Posted Content•
Market technologies and the pragmatics of prices
TL;DR: In this article, a pragmatic analysis of closing prices at the Paris Bourse is presented, based on the concept of the sign of the price of a sign and its relationship to a certain event.
Abstract: This article contributes to a pragmatist analysis of pricing and valuation through an account of the production of closing prices at the Paris Bourse. The Paris Bourse is an electronic stock exchange and the actors in charge of its technological configuration often need to face concerns about the quality of the prices that the configuration produces. Closing prices are particularly important because they constitute references that circulate widely. The author analyses how a problem of representativeness of closing prices was raised in the late 1990s and how several techniques aimed at solving it. In order to deal with this problem of representativeness, the author proposes the consideration of prices as signs in a pragmatist manner. Adapting Charles S. Peirce's theory of the sign to the study of prices, the author concentrates attention on the material display of prices, on their capacity to stand as traces of some event, and on the way they may suit a set of calculative conventions.
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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
613 citations
TL;DR: The authors analyzed the role in the credit crisis of the processes by which market participants produce knowledge about financial instruments, and presented a historical sociology of the clusters of evaluation practices surrounding ABSs and CDOs (collateralized debt obligations).
Abstract: This article analyzes the role in the credit crisis of the processes by which market participants produce knowledge about financial instruments. Employing documentary sources and 87 predominantly oral history interviews, the article presents a historical sociology of the clusters of evaluation practices surrounding ABSs (asset-backed securities, most importantly mortgage-backed securities) and CDOs (collateralized debt obligations). Despite the close structural similarity between ABSs and CDOs, these practices came to differ substantially and became the province (e.g., in the rating agencies) of organizationally separate groups. In consequence, when ABS CDOs (CDOs in which the underlying assets are ABSs) emerged, they were evaluated in two separate stages. This created a fatally attractive arbitrage opportunity, large-scale exploitation of which sidelined previously important gatekeepers (risk-sensitive investors in the lower tranches of mortgage-backed securities) and eventually magnified and concentrate...
313 citations
TL;DR: A critical overview of the sociology of markets as it relates to our concepts of society, focusing on four main representations of what is sociologically important about markets: the social networks that sustain them, the systems of social positions that organize them, institutionalization processes that stabilize them, and the performative techniques that bring them into existence as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Starting from the objectively dominant position of the sociology of markets in economic sociology, this article suggests that markets have served as a privileged terrain for the development and application of general theoretical arguments about the shape of the social order. I offer a critical overview of the sociology of markets as it relates to our concepts of society, focusing on four main representations of what is sociologically important about markets: the social networks that sustain them, the systems of social positions that organize them, the institutionalization processes that stabilize them, and the performative techniques that bring them into existence. I then speculate about the possible future directions that such theorizing might take, calling in particular for a stronger contribution of the sociology of markets to the analysis of societies as moral orders.
243 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors distinguish three heterodox approaches: socioeconomics, political economy, and cultural economists, arguing that the abstract market model is performative and not performative.
Abstract: Although markets are at centre stage in capitalist processes of circulation and exchange, they have rarely been made an object of study. In this paper we distinguish three heterodox approaches. (1) Socioeconomics points out that concrete markets cannot be separated from their social context. Markets are dissolved in social networks and socialized. (2) Political economy investigates how the market model is confused for real markets by market participants. The market is represented as a destructive force. (3) Cultural economists point to the practical self-realization of economic knowledge and argue that the abstract market model is performative.
188 citations
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Book•
01 Jan 1997
TL;DR: The authors published an eight-volume collection of Peirce's writings on general philosophy, logic, pragmatism, metaphysics, experimental science, scientific method and philosophy of mind, as well as reviews and correspondence.
Abstract: Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) is best known as the founder of pragmatism - the philosophy that assesses the meaning of what we say by its practical consequences. His writings cover a wide range of subjects and his influence can be seen in ethics, aesthetics, symbolic logic, religion, epistemology and metaphysics, and also scientific topics. The greater part of Peirce's papers were unpublished during his lifetime and upon his death several hundred manuscripts were left to Harvard University. This eight-volume collection also includes Peirce's writings on general philosophy, logic, pragmatism, metaphysics, experimental science, scientific method and philosophy of mind, as well as reviews and correspondence. Paragraphs are numbered for easy reference and contents arranged by subject.
3,967 citations
TL;DR: For example, North as mentioned in this paper pointed out that the literature on economics contains so little discussion of the central institution that underlies neoclassical economics-the market-and pointed out the weakness of market theory.
Abstract: Even as the market seems triumphant everywhere and its laws progressively and ineluctably impose themselves worldwide, we cannot fail to be struck by the lasting topicality of the following wellknown quotation from D. North: 'It is a peculiar fact that the literature on economics ... contains so little discussion of the central institution that underlies neoclassical economics-the market' (North, 1977).) How can this surprising shortcoming be explained? How can this self-proclaimed failure of economic theory be accounted for? By distinguishing the thing from the concept which refers to it, the marketplace from the market, the English language suggests a possible answer. While the market denotes the abstract mechanisms whereby supply and demand confront each other and adjust themselves in search of a compromise, the marketplace is far closer to ordinary experience and refers to the place in which exchange occurs. This distinction is, moreover, merely a particular case of a more general opposition, which the English language, once again, has the merit of conveying accurately: that between economics and economy, between theoretical and practical activity, in short, between economics as a discipline and economy as a thing. If economic theory knows so little about the marketplace, is it not simply because in striving to abstract and generalize it has ended up becoming detached from its object? Thus, the weakness of market theory may well be explained by its lack of interest in the marketplace. To remedy this shortcoming, economics would need only to return to its object, the economy, from which it never should have strayed in the first place. The matter, however, is not so simple. The danger of abstraction and unrealism which is supposed to threaten every academic discipline-and which time and again has been exposed and stigmatized,
1,564 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors propose a theoretical framework that helps to deal with markets without suspending their calculative properties, and apply this definition to three constitutive elements of markets: economic goods, economic agents and economic exchanges.
Abstract: How to address empirically the calculative character of markets without dissolving it? In our paper, we propose a theoretical framework that helps to deal with markets without suspending their calculative properties. In the first section, we construct a broad definition of calculation, grounded on the anthropology of science and techniques. In the next sections, we apply this definition to three constitutive elements of markets: economic goods, economic agents and economic exchanges. First, we examine the question of the calculability of goods: in order to be calculated, goods must be calculable. In the following section, we introduce the notion of calculative distributed agencies to understand how these calculable goods are actually calculated. Thirdly, we consider the rules and material devices that organize the encounter between (and aggregation of) individual supplies and demands, i.e. the specific organizations that allow for a calculated exchange and a market output. Those three elements define conc...
1,152 citations
Journal Article•
TL;DR: Do Economists Make Markets? as mentioned in this paper is the first book dedicated to the controversial question of whether economics is performative -of whether, in some cases, economics actually produces the phenomena it analyzes.
Abstract: Around the globe, economists affect markets by saying what markets are doing, what they should do, and what they will do. Increasingly, experimental economists are even designing real-world markets. But, despite these facts, economists are still largely thought of as scientists who merely observe markets from the outside, like astronomers look at the stars. Do Economists Make Markets? boldly challenges this view. It is the first book dedicated to the controversial question of whether economics is performative--of whether, in some cases, economics actually produces the phenomena it analyzes. The book's case studies--including financial derivatives markets, telecommunications-frequency auctions, and individual transferable quotas in fisheries--give substance to the notion of the performativity of economics in an accessible, nontechnical way. Some chapters defend the notion; others attack it vigorously. The book ends with an extended chapter in which Michel Callon, the idea's main formulator, reflects upon the debate and asks what it means to say economics is performative. The book's insights and strong claims about the ways economics is entangled with the markets it studies should interest--and provoke--economic sociologists, economists, and other social scientists. In addition to the editors and Callon, the contributors include Marie-France Garcia-Parpet, Francesco Guala, Emmanuel Didier, Philip Mirowski, Edward Nik-Khah, Petter Holm, Vincent-Antonin Lepinay, and Timothy Mitchell.
989 citations
Book•
01 Jan 2005TL;DR: Another monumental ZKM publication, "Making Things Public" as mentioned in this paper, is a collection of essays by more than 100 writers, artists, and philosophers on what politics is about.
Abstract: Another monumental ZKM publication, redefining politics as a concern for things around which the fluid and expansive constituency of the public gathers; with contributions by more than 100 writers and artists. In this groundbreaking editorial and curatorial project, more than 100 writers, artists, and philosophers rethink what politics is about. In a time of political turmoil and anticlimax, this book redefines politics as operating in the realm of things. Politics is not just an arena, a profession, or a system, but a concern for things brought to the attention of the fluid and expansive constituency of the public. But how are things made public? What, we might ask, is a republic, a res publica, a public thing, if we do not know how to make things public? There are many other kinds of assemblies, which are not political in the usual sense, that gather a public around things - scientific laboratories, supermarkets, churches, and disputes involving natural resources like rivers, landscapes, and air. The authors of Making Things Public - and the ZKM show that the book accompanies - ask what would happen if politics revolved around disputed things. Instead of looking for democracy only in the official sphere of professional politics, they examine the new atmospheric conditions - technologies, interfaces, platforms, networks, and mediations that allow things to be made public. They show us that the old definition of politics is too narrow; there are many techniques of representation - in politics, science, and art - of which Parliaments and Congresses are only a part. The authors include such prominent thinkers as Richard Rorty, Simon Schaffer, Peter Galison, Richard Powers, Lorraine Daston, Richard Aczel, and Donna Haraway; their writings are accompanied by excerpts from John Dewey, Shakespeare, Swift, La Fontaine, and Melville. More than 500 color images document the new idea of what Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel call an "object-oriented democracy."
848 citations