Rules, conventions and values: A plea in favor of ordinary normativity

Abstract

What does value rationality consist in and how does it relate to instrumental rationality? Can these problems be elucidated if coordination among social actors in non-market activities is understood to be founded on values, and if values are understood to be what allows for defining the common good? This article challenges that approach, recently reformulated in the French school known as economics of conventions. Using the same procedures as those developed in that school of thought -close analysis of procedural rationality, analysis of coordination and collective devices- we seek to answer the question more effectively, analyzing how norms and normativity themselves develop. Refusing to separate the field of argumentation (in the sense of Habermas's "communicative action") from that of interests, strategies and power relations, we analyze the aspect of collective action which cannot be reduced to individual action, an approach that allows for understanding the very nature of normativity.