Why do we do what we do? (Or, how do we justify what we do?)

For an everyday language account, see this New Yorker article:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/04/10/heres-why

In “Why?” (Princeton; $24.95), the Columbia University scholar Charles Tilly sets out to make sense of our reasons for giving reasons. In the tradition of the legendary sociologist Erving Goffman, Tilly seeks to decode the structure of everyday social interaction, and the result is a book that forces readers to reëxamine everything from the way they talk to their children to the way they argue about politics. 

In Tilly’s view, we rely on four general categories of reasons. The first is what he calls conventions—conventionally accepted explanations. Tilly would call “Don’t be a tattletale” a convention. The second is stories, and what distinguishes a story (“I was playing with my truck, and then Geoffrey came in . . .”) is a very specific account of cause and effect. Tilly cites the sociologist Francesca Polletta’s interviews with people who were active in the civil-rights sit-ins of the nineteen-sixties. Polletta repeatedly heard stories that stressed the spontaneity of the protests, leaving out the role of civil-rights organizations, teachers, and churches. That’s what stories do. As Tilly writes, they circumscribe time and space, limit the number of actors and actions, situate all causes “in the consciousness of the actors,” and elevate the personal over the institutional. 

Then there are codes, which are high-level conventions, formulas that invoke sometimes recondite procedural rules and categories. If a loan officer turns you down for a mortgage, the reason he gives has to do with your inability to conform to a prescribed standard of creditworthiness. Finally, there are technical accounts: stories informed by specialized knowledge and authority. An academic history of civil-rights sit-ins wouldn’t leave out the role of institutions, and it probably wouldn’t focus on a few actors and actions; it would aim at giving patient and expert attention to every sort of nuance and detail.

A more detailed, even argumentative, summary from this review:
http://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/viewArticle/1187/2605

2. Justification by ConventionJustification by convention may be illustrated by the first example quoted: Having been instructed to use contraceptive devices after the first abortion, a couple's failure of contraception is explained by convention, namely a Puritan principle which says that "artificial things" have to be excluded from sexual intercourse. It is the striking simplicity and the availability of stylized formula which characterize justification by convention. "The acceptability of such reasons does not depend on their truth, much less on their explanatory value, but on their appropriateness to the social situation" (p.40). [3] 

3. Justification by StoriesIn the second case, the Protestant preacher's justification of having changed his idea on racial segregation is an example which illustrates justification by story-telling. The reason is provided in the form of an autobiographic account which leaves out the whole process of contemporary political mobilization. Yet TILLY argues that what might be regarded as a deficiency is also a powerful source of reason-giving: Stories provide reasons by deliberatively keeping the numbers of actors involved to a minimum. The preacher found out that he had no reason to further exclude African Americans from religious service when an old Afro-American shoe-shiner he used to frequent had once dared to ask humbly and softly why he was not admitted. [4]
TILLY provides elaborate distinctions on the different formats of justification, and he sticks to his ambition to conceive of justifications as part of social processes. As the lack of philosophical references suggests, his aim is not to isolate what might be a justificatory proposition or to define a system of justifications. Consequently, TILLY is not clear on why there are precisely four repertoires of justification. He is much more concerned with clarifying how justifications relate to social order. As demonstrated throughout the book, this question falls into the domain of sociologists and social historians. Justifications are delivered to maintain, to change, or to repair social relations, including asymmetrical relations. To understand TILLY's interest in (a) asymmetries of power in justification and (b) the interference of different types of justifications, one should briefly return to the exposition of the third and fourth type of justification, namely codes and technical accounts. [5] 

4. Justification by CodesCodes or codified systems of rules and procedures
"emerge from the incremental efforts of organizations to impose their order on the ideas, resources, activities, and people that fall under their control ... Once in place, they strongly affect the lives of people who work for these organizations, or who cannot escape their jurisdiction. In those arenas, they shape the reasons people give for their actions as well as for their failures to act" (TILLY, p.125). [6]
On the other hand, research on organizations clearly shows how organizational practice may switch between what is justified by codes and what is to be accounted for by stories. TILLY provides many examples drawn from this corpus of research suggesting that justifications matter although organizations may put them to instrumental uses. This is where an interesting tension arises: how does the study of justifications relate to organizations—given that organizations partly derive their power from setting standards of justification? [7]
Following TILLY's argument, organizations are by no means to be excluded from the study of justifications. On the contrary, his choice of examples shows a predilection for organizational settings, and he is fairly interested in how justification occurs in relations of asymmetry within organizations. This path of inquiry is promising when it points at the interferences between the different types of justification. However, TILLY is more than reluctant to directly address this question and to elaborate on it in terms of a more theoretical discussion. A more thorough review of his examples would probably show that he sticks to explanations in terms of asymmetry, abandoning his ambition to do justice to all types of justifications and how they interfere. [8] 

5. Justification by Technical AccountsBut why would he not acknowledge and sustain the view that organizations systemically fail to purify justifications? This is somewhat puzzling as his book has examples which would confirm just that. These examples include a fourth type of justification by accounts established by technical experts. None of these ways of giving reasons is said to enjoy superiority. All of them are shown to intermingle. For instance, it is demonstrated that some professional experts facing laypersons are highly experienced in bridging technical accounts and stories (physicians, lawyers, and theologians). Even if he is not ready to radicalize the point of interference, TILLY's broad interest in how justifications work may be said to focus on that point. He is most intrigued by cases which simultaneously display the whole range of justifications he has suggested to divide up into the four categories of convention, stories, code, and technical accounts. [9]