Franck Cochoy

Bio: Franck Cochoy is an academic researcher from University of Toulouse. The author has contributed to research in topics: Performativity & Consumption (economics). The author has an hindex of 26, co-authored 121 publications receiving 2621 citations. Previous affiliations of Franck Cochoy include Institut Universitaire de France & Centre national de la recherche scientifique.

Calculation, qualculation, calqulation: shopping cart arithmetic, equipped cognition and the clustered consumer

Abstract: This paper investigates how such a trivial device as a shopping cart may surprisingly contribute to shaping exchanges in supermarkets. First, the shopping cart completely modifies consumers' calculations. It does so by leading them to accomplish particular gestures, by transforming a budgetary constraint into a volumetric one, and by providing them with true calculative tools. Second, shopping with a cart also implies some `planned' cognitive processes. These processes concern interplay between family needs, selection equipment (such as a shopping list) and market information (packaging, for example). The combination of these elements moves the consumer from mere calculation (price-based computing) to `qualculation' (i.e. quality-based rational judgements). Third, and in particular, since it favours the transformation of the individual consumer into a collective one (or `cluster', i.e. a small group of people gathering around the same device), a shopping cart functions as a scene or as a frame for collect...

Another discipline for the market economy: marketing as a performative knowledge and know‐how for capitalism

Abstract: How does the market economy work? On the one hand, orthodox economists have long argued that market equilibrium depends on the automatic adjustment of supply and demand; on the other hand, heterodox economists (Williamson, 1985; Arthur, 1989), but also historians (Chandler, 1977; Tedlow, 1990) and sociologists (Prus, 1989) have tried to show that supply and demand are socially constructed (Granovetter and Swedberg, 1992), that managerial practice shapes the contours of the market. Our objective in revisiting this debate is not so much to radicalize the classical opposition between the two camps but, paradoxically, to outline their common ground. Firstly, the arguments of both groups are always rooted in an examination of supply and demand and of their 'natural' or contingent aspect; secondly, their propositions always entail a separation of science (economics) from practice (management) in order to investigate the complex correspondences between the one and the other. Discussing the foundations of this endless dispute seems to be a good way to resolve it. In order to understand the market economy, one can look somewhere else, and ask other questions: does the functioning of markets rely on instances other than supply and demand? does the functioning of markets rest on processes other than those of science (economics) and/or practice (management)? In asking those questions, one discovers that, between economics and

A Sociology of Market-Things: On Tending the Garden of Choices in Mass Retailing:

Abstract: In its attempt to challenge economic explanations of market choices, the (now not so) ‘new economic sociology’ proposed to investigate the social (Granovetter, 1985), cultural (Zelizer, 1985; Abolafia, 1996) and political (Fligstein, 1996) ‘embeddedness’ of market behaviour. This research effort has been very useful in fleshing out economic exchanges, moving their investigation beyond abstract structures and stylized actors. The new economic sociology has given sociologists some robust tools and efficient theories for investigating the richness and humanity of economic activities and processes. Since it tends to reduce market realities to their human dimensions (networks, ideas and institutions), however, this perspective ends up neglecting the role of objects, technologies and other artefacts in framing markets (Chantelat, 2002). Michel Callon’s Laws of the Markets (1998) may be seen as an attempt to fill in this gap. Callon proposed as a focus, the technical and intellectual devices shaping market exchanges. To a certain degree, this programme may be presented as a fourth contribution to the new economic sociology paradigm, a contribution that insists on the ‘cognitive/technological’ embeddedness of markets. Yet this would only be accurate if Callon and his colleagues could be said to think of a market reality as being ‘embedded’ in some kind of social context! In the very same way that Bruno Latour refuses the idea of an ‘ever there’ ‘social stuff’ encompassing everybody and everything, preferring to define the word ‘social’ as an association process mixing and connecting human and non-human matters and issues (Latour, 2005), one might consider that for ‘ANT-driven’ economic sociology ‘market’ and ‘social’ realities are neither separated nor subject to the precedence of the other. Rather they are both combined and produced through ‘socio-economic’ action. In this chapter I propose, to follow along the latter perspective, to move from a sociology of marketing – ie, of how market knowledge ‘performs’ economic action (Cochoy, 1998) – to a sociology of ‘market-things’ – ie, of how commercial objects, frames and tools equip consumer cognition (Cochoy, 2004). In other words, I suggest abandoning market theories and opening our eyes to

Introduction. Les professionnels du marché : vers une sociologie du travail marchand

Abstract: Le demi-siecle ecoule aura ete marque par un certain recul de la centralite du travail. Ce mouvement, qui a debute avec le glissement du travail a l’emploi, semble aujourd’hui se prolonger avec la migration des enjeux sociaux du monde productif vers l’univers de la consommation : apres plusieurs decennies d’inquietude sur le travail puis sur le chomage, l’attention se porte aujourd’hui sur des problemes directement lies a la maitrise du marche, tels la crise de la vache folle, la dissemination des OGM (organismes genetiquement modifies) ou la mondialisation des echanges. [premieres lignes]

Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community

Abstract: The present historical moment may seem a particularly inopportune time to review Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam's latest exploration of civic decline in America. After all, the outpouring of volunteerism, solidarity, patriotism, and self-sacrifice displayed by Americans in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks appears to fly in the face of Putnam's central argument: that \"social capital\" -defined as \"social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them\" (p. 19)'has declined to dangerously low levels in America over the last three decades. However, Putnam is not fazed in the least by the recent effusion of solidarity. Quite the contrary, he sees in it the potential to \"reverse what has been a 30to 40-year steady decline in most measures of connectedness or community.\"' As an example of how the current \"war on terrorism\" could generate a durable civic renewal, Putnam points to the burst in civic practices that occurred during and after World War II, which he says \"permanently marked\" the generation that lived through it and had a \"terrific effect on American public life over the last half-century.\" 3 If Americans can follow this example and channel their current civic

Economics of Information

Abstract: The author systematically examines one of the important issues of information — establishing the market price. He introduces the concept of «search» — where a buyer wanting to get a better price, is forced to question sellers. The article deals with various aspects of finding the necessary information.

The Practice Of Everyday Life

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