Michel Callon

The laws of the markets

1. On the Role of Accounting in the Structuring of Economic Behaviours: Peter Miller (The London School of Economics and Political Science). 2. Title not yet available: Michel Callon: (Ecole Nationale Superieure des Mines, Paris). 3. Does the State make the Market or the Market, the State? The Cosmologies of Railroad Kings in the United States and France: Frank Dobbin (Princeton University, USA). 4. The Proliferation of Social Currencies: V. Zelizer (Princeton University, USA). 5. Markets as Institutions: An Ethnographic Approach: Mitchel Abolafia (State University of New York). 6. The Contribution of Social Sciences to the Construction of Markets: The Case of Marketing: Frank Cochoy (Uiversiti de Toulouse). 7. Karl Polanyi Revisited: On the Great Transformation: Bruno Latour (Ecole des mines de Paris). 8. On the Constructions of Boundaries between the State and the Market: John Law (Keele University, UK). 9. The Politics of Industrial Policy and the Non--Market Governance Structure: The Case of Japan: Bai Gao (Duke University, USA). 10. How Economists Contribute to the Construction of Markets: The Case of the Cement Industry: Hervi Dumez and A. Jeunemaitre (Ecole Polytechnique, Paris). 11. Shifting Boundaries and Social Construction in the Early Electricity Industry 1876--1910: Mark Granovetter (Stanford University, USA). 12. Recombinant Property in Eastern European Capitalism: David Stark (Cornell University, USA). Index

Techno‐economic networks and irreversibility

This paper explores the heterogeneous processes of social and technical change, and in particular the dynamics of techno-economic networks. It starts by considering the way in which actors and intermediaries are constituted and define one another within such networks in the course of translation. It then explores, first the way in which parts of such heterogeneous networks converge to create unified spaces linking incommensurable elements, and second how some of these links achieve longevity and tend to shape future processes of translation.

The Sociology of an Actor-Network: The Case of the Electric Vehicle

If laboratories and research sites are to the twentieth century what monasteries were to the twelfth, then the sources of their power and efficacy remain a mystery. How is it that the ideas and writings that issue from these institutions are able to revolutionise, if only gradually, conditions of work in industry, the universe of consumer goods and lifestyles? How are the discoveries made in Stanford, Gif-sur-Yvette, and Cambridge diffused such that they become universally known and recognised? How are certain technical devices, shaped in research departments of French or English companies, able to conquer markets throughout the world? Anthropological studies of the laboratory have shown that nothing exceptional occurs within the walls of research centres themselves which could account for their influence. These studies have also shown that the force and generality of results obtained cannot be attributed to the existence of a specific scientific method (Latour and Woolgar, 1979; Knorr-Cetina, 1981; Lynch, 1985). Though scientists give certain activities a higher priority than others (see Chapter 3), the former do not possess greater rigour or a logic which enable an observer to distinguish them from the latter.

Peripheral Vision Economic Markets as Calculative Collective Devices

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 concrete markets as collective organized devices that calculate compromises on the values of goods. In each, we encounter different versions of our broad definition of calculation, which we illustrate with examples, mainly taken from the fields of financial markets and mass retail.

Actor-network theory—the market test

It is often argued that ANT fails to offer a satisfactory theory of the actor which is allegedly endowed either with limitless power, or deprived of any room for manoeuvre at all. The aim of this paper is to show that the absence of a theory of the actor, when combined with the role attributed to non-humans in the description of action, is precisely one of the strengths of ANT that it is most important to preserve. This is because this combination makes it possible to explain the existence and the working of economic markets. Any particular market is the consequence of operations of disentanglement, framing, internalization and externalization. ANT makes it possible to explain these operations and the emergence of calculating agents. Homo economicus is neither a pure invention, nor an impoverished vision of a real person. It indeed exists, but is the consequence of a process in which economic science places an active role. The conclusion is that ANT has passed one of the most demanding tests: that of the market.

Co-word analysis as a tool for describing the network of interactions between basic and technological research: The case of polymer chemsitry

The goal of this paper is to show how co-word analysis techniques can be used to study interactions between academic and technological research. It is based upon a systematic content analysis of publications in the polymer science field over a period of 15 years. The results concern a.) the evolution of research in different subject areas and the patterns of their interaction; b.) a description of subject area “life cycles”; c.) an analysis of ”research trajectories” given factors of stability and change in a research network; d.) the need to use both science push and technology pull theories to explain the interaction dynamics of a research field. The co-word techniques developed in this paper should help to build a bridge between research in scientometrics and work underway to better understand the economics of innovation.

Mapping the dynamics of science and technology : sociology of science in the real world

List of Figures - List of Tables - Acknowledgements - PART 1 INTRODUCTION - Introduction: How to Study the Force of Science M.Callon, J.Law and A.Rip - PART 2 THE POWER OF TEXTS IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY - The Sociology of an Actor-Network: The Case of the Electric Vehicle M.Callon - Laboratories and Texts J.Law - Writing Science: Fact and Fiction: The Analysis of the Process of Reality Construction through the Application of Socio-Semiotic Methods to Scientific Texts B.Latour and F.Bastide - The Heterogeneity of Texts J.Law - Mobilising Resources through Texts A.Rip - PART 3 MAPPING SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY - Qualitative Scientometrics M.Callon, A.Rip and J.Law - Aquaculture: A Field by Bureaucratic Fiat S.Bauin - State Intervention in Academic and Industrial Research: The Case of Macromolecular Chemistry in France W.Turner and M.Callon - Pinpointing Industrial Invention: An Exploration of Quantitative Methods for the Analysis of Patents M.Callon - Technical Issues and Developments in Methodology J-P.Courtial - Future Developments M.Callon, J-P.Courtial and W.Turner - PART 4 CONCLUSIONS - Putting Texts in their Place M.Callon, J.Law and A.Rip - Glossary - Bibliography - Index

Economization, part 2: a research programme for the study of markets

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 processes, which constitute but one modality of economization, are discussed here from five vantage points: the things in the market, agencies, encounters, prices and market maintenance.

Economization, part 1: shifting attention from the economy towards processes of economization

Abstract This article proposes a research programme devoted to examining ‘processes of economization’. In the current instalment we introduce the notion of ‘economization’, which 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 begin by discussing the importance, meaning and framing of economization, as we unravel its trace within a variety of disciplinary backgrounds. We show how in combination, these works have laid the foundations for the study of economization. The second instalment of the article, to appear in the next volume of Economy and Society, presents a preliminary picture of what it might mean to take processes of economization as a topic of empirical investigation. Given the vast terrain of relationships that produce its numerous trajectories, we will illustrate economization by focusing on only one of its modalities – the one that leads to the establishment of economic markets. With emphasis on the increasingly dominant role of materialities and economic knowledges in processes of market-making, we will analyse the extant work in social studies of ‘marketization’. Marketization is but one case study of economization.

THE KEY TO SUCCESS IN INNOVATION PART I: THE ART OF INTERESSEMENT

We all know of innovations which either made their creators a fortune or which led to their downfall. It is easy to retrospectively explain success as a stroke of genius or failure as a blatant mistake. Easy in retrospect…but what about innovation in the making? How does the innovator navigate the pitfalls which threaten him?