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Adam B. Lawrence

Bio: Adam B. Lawrence is an academic researcher. The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 1 publications receiving 181 citations.

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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, a research program devoted to examining the process of economization is proposed, which refers to the assembly and qualification of actions, devices and analytical/practical descriptions as economic by social scientists and market actors.
Abstract: Presented in two parts, this article proposes a research programme devoted to examining ‘processes of economization’. In the first instalment, published in Economy and Society 38(3) (2009), we introduced the notion of ‘economization’. The term refers to the assembly and qualification of actions, devices and analytical/practical descriptions as ‘economic’ by social scientists and market actors. Through an analysis of selected works in anthropology, economics and sociology, we discussed the importance, meaning and framing of economization, unravelling its trace within a variety of disciplinary backgrounds. This second instalment of the article explores what it would mean to move this research programme forward by taking processes of economization as a topic of empirical investigation. Given the vast terrain of relationships that produce its numerous trajectories, to illustrate what such a project would entail we have limited ourselves to the examination of processes we call ‘marketization’. These p...

769 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
Taina Bucher1
TL;DR: Foucault’s notion of surveillance as a form of permanent visibility is reversed, arguing that participatory subjectivity is not constituted through the imposed threat of an all-seeing vision machine, but by the constant possibility of disappearing and becoming obsolete.
Abstract: This article explores the new modalities of visibility engendered by new media, with a focus on the social networking site Facebook. Influenced by Foucault’s writings on Panopticism – that is, the architectural structuring of visibility – this article argues for understanding the construction of visibility on Facebook through an architectural framework that pays particular attention to underlying software processes and algorithmic power. Through an analysis of EdgeRank, the algorithm structuring the flow of information and communication on Facebook’s ‘News Feed’, I argue that the regime of visibility constructed imposes a perceived ‘threat of invisibility’ on the part of the participatory subject. As a result, I reverse Foucault’s notion of surveillance as a form of permanent visibility, arguing that participatory subjectivity is not constituted through the imposed threat of an all-seeing vision machine, but by the constant possibility of disappearing and becoming obsolete.

723 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss the connections between social studies of material participation and political theory, and define the contours of an empiricist approach to material publics, one that takes as its central cue that the values and criteria particular to these publics emerge as part of the process of their organization.
Abstract: This introduction provides an overview of material- or device-centered approaches to the study of public participation, and articulates the theoretical contributions of the four articles that make up this special section. Set against the background of post-Foucaldian perspectives on the material dimensions of citizenship and engagement - perspectives that treat matter as a tacit, constituting force in the organization of collectives and are predominantly concerned with the fabrication of political subjects - we outline an approach that considers material engagement as a distinct mode of performing the public. The question, then, is how objects, devices, settings and materials acquire explicit political capacities, and how they serve to enact material participation as a specific public form. We discuss the connections between social studies of material participation and political theory, and define the contours of an empiricist approach to material publics, one that takes as its central cue that the values and criteria particular to these publics emerge as part of the process of their organization. Finally, we discuss four themes that connect the articles in this special section, namely their focus on 1) mundane technologies, 2) experimental devices and settings for material participation; 3) the dynamic of effort and comfort, and 4) the modes of containment and proliferation that characterize material publics.

266 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, a novel and deeper conceptualisation of artifacts and materiality is proposed to improve the understanding of the influence of artifacts on routines dynamics by drawing from recent advances in Routines and STS/Performativity Theory.
Abstract: Existing theories of organisational routines have generally had simplistic and extreme views of artifacts as fully deterministic or largely inconsequential. Artifacts have been treated as either too solid to be avoided, or too flexible to have an effect. This paper endeavours to improve our understanding of the influence of artifacts on routines dynamics by proposing a novel and deeper conceptualisation of their mutual relationship. In drawing from recent advances in Routines and STS/Performativity Theory, the paper contributes to advancing our understanding of routines dynamics by bringing artifacts and materiality from the periphery to the very centre of routines and Routines Theory.

253 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors focus on the work of those specialist forms of consultants known as "industry analysts" and consider them as promissory organizations to capture how they are successful in mobilizing and organizing expectations within procurement and innovation markets.
Abstract: The business of technological expectations has yet to be explored thoroughly by scholars interested in the role of expectations and visions in the emergence of technological innovations. However, intermediaries specializing in the production, commodification and selling of future-oriented knowledge have emerged to exert new kinds of influence on the shaping of technology and innovation. We focus on the work of those specialist forms of consultants known as ‘industry analysts’ and consider them as promissory organizations to capture how they are successful in mobilizing and indeed increasingly organizing expectations within procurement and innovation markets. Our aim is to highlight the important role these actors play in shaping technologies and, in so doing, to show how they typically exhibit complex and highly uneven forms of influence. The paper is organized around a central question: Why are certain kinds of promissory behaviour more influential than others? To answer this, we draw from discussions of the ‘constitutive’ nature of promises in the literature on technology expectations, which provide a useful but arguably partial analytical approach for articulating the dynamics and differences surrounding product based expectations. We thus supplement our understanding with recent developments in Economic Sociology and the Sociology of Finance where an ambitious theoretical framework is unfolding in relation to the ‘performativity of economic theory’. By contrasting different forms of promissory work conducted by industry analysts and varying forms of accountability to which this work is subject, we begin to map out a typology that characterises promissory behaviour according to differences in kind and effect.

173 citations