Philip John Roscoe

The state of affairs : critical performativity and the online dating industry

In this article we pursue a dialogue between Callon’s (1998) ‘performativity thesis’ and Critical Management Studies (CMS). We make use of the performativity thesis to elaborate on the construction of a market and the generation of calculative and rational economic agency in a specific empirical setting: the markets for relationships offered by dating services. We find evidence for ‘effective’ performativity, where technical processes and outcomes are shaped by academic theory. We link the performativity analysis with three critical perspectives: a novel enclosure in the commodification and sale of relationships; the politics of standardization, classification, expertise and responsibility; and the enactment of instrumentally rational, self-interested social relations through the individualist assumptions of matching systems. We argue that a performativity analysis must begin with a critical politics: what kind of world would we like to see performed?

Creating numbers: carbon and capital investment

Purpose - – The purpose of this paper is to seek to illustrate the way in which carbon emissions are given calculative agency. The authors contribute to sociology of quantification with a specific focus on the performativity of the carbon number as it was introduced to the organization’s capital investment accounts. In following an intangible gas to a physical amount and then to a dollar value, the authors used categories from the sociology of quantification (Espeland and Stevens, 2008) to explore the persuasive attributes of the newly created number and the way it changed the work of actors, including the way they reacted and viewed authority. Design/methodology/approach - – An empirical case study in a large Australian water utility drawing on insights from the sociology of calculation. Findings - – The authors present empirics on the calculative appeal of the carbon emissions number, how it came into being and its performative (or reactive) effects. The number disciplined behaviour and acted like a boundary object, while at the same time, enroled allies through its aesthetic appeal in management accounting system designs. In framing the empirics, the authors were able to highlight how the carbon number became a visible actor in the newly emergent and evolving carbon market. Practical implications - – This paper provides an empirical framing that continues the project of writing the sociology of calculation into accounting. Originality/value - – This study contributes to the sociology of quantification in accounting with an empirical framing device to reveal the representational work of a number and how it expands as it becomes implicated in broader networks of calculation.

How does an old firm learn new tricks? A material account of entrepreneurial opportunity

Opportunity has become the central concept in entrepreneurship. Discovery-focused accounts assume opportunity to be objective and to exist independently of the entrepreneur. Process-focused studies critique such notions. We contribute to process-based conceptions of entrepreneurship with an account of opportunity as historically specific and materially embedded. Drawing on Latour we argue that opportunities are constituted through dense material networks. We argue that opportunity and entrepreneurship are mutually constitutive, and emphasise that the entrepreneur shares agency with a heterogeneous array of ‘actants’ in the network of opportunity. We make use of this framework in a historical analysis of a large family agribusiness in Honduras, illustrating the historically dependent nature of entrepreneurial process and the role that the material plays in it.

On the Possibility of Organ Markets and the Performativity of Economics

Callons (1998) ‘performativity thesis’ encourages us to consider how the boundaries of the economy are negotiated. This paper explores one such discussion: the contributions of economics to the debates over the introduction of markets for transplant organs. The paper pays particular attention to the normative aspects of economic valuation. It examines the philosophical antecedents of economic contributions to the debate, notes the rhetorical and linguistic power of economic calculation and then focuses on three distinct sets of calculations concerning the value of a transplant kidney: a contingent valuation calculation, a risk-premia based calculation, and a cost-efficiency simulation. In each case, it shows that economic facts, once created, may travel freely through normative debates and claim moral force. The technical process of economic modelling is therefore seen to be a crucial aspect of the economisation of this area, and of economic performativity more generally.

‘Elephants can’t gallop’: performativity, knowledge and power in the market for lay-investing

Abstract This paper examines lay-investment in financial markets (investment by members of the general public) as a practice performed by marketing knowledge. It follows the market studies programme to examine a problem that puzzles researchers in finance: Why do lay-investors remain in the market despite their poor returns? Using a qualitative study of lay-investors in the United Kingdom, it considers the devices, ‘agencements’ and discourses that structure investment behaviour. It uses Foucault’s writing on governance under neo-liberalism to suggest that investors are constituted as self-entrepreneurs, sustained by antagonism to professional investors, heterodox market beliefs and a consumer allegiance to investment styles and products. Marketing knowledge is inscribed in market devices and structures market relations. Finally, it suggests that self-discipline and confession are normalising technologies that help investors cope with difficulties and losses in the market. The paper develops theoretical linkages between the literatures of performativity and governmentality.

Unsettling issues: valuing public goods and the production of matters of concern

What are public goods – of any kind – worth? How are they valued, and made valuable? What expertise is involved in their production? Questions over the value of public goods – a sporting championship, the arts, scientific advances, or quality of life – figure prominently in our public and political discourse, as politicians and administrators struggle to manage the often competing claims of instrumental, economic reason and intangible, cultural evaluations. We must decide not only what characteristics and ‘goods’ to value, but how to value them, sometimes in the less than fully realised knowledge that modes of valuation are performative (Austin 1978) of worth. This themed section considers the making of value and negotiations over what matters – over worth – in the case of a diverse selection of public goods: the scientific knowledge embodied in clinical trials, expertise in government oversight of ‘culture’, and regulations for sustainability. Following the ‘turn to value’ (Stark 2011) and the growing ‘valuographic’ literature (Dussauge et al. 2015), we treat valuation as a process and a practice dependent upon actors, materialities, and multiple ontologies; we recognise the plurality of orders of worth to which all of these actors can appeal (Boltanski & Thevenot 2006); and that the settling, or performing, of a good as valuable is as important as, and often contiguous with, valuation itself. Our papers contribute to the empirical literature on value making and seek to de-naturalise the assumptions of the substantial academic literature on the economic evaluation of public goods, which assumes that agents’ preferences may be extrapolated through inferred, hedonic, and contingent valuation methods (Kahneman & Knetsch 1992; Ledyard 1997). More broadly, we provide further theoretical and empirical support for the recognition that valuation is a distinctive sociological phenomenon worthy of attention (Stark 2011). Our contributions follow a Latourian injunction to discover the production of ‘matters of concern’. Latour’s project seeks to emancipate political discourse, and those who consume it, from what he calls ‘prematurely naturalised objective facts’ (2004, p. 227). We should, he argues, consider the ongoing and politically charged negotiations that produce matters of fact to be just part of a much broader expression of concerns. He writes:

Performativity Matters: Economic Description as a Moral Problem

If performativity theory simply repeats that economists design markets, much of its radicalism is lost. Instead, researchers must consider the mechanisms by which economisation transforms social arrangements. This chapter develops the argument that economic description constitutes aspects of the social as economic. Following Austin and Butler, I argue that such description has a performative force, and is therefore politically and ethically charged. I suggest that an understanding of economic description as performative explain show economics can at once constitute and claim authority over an object. The chapter explores how economic description transforms social relations. It connects performativity theory to existing critiques of economic relations, and suggests that performativity research can develop ethically rich narratives without losing theoretical or empirical rigour. Finally, it urges performativity research to rediscover its radicalism in its ability to unseat the ‘meta physical presumptions’ of economics.

Economizing habitus : material calculation and ‘the rules of the game’ in the publishing industry

Pierre Bourdieus classical sociology and the actor network-based ‘economization’ literature are often considered contradictory, despite some agreement on the constructed nature of economic man. Through an examination of the publishing industry, we argue that Bourdieus concept of habitus may offer a useful contribution to the literature on economization. We examine how those new to a field come to understand their position and the role of material devices in structuring this. We argue that Bourdieus theory, appropriately stated, sheds light on the tacit assessments made by market agents alongside their involvement in network-based calculative mechanisms and allows studies of markets to deal with some persistent criticisms of the economization programme.

Performing a Myth to Make a Market: The construction of the ‘magical world’ of Santa:

If you believe in Santa, do not read this paper. Through an in-depth, qualitative, empirical study, we follow the Santa myth to a remote northern location in Lapland, Finland where, for one month a year, multiple actors come together to create a tourist market offering: the chance to visit Santa in his ‘magical world’. We explore how the myth is transformed into reality through performative, organisational speech acts, whereby felicitous conditions for the performance of visits to Santa are embedded in a complex socio-material network. We develop the performative turn (Gond et al., 2016) in organisational studies by introducing a new category of speech act, ‘translocution’, a compendium of imagining, discussing, proposing, negotiating and contracting that transforms the myth into a model of an imaginary-real world. Through translocutionary acts, actors calculate, organise the socio-material networks of the market, and manage the considerable uncertainty inherent in its operation. Details of the myth become market facts, while commercial constructs fade into the imaginary. The result, when felicitous conditions are achieved, is a ‘Merry Christmas’ of magical, performative power.

Practices and meanings of non-professional stock-trading in Taiwan : a case of relational work

Abstract Non-professional investors, especially outside the Anglo-Saxon context, represent an important and under-researched topic for sociological studies of finance. The paper presents a qualitative study of non-professional investors in Taiwan, where levels of participation in the stock market are very high. It shows that investors are embedded in complex networks of social relations, cultural norms and economic projects. We use Zelizer’s notions of ‘relational work’ and ‘earmarking’ to explore how economic relations construct and reinforce social relations: investing is productive of, as well as derived from, social structures. Stock market participation secures access to social groupings and reproduces hierarchical relations in families and social networks. Our study seeks to highlight the relational content of financial markets, and calls for further investigation of the relational work performed by the material-calculative architectures of high finance.