as an “unworthy” subject in the civic world because it represented only a minority: “Only 11,000 students from colleges and universities exercised their right to strike out of 475,000 students.” By doing so, the Liberal Party painted the student movement as built on individuals defending their “individual benefits” while “taxpayers,” who are a majority, did not benefit from the student demands: “If we continue to freeze tuition, who pays? All taxpayers, the majority of whom do not have a university degree” (Liberal Party). In other words, while student organizations called on civic world justifications to emphasize the worth of the strike, the Liberal Party and other opponents attempted to undermine the strike’s worth in the civic world and the worth of its proponents. To do so, the Liberal Party set itself up as the worthy defender of civic values for non-striking students as well as for taxpayers.
Escalating the civic world test with a national demonstration
In response, student organizations emphasized the growing number of students participating in the strike. To consolidate this position, one month after the first general student strike vote, the ASSÉ organized a national demonstration to take place on March 22, 2012. With this, they introduced a new object, the national demonstration, that became the focus of a new test of worth.
Summary
Some of the themes we introduced in our preliminary analysis of the first test are again present here, sometimes with certain nuances. First, in discussing the first test, we noted that requalifying moves in which initial definitions of an object were requalified according to a new order of worth could be contagious, leading other actors to draw on the new criterion though perhaps in different ways. We see in the analysis of test 2 that contagion may or may not happen. For example, the Liberal Party’s counter-qualification of the strike using market world arguments did not displace the debate, but was met with further civic world qualifications from the strikers, further enhancing that world of worth in the controversy. Second, we see that the materializing of the debate around a new object (the strike) refocuses the nature of qualifications around this object (although the initial dispute about tuition fees remains in the background). The cycle is repeated at the end of test 2 when the student organizations intensify materialization of civic world concerns in the national demonstration, again shifting the focus, as we shall see.
A third and novel theme that emerges during this period concerns the way in which actors attempt to position their own worth to speak on behalf of a particular world by invoking associations with relevant worthy others. We call this evaluative move self-casting. For example, the Liberal Party casts itself as worthy in the civic world when it discursively allies itself with students seeking to pursue their education and with taxpayers whom it represents. A fourth theme that mirrors the third concerns the way in which actors may attempt to undermine the worth of opponents in a specific world—an evaluative move we call altercasting. For example, the Liberal Party altercasts the strikers as unworthy in the civic world because they are pursuing narrow minority interests at the expense of others. A final theme appearing in this episode concerns the potential for protagonists to reinterpret the object of a test in ways that shift constructions of worth in the same world. For example, the reinterpretation of a “strike” as a “boycott” places the event in a new light that changes its worth with respect to the civic world. We call this evaluative move “reformulating the test” because it results in a reordering of the object being evaluated, though not a shift in evaluative criteria.
Test 3: The national demonstration
Initial qualifications: The national demonstration as a popular movement to protect citizens from attacks on access to education (civic world)
The national demonstration was a generalized call made by students who wanted to voice their concerns to the Liberal Party. By defining the demonstration this way, student organizations put themselves forward as worthy subjects in the civic world, aiming to show that the student movement represented far more than a minority of the student population (an argument of the Liberal Party). They therefore worked to obtain as much support as possible from the majority of Quebec students and from other citizens (who might have different reasons to oppose government policies and different reasons for not participating in the strike). The student organizations defined this demonstration as a true representation of popular support against the tuition fee increase project: “What we want is to bring the workers with us and make people understand that raising tuition is part of a wider context, in the context of a government that attacks the entire population” (ASSÉ).
Counter-qualifications: The national demonstration as evidence of failure to take responsibility (emergence of domestic world criteria)
After the national demonstration that took place on March 22, where more than 250,000 people participated and marched through Montreal, the Liberal Party was publicly criticized by opposition parties who argued that the Liberal Party had to take its responsibilities by trying to discuss with student organizations. According to the Party Québécois, “By refusing to dialogue with young people, Jean Charest [the Prime Minister] is showing weakness” (Parti Québécois, PQ). PQ representatives added that “the government behaves as if students are enemies of the state” instead of opening its door to its youth (a critique based on the domestic world) while other opposition parties such as the CAQ and Quebec Solidaire and student organizations also criticized the Liberal Party for similar reasons. Quebec Solidaire officials said they were proud to see “so many young people standing up despite the lack of listening” from the Liberal Party.
Counter-counter-qualifications: National demonstrations as acts of violence (converging on domestic criteria)
In response to these critiques, the Liberal Party defended its position by arguing that it did invite the student organizations to discuss the future of education during a summit on higher education in December 2010. According to the Liberal Party, “students [were] invited to sit and talk to [them]. Unfortunately, they chose to boycott the discussion.” Trying to even further reposition itself as worthy, the Liberal Party argued that it could not yield to groups that use violence and intimidation to make their points, noting that a number of incidents had occurred during the demonstration. As the Minister of Education affirmed,
I take my responsibilities as Minister of Education, but you cannot ask me, because there is vandalism, because there is rampage, because they use violent acts, to sit down with them and yield. … I cannot give in to intimidation and violence.
The Liberal Party thus reformulated the national demonstration as an act of intimidation and violence and consequently an unworthy object in the domestic world. In other words, this episode shows how the test of the national demonstration brought forth a new criterion of worth that was influential in subsequent events.
Materializing the domestic and civic worlds in a new test
As concern increased about the ongoing strike and the aftermath of the national demonstration, the Liberal Party decided to intervene decisively. A special bill was presented to the National Assembly (as the Quebec legislature is called) and passed into law on May 19 as Bill 78. This bill forced the organizers of any demonstrations of over 50 people to present their itinerary eight hours in advance to the police. Protesters also had to remain at more than 50 meters from higher education institutions. The bill also imposed significant fines for offenders, ranging from $1,000 for individuals up to $125,000 for student organizations. The leaders of these groups were liable to fines of $7,000 to $35,000. As we see below, this reoriented the controversy towards a new object that became the focus of a new test, grounded initially in both civic and domestic worlds of worth.
Summary
This test reveals again some of the dynamics illustrated in the first and second moments of test. First, the introduction of domestic world criteria (the requalifying move) is contagious and orients the following qualifications and counter-qualifications, even among those who initially relied on other criteria. Second, we see how the controversy leads a key actor to rematerialize the test in a new object to consolidate their view (Bill 78). Finally, we see forms of self-casting and altercasting in which protagonists promote their own worth and contest the worth of others, this time in the domestic world. For example, the Liberal Party is cast by opposition parties as irresponsible for its lack of attention to students. In response, the Liberal Party promotes its worth in the domestic world by establishing itself as an authority figure in a hierarchy of order that is disrespected by protesters using acts of violence and intimidation.
Test 4: Bill 78
Initial qualifications: Bill 78 as an insurance for citizens’ rights to education (civic world), and as a protection from violence and intimidation (domestic world)
Bill 78 can be viewed as an object that allowed the Liberal Party to reposition itself as worthy in both the civic and the domestic worlds. In terms of the civic world, in addition to its legal nature, it was also a response to qualifications and attacks associated with this world. Specifically, the Liberal Party qualified its action in terms of ensuring the right of access to education to non-striking students, a vision shared by the MESRQ (the association of non-striking students) and CREPUQ (the association of university rectors): “[The Prime Minister] said he wanted to ensure that the rights of these citizens’ access to their classroom is respected” (Liberal Party). In parallel with this, Bill 78 aimed to assist services in positions of authority, such as the police, the government, and the universities. Indeed, it was an attempt to encourage the resumption of order and authority, and was thus associated with the domestic world in addition to the civic world: “We cannot ask the state to completely erase itself to the benefit of the street, to the benefit of noise and vandalism” (Liberal Party). The bill reduced gray areas of police practices, promoting the legitimacy of their interventions. These qualifications were supported by the Employer’s Association (Conseil du patronat du Québec): “Certainly, with the non-compliance with instructions in the past weeks, the bill should include measures to generate sufficiently strong deterrent effects.”
Counter-qualifications: Bill 78 as a violation of rights of association (civic world) and as excessive use of force (domestic world)
However, the initial qualifications of Bill 78 were strongly contested by opponents, drawing on the same worlds, though perhaps more strongly on the civic world: “The government of Quebec [Liberal Party] is using a crisis it has itself provoked to transform any expression of citizen social movement into a crime. It is transforming a state that has a tradition of openness into a police state” (FECQ). It also drew new actors into the debate. For example, the Quebec Bar Association joined the opposition in order to defend rights of association: “Bill 78 violates the constitutional and fundamental rights of citizens.” Student associations and unions positioned themselves similarly, claiming that Bill 78 was an attack on the freedom of the entire population and not just on students: “The representative of the ASSÉ [student organization] accused the government of violating fundamental freedoms such as freedom of expression and association” (indirect quote). Student organizations also condemned the Liberal Party for using excessive power to silence the population, ordering its representatives as unworthy in the domestic world: “He [The leader of ASSÉ] sees an ‘authoritarian drift’. He accused the government of using the gag as an exceptional parliamentary measure” (indirect quote).
The protests against Bill 78 eventually coalesced and materialized into a broader community movement that included “pots and pans” rallies. Student organizations were therefore able to claim that new citizen groups were joining the student organizations, further promoting their worth in the civic world: “There are not only students in the streets now, but also citizens of all kinds” (FECQ). In other words, this test of worth played out in both the civic and domestic worlds, with increasing mobilization over time, of students, CEGEP professors, union workers, and other citizens demonstrating against Bill 78.
Although no agreement was reached, this chaotic situation forced the Liberal Party to trigger an election, which it lost to the opposition Parti Québécois. Though elections are not issue-specific, this nevertheless seems to suggest that the Liberal Party had compromised its worth as a representative of the interests of the population (civic world) and as a figure of authority that would equitably use its power to protect and listen to its population (domestic world).
Summary
In this episode, we see some similar dynamics as for other tests: for example, we see the contagious nature of requalification in the domestic world. However, this moment of test is also interesting as it mobilizes two orders of worth simultaneously that are interpreted differently by different actors and that build on the accumulation of worlds of worth that have been developing across the sequence of tests. We also see how initial qualifications based on civic and domestic worlds are undermined by the building coalition coalescing around an object (Bill 78) that, in this case, is increasingly constructed as unworthy. More and more groups and citizens are drawn into the controversy to defend what are seen as civic liberties. This final test shows how the cumulative evidence of support for the students’ position against Bill 78 casts not just the Bill itself as unworthy but also the Liberal Party who introduced this object in both the civic and domestic worlds. In other words, through the process described, the civic and domestic worlds became the evaluation criteria stabilized in the evaluation process, replacing over time the emphasis on the market world within which the controversy had initially been qualified in the first test (the increase of tuition fees).
Through the electoral process (in essence, a new but more definitive “test” with agreed democratic rules), the Liberal Party lost power and the controversy moved towards a resolution as a new government repealed Bill 78 and replaced the large tuition fee increase with a more acceptable gradual adjustment in line with inflation.
Towards a Model of Evaluation Processes during a Controversy
We now draw the findings of the preceding section together in order to identify the key elements comprising the evaluation process and to introduce our overarching conceptual model. The accumulation of conceptual elements identified in the summaries from the previous section serve as the basis for this analysis. We begin by explicitly identifying the most important evaluative moves composing the overall process. We then examine how these moves become chained together and collectively drive the evaluation process forward over time. This allows us to propose a generic overarching conceptual model of the evaluation process in a controversy.
Evaluative moves underlying the collective re-evaluation of worth
The study of a public controversy as an evaluation process revealed not only how the position of actors changes over time, but also how the objects and issues that are the focus of evaluation are transformed as the evaluation process proceeds. Specifically, across the four tests of worth, we identified six distinctive “evaluative moves” used to introduce and validate new criteria and concerns. Table 2 summarizes and illustrates these moves and we elaborate on them below. The first three moves (qualifying the object of a test; reformulating the object of a test; requalifying the object of a test) deal with discursive moves that establish or re-establish appropriate evaluation criteria (or worlds of worth) and at the same time order the object of the test according to those criteria. The remaining three (materializing; self-casting; altercasting) highlight the material dimension of the evaluation process, and the way in which the focus of evaluation shifts as protagonists attempt to create or draw in new objects and people to reorient the evaluation process in ways that favor their position.
Six Evaluative Moves in a Controversy.
The first evaluative move (see Table 2) is “qualifying the object of a test.” With this move, actors try to define tests of worth using one or more worlds of worth that allow them to order objects according to their own visions. At this stage, actors generally propose tests based on worlds that have already been highlighted in the evaluation process or referring to a world that they believe cannot be denied. This move is the first that appears when a new object of test is introduced (e.g., the tuition fee increase in test 1, the strike in test 2, the demonstration in test 3, and Bill 78 in test 4) as the initiator of that object puts forward the evaluative criteria they believe demonstrate its worth. Thus the object of the first test (the tuition fee increase) was initially qualified by its initiator (the Liberal Party) in the market world. The findings section above identifies explicitly the initial qualifications put forward for each of the successive tests.
The second move is “reformulating the object of a test.” This move involves reformulating a test proposed by others using the same criteria of worth but drawing attention to different features of the situation that lead to a reordering of its value. This move is one possible reaction to the previous move. Whenever the debates involved back and forth attempts at reordering an object within the same world (i.e., using similar criteria as those put forward previously), this move is operating. It implies, in fact, acceptance of the relevant criteria to be considered, though not of the ordering previously proposed.
The third evaluative move, “requalifying the object of the test,” is used to contest the very nature of the test of worth by bringing to bear new worlds of worth. This is an alternative response to the first move and it has the potential to reorient the test, depending on whether the criterion is picked up and mobilized by others. For example, the Liberal Party’s initial qualification in the market world was immediately requalified in the civic world by the students (as an attack on accessibility), and in this case civic world criteria were widely picked up, even by the Liberal Party, reorienting the controversy significantly.
These first three moves are inherent to the notion of test developed by Boltanski and Thévenot (2006) and directly related to the evaluation process as formulated by Lamont (2012). In particular, they involve the bringing to bear of different criteria and the reordering of objects around these criteria. Note however that these are indeed “moves” in an ongoing social process spread out over time, not one-time calculations. The sequence of moves and the way they interact is important for understanding the outcome. Perhaps even more interesting, however, are the three remaining moves that result in shifting the focus of the test and explicitly consider its material element (Cloutier & Langley, 2013), something not brought to the fore so clearly even in many studies that formally draw on the orders of worth perspective (Oldenhof et al., 2014; Patriotta et al., 2011; Taupin, 2012).
The evaluative move “materializing” involves introducing a new object or reconstructing an object already involved in the controversy in a way designed to favor that protagonist’s vision according to orders of worth in play. This move allows actors to materialize their vision and promote it in a stronger manner so that the worlds of worth on which they rely reconfigure the evaluation process. This move thus involves the instantiation of a specific qualification within novel material objects that moves the controversy forward, and indeed refocuses it in new rounds of testing concerning this new object (as illustrated in Table 2 and in the series of four successive tests described in the findings section).
We identified the evaluative moves “self-casting” and “altercasting” to underline the fact that the evaluation process proceeds not only through a qualification and ordering of the object of the test itself but through qualification of subjects (or people) involved in the controversy as more or less worthy within certain worlds, reflecting indirectly on the worth of their actions. While self-casting is self-referential and aims to cast one’s own actions as worthy because of an alignment with worthy others, altercasting focuses on promoting or diminishing the worth of others. Note that the term “altercasting” was coined by Weinstein and Deutschberger (1963) but has been little used in organization studies. It and its counterpart “self-casting” were however employed in a recent study of professional boundary work by Bucher, Chreim, Langley, and Reay (2016). We adopted the terms here as they fit well with our own observations.
An integrative model of the evaluation process during a controversy
Building on the analysis of the four tests of worth and the six evaluative moves identified above, we developed the model presented in Figure that shows the various steps through which objects introduced into a controversy are defined, reformulated, requalified, ordered, and sometimes materialized in new objects that then become the focus of subsequent tests. While we presented our empirical findings linearly as a sequence of tests over time, what we see conceptually is a cyclical process in which the combination of evaluative moves mobilized for each test leads to a redefinition of the focal object of evaluation, which then becomes the starting point for a new test, and a repetition of the cycle. This cyclical process continues iteratively until a kind of “settlement” (Helms, Oliver, & Webb, 2012) or compromise around the criteria to be considered and their relative worth is reached. Empirically, such a settlement occurred in our case through the definitive test of an election. We now describe the key features of the model.
Evaluation processes in a controversy as recursively organized around a sequence of tests
The focal point of our model is the idea that evaluation processes during a controversy are punctuated by a series of tests of worth (box 2 of Figure 2) built around the qualification of different objects of test (box 1), each of which (except the first) is materialized within the process itself as a response to an emerging configuration of qualifications and orderings generated through previous tests (feedback arrow between box 4 and box 1). In concrete terms, a key observation of our study is how controversies generate new objects as they evolve, and how these may significantly transform the process over time with important consequences for outcomes. For example, in our case, the controversy that began around a tuition fee increase was reconfigured to become a questioning of the democratic ability of citizens to participate in the decision-making process, and finally to concerns regarding freedom of speech.
A Model of the Evaluation Process during a Controversy.
Tests as comprised of two processes (establishing evaluation criteria and ordering) involving multiple evaluative moves
As we mentioned at the outset, evaluation in the context of tests is comprised of two key processes: qualification (or establishing appropriate evaluation criteria—box 2a in Figure 2), and ordering (that is, assessing objects according to these criteria—box 2b in Figure 2). Our findings showed that these two processes are not perfectly separable in practice: people often simultaneously attempted to impose criteria of worth at the same time as putting forward assessments of worth according to these criteria. And yet, as we showed in the findings, as tests developed, they did tend to converge around a limited set of worlds of worth.
As shown in Figure 2, each test for a specific object also involves a multiplicity of evaluative moves that can include initial qualifications, attempts at reformulating the test to reorder the worth of the object according to the same orders of worth, and attempts to requalify the object according to new orders of worth. As we analysed the tests occurring in this controversy, we noted, however, that evaluations of the protagonists themselves also became important to its evolution, i.e., the moves of self-casting and altercasting. While it might be thought that self-casting and altercasting would be used mainly for ordering rather than to bring to bear new qualifying criteria, we noted some exceptions. For example, the domestic world of worth was introduced into the debate around the third test (the national demonstration) first and foremost as a means of casting the Liberal Party as irresponsible and thus unworthy.
Qualifications and requalifications as more or less “sticky” depending on (a) socio-historical embeddedness and (b) centrality for protagonists
During each test, some forms of qualification tend to “stick” and become the basis for subsequent attempts at ordering while others do not. For example, the civic world originally introduced by opponents to the tuition fee increase came to be central to the controversy and was drawn on by almost all participants, while market world criteria faded in importance despite being introduced initially as supporting the tuition fee increase. We suggest that criteria that tend to stick will be those that the central actors as well as their audiences can most strongly relate to. For example, the sustained importance of civic criteria in the controversy we studied is not surprising, given the particular socio-historical context in which education was defined by a historic Commission as serving “mainly the general interests of society” (Gouvernement du Québec, 1966), more than as an individual good. Repeated long-standing tuition freezes and previous unsuccessful attempts to transform the system for the financing of higher education set the scene for civic criteria to remain central. Even the proponents of change could not dismiss them.
A second element that might make the introduction of new worlds of worth “stick” concerns the centrality of those worlds to the legitimacy of certain actors. For example, when the Liberal Party was attacked for its weakness in taking its responsibilities as a government (domestic world) through the altercasting of others, defending itself from these attacks became critical since the attacks undermined its raison d’être as a government. It was thus important to respond—and a response in a different world of worth would not deal adequately with the problem. This observation also tends to suggest that altercasting may be a particularly powerful evaluative move that tends to motivate opponents to respond by defending themselves within the worlds of worth expressed, and eventually by materializing new objects that “prove” their claimed worth. We pursue this argument next.
Materialization as a response to a stalled evaluation process, often stimulated by altercasting
As shown in Figure 2, when the evaluation process in a controversy appears to be stalled or unresolved (box 4), protagonists are likely to materialize new objects to reinforce their position. A strong stimulus for materialization of new objects is altercasting by opponents that undermines the worth of certain actors, making them more inclined to introduce new objects to add weight to their claims. This happened, for example, for the strike, when the Liberal Party’s altercasting of students as representing only a minority (unworthy in the civic world) stimulated the students to “prove” their worth by organizing a national demonstration. Thus, shifts in objects of test are likely when protagonists feel sufficiently threatened to attempt to embed their preferred evaluative criteria in new objects. By so doing, however, they may open a Pandora’s box, as the consequences of the new test are unpredictable: since the object has changed in nature, its characteristics may be subject to new qualifications and attempts at reordering.
In summary, the model offered in Figure 2 shows the cyclical evolution of an evaluation process over time. This process model explains the transformation of evaluation criteria through the chaining together of successive moments of test and their outcomes in the development of a controversy over time, drawing on multiple worlds of worth. We now discuss the contributions of the conceptual elements and model developed above in relation to previous literature.
Discussion and Conclusion
In this paper, we began by asking: How do the evaluation processes produced by different actors involved in a public debate influence the evolution of a controversy? We showed above how six different evaluative moves contribute to these evaluation processes, and how they are chained together in a series of “tests” that contribute to shifting the focus of the controversy over time, ultimately shaping its outcome.
Our contributions to the literature are threefold. First, we contribute to the literature on public controversies by showing how a perspective grounded in the sociology of valuation and evaluation (Lamont, 2012) mobilizing the orders of worth framework can be useful in understanding the development of a public controversy and the way in which different evaluation criteria and evaluative moves are brought to bear. Public controversies have been examined using discursive perspectives such as critical discourse analysis (Joutsenvirta & Vaara, 2015; Maguire & Hardy, 2009) and frame analysis (Guérard et al., 2013; Lefsrud & Meyer, 2012; Reinecke & Ansari, 2016). These studies have contributed to our understanding of the role of meaning in controversies, but they do not recognize that, underlying discursive strategies, there may be a rather limited number of repertoires of evaluation that are seen as legitimate within the public sphere and that it is through the reflexive mobilization of these repertoires that competent agents formulate and defend their public actions (Conley, 2015).
Boltanski and Thévenot’s (2006) orders of worth framework digs beneath more ad hoc analyses of protagonists’ discourses to draw attention to these repertoires. Moreover, it recognizes the crucial role of material elements in giving weight to discursive interventions. Our analysis of evaluative moves includes materializing as a key move that shifts the focus of the controversy by solidifying actors’ discourses through the creation of new objects. It also recognizes self-casting and altercasting (i.e., the evaluation of people involved in the controversy) as a crucial element in the evaluation process. In particular, we note the powerful role of altercasting in stimulating defensive moves. More specifically, our contribution to the literature on public controversies is expressed in the six evaluative moves identified above and the overarching model in Figure 2 that links them together. While some of the specific moves identified are partly inspired by Boltanski and Thévenot’s (2006) framework, our data enabled us to reach beyond these elements to generate an overarching model of the evaluation process with potentially useful insights for understanding other controversial situations.
Indeed, our second contribution is to the “orders of worth” framework itself, and in particular to the understanding of the notion of test, and its application to empirical situations, especially those that evolve longitudinally over time, traversing multiple moments of test. In fact, despite its apparent centrality to Boltanski and Thévenot’s (2006) original oeuvre, the notion of “test” is less fully developed by these authors and less widely adopted than the repertoire of worlds of worth (but see Boltanski, 2011). A limited amount of previous work in organization studies has used the notion of “test of worth” in empirical research.
Among exceptions, McInerney (2008) highlighted the importance of a single field-configuring event as a test of worth in defining a new field. Patriotta et al. (2011) analyzed a nuclear accident as a legitimacy test and identified the series of justifications that this engendered in order to re-establish legitimacy. Annisette et al. (2017) described how accounting devices might be reformulated to create tests enabling a compromise among multiple worlds of worth. Gond et al. (2016) also refer to “tests of worth” in their analysis of a shale gas controversy, but they appear to use this concept in a rather narrow sense of formalized expert assessments (referral to an environmental assessment agency). Their discussion of the power dynamics surrounding this issue involve discussions of how certain actors attempted to “avoid” tests of worth to prevent public scrutiny of their activities. Finally, Taupin (2012) embeds the notion of test somewhat more deeply into his analysis by examining the links between forms of test (i.e., tests within a single world, or involving multiple worlds) and forms of compromise, showing how repeated “tests” of the worth of credit agencies tended to reinforce existing compromises associated with the status quo rather than seriously challenging them, precisely because of defenders’ capacity to draw on multiple worlds of worth.
However, previous studies have rarely explored the full richness of the notion of test. First, few authors have considered in detail the notion of qualification or the dynamics of their interaction in tests of worth. Our analysis in contrast delved deeply into these acts of qualification and their interactions. In particular, by comparing a series of tests over time, we were able to shed light on the basic acts which underlie the evaluation of a situation expressed as a series of “evaluative moves” associated with a test. Second, few authors have examined the chaining together of tests over time as issues evolve (Dansou & Langley, 2012) as well as the mechanisms implicated in shifting the foci of tests. In contrast, our study analyzed their interrelation across multiple iterations. We argue that by focusing on successive moments of test, we provide a better understanding of how actions and reactions play out in the unfolding of a controversy. In particular, we noted the important role of materializing in transforming the focus of a test even within the same controversy, as well as the role of negative altercasting in motivating the mobilization of proofs through materialization, and thus the refocusing of tests.
Further insights into the notion of test can build on Boltanski’s (2011) more recent work, in which he proposes three types of tests that offer successively greater potential for contesting institutionalized power relations. These are “truth tests” that ritually confirm embedded value systems by limiting consideration of alternatives (as expressed for example in Nyberg et al.’s (2017) analysis of public inquiries on fracking in the UK), “reality tests” that bring to bear multiple orders of worth and enable contestation and debate within the bounds of what actors consider to be “realistic” given the political regime in which they are embedded, and finally “existential tests” that radically challenge institutionalized value systems and power relations by revealing their contradictions in extreme cases. Our study suggests that, in some circumstances, the critical nature of tests may escalate over time before resettling into a “realist” mode that affirms and reconstitutes what is seen as acceptable (Nyberg et al., 2017).
Indeed, our paper also contributes to the understanding of evaluation by illustrating the micro-level practices through which extant or proposed definitions of the worth of a focal phenomenon such as higher education may be enriched and transformed, or reinforced over time. The controversy we studied began as proponents of the tuition fee increase put forward a proposal that was narrowly defined in the market world: the value of education was assessed in terms of a monetary amount that was presented as the “fair price” that students should pay for the benefits they would derive from it. It is no accident perhaps that this move corresponds to a wider trend in the institutional environment towards the “marketization” of higher education (Johnstone, 2004; Jongbloed, 2003; Nickolai et al., 2012). In this case however, the “fair price” was not able to sustain a test of worth that rapidly spread beyond the market world to draw in civic and domestic criteria. Through the various evaluative moves and processes we identified, higher education in Québec was re-established as a much more complex phenomenon. Although the settlement of the conflict did not establish higher education as a free collective good (the civic world values promoted by some in the student movement), it did reinstate to some degree the pre-existing socio-historical compromise. Our study shows how and why this happened.
In concluding, we note that although our study focused on a particular sector and controversy, our contribution could easily be extended to other contexts. We studied a public setting which made the evaluation processes examined transparently observable. However, evaluation processes occur at every level of social organization when the value of objects, actors, and actions is assessed, and when concerns are raised about how value should be attributed (Lamont, 2012). Our model appears particularly relevant to pluralistic organizational settings traversed by multiple value systems and diffuse power relationships (Cloutier et al., 2017). It could assist actors at many levels—at the political level, the organization level, and the inter-organizational level—to better understand the paths of evaluation and re-evaluation in a decision-making process in order to facilitate it, manoeuver within it, and to understand how to best orient the outcome of a controversial situation.
Footnotes
Appendix
Excerpts from the plural interpretations of Bill 78.
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- “It is not the radical demonstrators who should dictate the agenda. Obviously the police must act with caution, but they must enforce the law.” (CAQ) - He sees an “authoritarian drift”. He accused the government of using the gag with an exceptional parliamentary measure. (ASSÉ) - “Certainly, with the non-compliance with instructions in recent weeks, the bill should include measures to generate sufficiently strong deterrent effects.” (Conseil du patronat du Québec) - “Our responsibility is public safety.” (Liberal Party) - ““We cannot ask the state to completely erase itself to the benefit of the street, to the benefit of noise and vandalism. Otherwise, what is the result of that? (Liberal Party) - “Many Liberal members wanted to use state power to demonstrate to students that the government is more powerful than them.” (FECQ) |
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- “He said he wanted to ensure that the rights of citizens’ access to their classroom is respected; as in the court orders.” (Liberal Party) - Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois accused the government of violating fundamental freedoms such as freedom of expression and association. (ASSÉ) - Bill 78 “violates the constitutional and fundamental rights of citizens.” (Bar Association) - “The government’s position is to say that there is a fundamental right to education. If that is so fundamental, then it should be guaranteed in the charter, and it should be free, like health!” (Clinique Juripop) |
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Marianna Fotaki and three anonymous reviewers for their very constructive advice in developing this paper.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.