Tag Archives: Callon

Cfp_7th Interdisciplinary Market Studies Workshop, 31 May – 2 June (#IMSW2023).

September 14, 2022 – 11:51 am
[Cfp_7th Interdisciplinary Market Studies Workshop, 31 May – 2 June, more info: https://www.imsw2023.business-school.ed.ac.uk/ ]

Dear Colleague   It is our great pleasure to invite you to the 7th Interdisciplinary Market Studies Workshop, 31 May – 2 June (#IMSW2023). In 2023, IMSW comes to the University of Edinburgh Business School and will be hosted for the first time in collaboration with the Journal of Cultural Economy.



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¿Fue Chile un experimento?

October 30, 2020 – 12:36 pm

[Un amigo me preguntó el otro día si conocía de literatura que haya problematizado la categoría de “experimento” como concepto para describir las reformas económicas y sociales de los Chicago Boys en Chile. Su pregunta me acordó de que alguna vez intenté escribir algo sobre esto que quedó ahí pérdido. Buceé en mi correo y encontré esto del 2007(!). Como el tema es todavía relevante, decidí compartirlo. Eso sí, críticas por favor dirigirlas a mi versión pre-30s]

¿Fue Chile un experimento?

Las reformas económicas y sociales aplicadas en Chile entre la segunda mitad de los setenta y la primera mitad de los ochenta son muchas veces referidas como un experimento. ¿Qué tipo de experimento fueron?

Definir un hecho como experimental puede tener diferentes sentidos. Por ejemplo, en el diccionario online de la Real Academia de la Lengua (RAE): experimental es (1) algo “fundado en la experiencia, o que se sabe o alcanza por ella” // (2) “que sirve de experimento, con vistas a posibles perfeccionamientos, aplicaciones y difusión // y (3) “que tiende a la búsqueda de nuevas formas estéticas y de técnicas expresivas innovadoras”. Las reformas económicas y sociales chilenas cumplen con las dos primeras acepciones: fueron la aplicación práctica de un conjunto de conocimientos teóricos, constituyéndose en un proceso de aprendizaje; al mismo tiempo, el caso chileno, “el milagro chileno” para algunos (lo que por cierto abre la discusión sobre el uso de otro tipo de metáforas), se constituye en un ejemplo, “un caso experimental”, que puede ser replicado (y cuya replicación, por lo demás, se ha transformado en un muy buen negocio para quienes originalmente lo desarrollaron). Que las reformas económicas se orientaran a la búsqueda de nuevas formas estéticas es menos claro, aunque sin duda aportaron a la creación de “técnicas expresivas innovadoras”, tales como nuevos métodos, términos e instituciones, y, por sobre todo, la invención de la figura del economista como experto a cargo de políticas sociales.

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Notas de lectura: Taking the Floor

August 28, 2020 – 4:10 pm

[Hace unas semanas leí el libro de Daniel Beunza Taking the Floor. Models, Morals and Management in a Wall Street Trading Room (Princeton University Press 2019). Este post son las notas que fui tomando mientras leía. No es una reseña, ni una evaluación crítica. Es un intento por compartir qué y cómo me hizo pensar este libro]

18/6/2020

Acabo de empezar Taking the Floor. Models, Morals and Management in a Wall Street Trading Room de Daniel Beunza.

Leí la introducción. Se inventa un puzle ingenioso.

Beunza hizo una etnografía de una trading room a fines de los 1990s principios de los 2000s. Publicó algunos artículos con D. Stark que se hicieron bien conocidos y se transformó en uno de los fundadores de los, por esa época, nuevos estudios sociales de las finanzas. Como el resto, escribió sobre formulas, dispositivos y performatividad. Luego, vino la crisis y con ello la sorpresa con que el libro abre. Las prácticas que la prensa y la investigación de la época empezaron a mostrar no representaban bien lo que Beunza encontró en su etnografía. Como lo pone él, o lo engañaron, o la descripción de las finanzas en la prensa y en otros estudios no era correcta. Al final, un poco por casualidad, encontró que su dilema tenía otra solución. Un día invitó a uno de sus informantes a su clase y lo que él contó ahí era que antes de que Beunza lo conociera, en su trabajo anterior, había pasado por una compañía que había terminado con escándalos y problemas legales. Cuando volvió a trabajar, decidió que había que hacer las cosas de una forma diferente. Lo que Beunza investigó entonces fue su intento por hacer las cosas de una forma distinta. El estudio no es de cómo se hacen las cosas en Wall Street normalmente. Es una investigación de cómo podrían haberse hecho las cosas de una forma que quizás podría haber evitado el tipo de escandalo y crisis del 2008.

El libro entonces busca explicar qué es lo que hace a la organización que Beunza estudió distinta. El tipo de respuesta, hasta donde entiendo, es cultural. Todavía no veo bien como, pero, lo que Beunza intenta es, podríamos decir, traer a la cultura de vuelta. No es una operación menor. Los estudios sociales de las finanzas surgen como un proyecto anti-cultural. Muy influidos por la teoría del actor-red, la heurística básica era la explicación está en las redes socio-materiales, los dispositivos. Lo social, lo cultural, las normas, etc., no explican, a lo más son resultados que hay que explicar. Este libro intenta, por decirlo rebuscadamente, revertir la inversión. Acá, la explicación es cultural.

Dos notas.

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Cfp_6th Interdisciplinary Market Studies Workshop

September 9, 2019 – 2:32 pm

6th Interdisciplinary Market Studies Workshop. Call for Papers. 3-5 June 2020 Grenoble. We invite contributors to submit an extended abstract of 2-3 pages (incl. references) before Friday December 20th, 2019. Proposals should indicate topic, theoretical positioning, methodology and outline findings, if appropriate. Proposals must be submitted online via the official conference website: https://imsw2020.sciencesconf.org. Keynote Speakers: Marieke de Goede & Brett Christophers.

‘Flowing Markets’

Since it was set up in 2010, the Interdisciplinary Market Studies Workshop has become one of the main meeting places for scholars from sociology, organization studies, marketing, political science, history and geography interested in social studies of markets.  The 2020 Interdisciplinary Market Studies Workshop will take place at Science Po Grenoble. “At the end of each street, a mountain…” Stendhal wrote of the capital of the French Alps, a city that seeks to add to its reputation as a major research and technology centre the noble aspiration of being the next “green capital” of Europe.

The Theme

For its 6th meeting, the IMSW sets out to explore markets through the prism of the circulation of goods, people and money. The inter-play between markets, capitalism and circulation was at the heart of the first political economy theories, whether classic (the free circulation promoted by A. Smith) or critical (Marx’s value-creation through the movement of money and merchandise). The ‘great history’ of our market societies has been described as the extension and unification of heterogeneous economic spaces, from local market place to global trade (Polanyi [1944]2001), while stressing the role of the emerging class of urban capitalist merchants in controlling foreign and long distant trade and taking advantage of the international division of labor (Braudel, [1979]1992).

By exploring the routes of circulation linked to market trade, the physical movement of goods and their representations (Caliskan, 2010), the materiality (or immateriality) of transactions in process (Callon, 2018), the spatiality and temporalities of trading spaces, the political distribution of capacities on the concentration and control of flows, etc., participants are invited to address some of the classic issues stemming from the social studies of markets – valuation, qualification, market boundaries – along with broader social and political concerns such as democracy, risk, inequalities.  Such ideas remind us of the rich monographs of historians (Chagny & al., 2015; Fontaine, 2008) and anthropologists – i.e. Tsing’s mushrooms (2015), Guyer’s African currency commodities (2004), Brooks’ second-hand clothes (2015) – which describe composite chains of exchange (market and non market) and unravel the complex mechanics of valuation across heterogeneous orders of value (Zelizer, 2011). These themes also recall the numerous STS works offering fruitful insight into the infrastructure of technological zones (Barry, 2001), the classification of goods (Beckert, Musselin, 2013), the fabric of commensurability (MacKenzie, 2009; Espeland, 2001), in relation to transactions spanning/bridging various locations, scales and institutional spaces. By tracing the geopolitics of international flows – of capital (Christophers, 2013) or energy resources, finance and arms export (Mitchell, 2011) – recent works take up the issue of political power and democracy in a globalized world.

The conveners particularly invite contributions dealing with any of the following themes: Continue reading →

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How to write after Callon’s performativity? (final part)

October 31, 2018 – 10:25 am

[El nombre de esta sección es “artículos en cuotas”. La idea es, como en una novela por entregas, ir subiendo partes de papers a medida que vayan saliendo. El texto abajo es la tercera parte de un capítulo para el libro A Routledge Companion to ANT, editado por Anders Blok, Ignacio Farías & Celia Roberts. Las primeras dos partes están acá y acá. Una versión completa del texto en su versión actual está disponible acá]

How to write after Callon’s performativity? José Ossandón.

[Third and final instalment of chapter prepared for A Routledge Companion to ANT, edited by Anders Blok, Ignacio Farías & Celia Roberts. Draft October 2018.]

Part III. The characters

The previous section was about the research persona created with Callon’s performativity thesis. It showed that Callon used Garcia-Parpet’s case to create a new position to approach markets. This section explores work conducted after Callon. It revises work that is not set against or beyond but that follows Callon’s performativity thesis, and that, a bit like Callon did with Garcia-Parpet, has enacted different research personae. The following lines distinguish three different characters, three different sets of instructions of how to write after Callon’s performativity.

Before moving on there are two disclaimers to make. Callon’s performativity thesis has inspired thousands of papers in several sub-disciplines (Cochoy 2014, McFall & Ossandón 2014). The distinction between the three different ways of writing after Callon proposed here is informed by years of close reading of this literature, but it cannot claim to be exhaustive. The typology should be read as a tentative classificatory hypothesis. Second, it is worth mentioning that some of the questions posed here have been asked before. Inspired by Ian Hunter’s (2006) critical historical analysis of recent humanities, Du Gay (2010) identified a tension in the work of Callon and colleagues. Sometimes, this work is descriptive and empirically oriented, while other times it is populated by empirically untestable statements. Jenle (2015) picked the label Du Gay uses, the ‘theoreticist’, to characterize the stance of work informed by Callon’s performativity program. He identifies two features: ‘a primary commitment to or prioritization of the development of generally applicable conceptualizations of markets’ and ‘a lack of concern with the object of study as constituted by an empirical state of affairs’ (Jenle 2015: 216). The exercise here is certainly inspired by these discussions. It will be argued, for instance, that Callon’s theory has enabled the development of different personae and that these have different stances in relation to empirical inquiry. The point here, however, is not to evaluate whether the orientation of the performativity thesis is empiricist enough. Neither is it to identify this theory’s overall stance. The point is rather to identify the type of research personae, the implicit characters and the rules set to them, enacted with and after Callon’s approach to markets. Continue reading →

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Pardo-Guerra en el diván de Fridman

March 7, 2018 – 1:08 pm

[El nuevo podcast “Sociología con Acento” de sociocast se inaugura con una conversación donde Juan Pablo Pardo Guerra le cuenta sobre su trayectoria de la física a la sociología de las finanzas a Daniel Fridman]

“En el primer episodio de Sociología con Acento conversamos con Juan Pablo Pardo Guerra sobre su transición de la física a la sociología y sobre su investigación en sociología de las finanzas. Juan Pablo estudió en México y Escocia, y trabaja hoy en la Universidad de California San Diego, Estados Unidos”

http://sociocast.org/podcast/juan-pablo-pardo-guerra/

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How to write after performativity? (part 2)

February 26, 2018 – 1:26 pm

[El nombre de esta sección por ahora es “artículos en cuotas”. La idea es, como en una novela por entregas, ir subiendo partes de papers a medida que vayan saliendo. El texto abajo es la segunda parte de un capítulo para el libro A Routledge Companion to ANT, editado por Anders Blok, Ignacio Farías & Celia Roberts. La primera parte está acá. Por cierto, sugerencias sobre cómo debería seguir la historia son muy bienvenidos]

How to write after performativity? José Ossandón.

[Second instalment of chapter prepared for A Routledge Companion to ANT, edited by Anders Blok, Ignacio Farías & Celia Roberts. Non-proof read draft.]

Part II. The instructions

Callon’s performativity thesis reoriented the attention of researchers inspecting economic issues. The traditional critical stance towards the way economists portray economics actors and the economy is replaced by an increasing attention to those whose work involves formatting calculative agencies, among them economists themselves. The question ‘how to write after performativity?’ shifts the attention in a different direction. The focus here is not directed at the economic agents that are performed with economics, but at the research personae enacted with the performativity approach to the economy. To use a cinematographic analogy, it could be said that from this perspective, Callon is seen as a film director, and the researchers informed by his work are like cameramen following his instructions, and, in order to clarify the particular type of personae these researchers enact, what ought to be done first is to clarify the director’s guidelines.

In 1981, a new market place for the trading of table strawberries was set at the commune of Fontaines-en-Sologne in central France. This strawberry market became officially part of the social scientific discussion in 1986, when a paper about the case by Marie-France Garcia-Parpet (2007) was published in Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales, the journal Pierre Bourdieu started in 1975. In 1998, Garcia-Parpet’s strawberries began a second life, when Michell Callon used her case study as the central empirical evidence of what it will become the more influential idea of his famous chapters in the edited collection The Laws of the Markets. In fact, Garcia-Parpet’s piece only appeared in English in 2007 when it was included in the edited collection – Do Economists Make Markets? – that consolidated the international academic influence of Callon’s thesis. What Callon did not make explicit in his chapters is that while taking Garcia-Parpet’s basic insight, his conclusions are radically different. In what follows, the modifications Callon introduced in relation to Garcia-Parpet’s case are used as entry points to identify his particular guidelines; the rules set to the research personae to be enacted with the performativity thesis.

Strawberries exchange forever

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T. Undurraga reseña y comenta Freedom from Work de D. Fridman

January 8, 2018 – 4:28 pm

Billedresultat[La categoría “debate” es una sección dedicada a discutir a partir de libros publicados por los contribuidores de Estudios de la Economía. En este post Tomás Undurraga comenta el libro Freedom from Work: Embracing Financial Self-Help in the United States and Argentina, (Stanford University Press 2017) de Daniel Fridman. El debate sobre “Freedom from Work” continuará con un comentario de Tomás Ariztía, para terminar con una respuesta de Daniel a los comentaristas] 

Based on careful ethnographic research, this book provides a compelling account of how financial self-help followers aim to change their economic thinking, adopt new practices and thereby reach financial freedom. Freedom from work investigates the expansion of neoliberalism not at a structural level, but rather at the micro level where self-governance is shaped. It follows financial self-help groups, artefacts and actors, paying attention to the philosophy and materiality of their actions – e.g. forums, board games, interactions. The book is based on a two-year ethnographic fieldwork (2008 – 2009) with groups of financial self-help fans in New York and Buenos Aires. Specifically, it focuses on the cult-like influence of Robert Kiyosaki’s bestselling books and how devoted readers adopted and spread their views, aiming to do business, gain new followers, and change their lives.

Fridman offers a comprehensive explanation of the logic of financial self-help circuits, the promises which engage fans, and the practices distinctive of the programme. According to Fridman, the popularity of Kiyosaki’s books can be explained by a powerful combination of motivational elements, engaging tools for the development of rational thinking, and his sociological interpretation of late capitalism changes. The book argues that it is the combination of these elements that makes Kiyosaki’s ideas so popular. First, financial fans are personally challenged to voluntarily change their economic perspective, developing the courage to overcome their fears about money. Second, this philosophy promotes discipline in acquiring new financial expertise and tools (literacy in economic history, business planning, accounting practices, taxes, investing). Fans are then encouraged to use these techniques to change their economic practices. Third, Kiyosaki’s programme offers a diagnosis of contemporary capitalism – e.g. the rise of globalisation, the state’s changing role in the economy, and the decline of working conditions – that helps readers make sense of their own personal experiences, and financial grievances. Kiyosaki thus criticises the crises of industrial capitalism, at the same time inviting followers to survive by themselves in this brave new world.

Freedom from work is at its most impressive in revealing the logic by which this financial self-help programme produces the ‘neoliberal self’. Continue reading →

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The concept of market (Part 2)

December 4, 2017 – 11:32 am

[El nombre de esta sección es “artículos en cuotas”. La idea es, como en una novela por entregas, ir subiendo partes de papers a medida que vayan saliendo. El texto abajo es un borrador de un artículo en el que trabajo. Presenté la primera versión en EGOS este año y esto que estoy subiendo acá es una segunda versión, pero aun, borrador y sin edición del inglés. Además de la introducción, el artículo se compondrá de cuatro secciones. Cada parte será una entrega que iré subiendo a medida que tenga las nuevas versiones listas. El texto abajo es la segunda entrega y la primera sección del artículo (ver acá la entrega anterior, la introducción). Como siempre, sugerencias son muy bienvenidas]

The concept of Market

José Ossandón, draft 4/12/2017

Concepts of markets after market design

The following extract is taken from a talk given by the winner of the 2012 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Memory of Alfred Nobel and renowned market designer Alvin Roth:

‘So, first of all think about market design, because market design is an ancient human activity. But because markets are so pervasive we think them a little bit like language. Languages and markets are both human artifacts. But we don’t think of language as something we can change, but as something we get. I speak to you in English and I have to speak in the same kind of English that you speak, otherwise it wouldn’t work. Often we think of markets on that way too: markets just happen. But, of course, markets are human artifacts and market design is that engineering part of microeconomics, that part that fixes markets when they are broken or make new ones sometimes.’ [i]

Roth presents a constructivist approach. He emphasizes that markets are both, like language, a social product, and like other artifacts, the outcome of purposely applied technical knowledge. This description would easily fit recent sociological accounts of markets; but, it would appear as strange in the context of traditional conceptualizations of markets in economics.

A dominant position in the economic sciences of the second half of the 20th century conceived markets in opposition to organization. While organizations were associated to features such as planning, hierarchy, or centralized decision making; markets were seen as decentralized, spontaneous and even inherently non-designable entities. Continue reading →

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The concept of market (Part 1)

November 30, 2017 – 3:57 pm

[El nombre de esta sección es “artículos en cuotas”. La idea es, como en una novela por entregas, ir subiendo partes de papers a medida que vayan saliendo. El texto abajo es un borrador de la introducción de un artículo en el que trabajo. Presenté la primera versión en EGOS este año y esto que estoy subiendo acá es una segunda versión, pero aun, borrador y sin edición del inglés. Además de la introducción, el artículo se compondrá de cuatro partes. Cada parte será una entrega que iré subiendo a medida que tenga las nuevas versiones listas. Como siempre, sugerencias son muy bienvenidas]

The concept of Market

José Ossandón, draft 30/11/2017

Introduction

The emergence of the broad set of practices and techniques grouped under the label of ‘market design’ makes apparent a challenge that has been avoided for too long in organizational and sociological studies of markets. The challenge can be illustrated with the example of school place allocation.

School allocation is a policy instrument increasingly popular among governments and policy makers. It consists in implementing algorithms to match two set of priorities; families’ preferred schools and schools’ available vacancies. School allocation is also one of the most recognized examples of ‘market design’ (Cantillon 2017). Markets designers label situations such as school place allocations, which do not feature some of the basic elements included in traditional social scientific definitions of markets (for instance: money, prices, or the transference of property rights), as market. In this context, social researchers interested in inspecting a situation like school place allocation are pushed to ask themselves a basic question: should the social researcher follow the definitions of markets accepted in their academic fields or they should take the definitions of market designers? In the following pages, I expect to demonstrate that school allocation is not merely a marginal example. It is “an extreme case” (Flyvbjerg 2006) that can be productively used as a provocation to initiate a broader discussion about the concept of market. Continue reading →

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