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 Victor Albert (2019)In: Belyaeva N., Albert V., Zaytsev D.  (eds) Protest Publics. Societies and Political Orders in Transition.  Springer, Cham Abstract.  In the late 2000s, a number of analysts were optimistic about Brazil’s  future. Their expectant analyses did not bear out, however, as a  political and economic crisis developed just as Brazil was gearing up to  host two mega-events, the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympic Games in  2016. This paper has two aims. The first is to deepen our understanding  of the crisis through examining one of the foremost social actors to  emerge in this period: the Landless Workers’ Movement (Movimento de  Trabalhadores Sem-Teto, MTST). The second is to use this case to  consider the potential for the sociology of critical capacity—a field of  theory that emerged out of the Political and Moral Sociology Research  Group in Paris in the 1980s—to contribute to theorising the  ‘justification work’ of movements and protest publics. Keywords: Crisis in Brazil; Pragmatic sociology; Protest publics; Homeless Workers’ Movement Excerpt: "The research programme initiated by Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot three decades ago has gone by various appellations, but the most promising and relevant for my analysis is the 'sociology of critical capacity' (Boltanski and Thévenot 1999).  This attention to ‘critical capacity’ is often  contrasted with the tendency in critical theory to downplay the critical  ability of agents to make judgements, evaluate alternatives and  cooperate with others. The sociology of critical capacity  thus sought to theorise the rationalisation of judgements, the means by  which agreement is reached between disputants and the moral dimensions  of cooperation. In On Justification, the founding text of the approach,  Boltanski and Thévenot develop a flexible  framework for the analysis of disputes and agreements, by elaborating  ‘economies of worth’ (Boltanski and Thévenot 2006). Though often  described as ‘ideal types’ (e.g. Jagd 2011), these ‘economies of worth’  are perhaps more productively considered here as  moral-cultural repertoires (Silber 2003) or ‘forms of argumentation’  (Ricoeur 2000, p. 83) from which actors may draw in the evaluation of  everyday events, actions and relationships. A central premise of the  economies of worth approach is that in order to  be considered socially legitimate, actors justify actions through  drawing on a notion of the good that extends beyond the self, requiring a  ‘rise in generality’. Boltanski and Thévenot derive six orders of worth  (or ‘polities’) from key texts of political  philosophy (2006, p. 67) which specify a plurality of public goods.  These include the market polity (whose key theoretician is Adam Smith),  the inspired polity (St. Augustine), the polity of renown (Hobbes), the  civic polity (Rousseau) and the industrial polity  (Saint-Simon). Subsequent research has also expanded these to include  the networked order of worth (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005) and a green  order of worth, which has accompanied the spread of environmentalism  (Thévenot et al. 2000). The sociology of critical  capacity is not only concerned with discursive legitimacy, however.  Orders of worth have common requirements for inclusion (Thévenot 2011,  p. 44) and correspond to different sets of ‘qualified objects’, which  are used in the course of evaluation and the pursuit  of public legitimacy. Boltanski and Thévenot use the term ‘worlds’ for  the combination of the orders of worth and their qualified objects and  conventions. The industrial world is composed of factories and manpower  (objects), for instance, whose products may  be compared according to accepted criteria. There may also be  compromises between the orders in any particular evaluation. A product  made in a factory, to take one example, may function excellently but be  energy inefficient and thus susceptible to criticism  according to green evaluative criteria. Further, any evaluation is  impermanent, for instance, when the product breaks down, revealing a  hitherto unacknowledged flaw in the industrial quality of the machine  (e.g. Thévenot 2002, p. 61). There thus may be compromises  and uncertainties revealed in the process of evaluation which unfold  over time. Publics may allow groups to stake claims in terms of  collective goods that correspond to the orders of worth, perhaps most  commonly the egalitarianism of the civic order. But the  contestations in which they are engaged may only be partially captured  by a framework that is, for my purposes, too narrowly focused on ‘the  critical practices evident in everyday life’ (Boltanski 2013, p. 47).  Boltanski and Thévenot have pursued independent  research programmes following the publication of On Justification,  however, that extend the scope for theorising the relationship between  the private and the public (Warner 2002) in quite different ways.  Boltanski’s interest in the situated ideologies and  characteristic critiques of capitalism is particularly relevant for the  left-wing actor analysed here (Boltanski 2011, 2013; Boltanski and  Chiapello 2005; see also Chiapello 2013). This is so because protestors’  claims may be justified through critiques of  capitalist relations, the inequalities they generate or the unjust  behaviour of elites, rather than in terms of explicitly articulated  public goods. Or rather, the public goods which they pursue may only be  implicit in their critiques of injustice, particularly  as principled demands become embedded in more polarised forms of  political contestation. Boltanski and Chiapello identify two principal  critiques of capitalism as it has developed since the nineteenth century  (2005). The first is a social critique that denounces  the material inequalities that are generated through capital  accumulation, while the second is an artistic critique that takes aim at  the alienation and inauthenticity created through the commoditisation  of human labour. Boltanski and Chiapello then historicise  the social and historical critiques, arguing that both the artistic and  the social critiques lost relevance as capitalism entered a new phase  of development after the 1970s."  (p. 102-103) Link to the chapterLink to the first version on Academia.edu