Most of my French-language articles are available on the Cairn.info academic portal HERE.
Latest article in French:
Bereni, Laure, Thomas Depecker, and Alice Lavabre. 2025. “Sur la scène du capitalisme responsable. Ethos réformateurs et performances de la vertu dans les rencontres professionnelles de la RSE.” Revue française de sociologie 66, no. 3: 507–36. https://doi.org/10.3917/rfs.663.0507
“On the Stage of Responsible Capitalism: Reform Ethos and Performances of Virtue in CSR Professional Meetings”
Building on an ethnography of 16 professional events on corporate social and environmental responsibility in France (2021-24), this article examines how these events contribute to the symbolic production of the CSR professional field. We illuminate a division of labor in the performance of responsible capitalism that operates on the stages of these gatherings, by identifying four ideal-typical speakers’ profiles rooted in hierarchies of gender, professional status, and economic power: the Responsible worker, the Captain of sustainability, the Benefactor boss, and the Paragon of virtue. We argue that this range of styles for embodying managerial and market virtue increases the effectiveness of the ideology of responsible capitalism. It signals both the mobilization of various fractions of the economic world around a shared horizon of reform, and the diverse possible ways of aligning private interests and the public good. Ultimately, we contend that these spaces contribute to reactivate the professional illusio of CSR practitioners.