Claes-Fredrik Helgesson

On the nature of markets and their practices

This article presents a conceptual model of markets as constituted by practice. Drawing on recent sociological research on the performativity of market theories, the article stresses the need to take seriously the role of ideas in the making of markets. Since extant studies of performativity focus on the role of economics in shaping markets, it is argued that marketing as an academic discipline is a particularly apt partner in expanding this endeavour. The conceptual model presents markets as the ongoing results of three interlinked types of practices: normalizing practices serving to establish normative objectives; representational practices serving to depict markets and/or how they work; and exchange practices serving to realize individual economic exchanges. The links between these practices, which are conceived as translations, are elaborated upon using a number of empirical studies. Finally, the model is used to illustrate differences in how markets are being continuously realized. This highlights the lack of studies on performativity in markets constituted by configurations of market practices in which marketing theories and techniques are likely to be important.

The Q(u)ALYfying hand: health economics and medicine in the shaping of Swedish markets for subsidized pharmaceuticals

The Q(u)ALYfying hand: health economies and medicine in the shaping of Swedish markets for subsidized pharmaceuticals

Introduction: Values and Valuations in Market Practice

Markets are sites where actors grapple with questions of value and valuation. Broadly speaking, the consummation of an economic exchange involves efforts to qualify the object that is exchanged (Callon et al. 2002; Beckert & Aspers 2011) and hence assess its value in certain dimensions. In some markets, notably financial markets, market participants have even been suggested to use the market to experiment and test their theories of (economic) value (Beunza & Stark 2005). But, the recent attention to markets in testing or performing economic models and theories has to some extent overshadowed the role of markets as venues where multiple social, cultural and political values are also at play. It is therefore welcome to see several recent studies investigating questions of value in other settings than the financial markets (where the performativity of economic theories admittedly is conveniently examined). These studies address how actors accommodate and mediate a wide variety of value registers as part of performing markets. Indeed, they illustrate that many markets are performed in settings where several social orderings overlap. We are thinking, for instance, of Ikiring Onyas’ (2012) study of the Ugandan coffee market, which shows how both farmers and traders align farming and processing techniques with valuation and calculation practices as they attempt to distinguish a market for sustainable coffee. Another example is the examination of how actors seek to reform the Swedish market for primary health care services aiming to construct rules that align a ‘special consideration to ... the care needs of underprivileged patients’ with values pertaining to free choice and competitive neutrality (Johansson Krafve 2012, p. 52). Other studies have illustrated the import of values and valuations in efforts to change markets in subsistence contexts (Lindeman 2012), in efforts to introduce ‘green’ values in markets (Reijonen & Tryggestad 2012), in efforts to co-create triple bottom line markets (Peñaloza & Mish 2011), and in the mundane management of retail markets (Azimont 2010). These studies are part of an emerging body of ‘market studies’ focusing on the ongoing practices related to markets and economic action in a wide range of settings (see also Araujo et al. 2010). This work stresses the importance of investigating the variety of settings in which markets and economic actions are configured and performed. As such, it provides support for the claim that it is detrimental from both scholarly and policy perspectives to give large financial markets too much of an iconic status regarding what is going on in and around markets. Moreover, it highlights the import of how we delineate what should count as economic action and values. The cited contributions serve both to

Political Marketing : Multiple Values, Performativities and Modes of Engaging

Markets are regularly relied upon to realize many different and changing values, a state of affairs that in turn attracts many efforts to engage with them. Such efforts, moreover, may draw on a wide variety of theoretical ideas about markets. Viewing real markets as on-going constructions, our aim is to explore different modes of engaging with markets to have them realize different values. We describe three different modes of engaging with markets based on empirical cases: (1) engaging to incorporate values in market exchanges; (2) engaging to reform the values that are to govern a market; and (3) engaging to represent the values produced by markets. We then use a fourth empirical case to expand on how the current realization of a market may interfere with and prove differentially fertile to efforts to incorporate, reform or represent values. Finally, we discuss when and how efforts to engage with markets may become political.

Epistemologies in the wild: local knowledge and the notion of performativity

Abstract This article explores the indigenous epistemology of market research. Industry textbooks are here taken as examples of commonly held understandings about market research knowledge. They are made the object of an epistemographic investigation of how the production and transfer of market research knowledge is understood within the field itself. Particular interest is directed towards what such local epistemic considerations might imply for our scholarly understanding of how economic theories and models shape markets. Our exploration depicts an indigenous epistemology characterised by a number of interrelated tensions (market research as: description vs. recommendation; art vs. science; information vs. source of inspiration; and distance vs. engagement). The article contends that these traits of the indigenous epistemology are important for understanding how market research participates in shaping markets.

Valuations of experimental designs in proteomic biomarker experiments and traditional randomised controlled trials

ABSTRACT This article examines the shifting conditions for biomedical knowledge production by studying trends in the design of biomedical experiments. The basic premise of the study is that the very act of establishing a research design entails a process involving a series of valuations where different values are evoked, ordered, and displaced. In focus is the articulation and ordering of what counts as central values in research design for two kinds of biomedical treatment trials, namely the traditional randomised controlled trial (RCT) and the emerging new form of biomarker trials used to assess biomarker/treatment combinations (BTTs). The empirical material consists of textbooks (RCTs) and journal articles (BTTs). We ask how these materials articulate the various scientific, medical, and economic values at play. Among the differences uncovered are a difference in relation to what counts as ethical in relation to prior knowledge, differences in the flexibility in design as well as the valuation of the risk for false positives and false negatives. More broadly, the study shows how textual accounts of different ways of producing knowledge are linked to partly different valuations of ethics, flexibility, and risk as part of establishing the research design of biomedical experiments.

Attempting to Bring Valuation and Politics Together : The Politics of Valuation Studies at a Series of Sessions in Copenhagen

Attempting to Bring Valuation and Politics Together : The Politics of Valuation Studies at a Series of Sessions in Copenhagen

Valuations as Mediators Between Science and the Market: How Economic Assumptions Shape Pharmaceutical Trial Designs

How can economic assumptions be present in the heart of commercially driven drug development research? Such assumptions underpin industry-based bio-statistical discussions around a new pharmaceutical trial design, the ‘compound finder’. This example illustrates several ways in which trials might be designed and situated in the larger setting of interlinked valuation practices central to the development, distribution, and use of pharmaceuticals. It shows how economic assumptions and considerations can be differently entwined with endeavors to produce knowledge. Different trial designs may further differ in what knowledge they produce. Adaptive design trials (ADTs), of which the compound finder is one kind, share the feature that they might be the object of thousands of simulations to specify the design taking many different kinds of considerations into account. These considerations include several economic aspects such as trial costs and assumptions about the future market. ADTs will likely continue to become more common in the years to come, even if the future for the specific compound finder trial design is uncertain. Yet, the continued rise in importance of ADTs means a further intimate entwining of economic assumptions into the specification of trial designs. This will be consequential for what knowledge is produced as well as where and how treatments are assessed.