The Technological Economy

The Technological Economy

In this major new collection, leading experts explore multidisciplinary connections between technology and economy, drawing on new convergences between economic sociology and science and technology studies. Through theoretical and empirical studies, the authors investigate economics and economic knowledges as technologies; economies as socio-technical assemblages; the nature of innovation; and the role of technological mediations in representing and performing economies. This book interrogates the evidence for contemporary claims about the emergence of the ‘new economy’ and ‘knowledge-based economy’ and sheds new light on the relation between economy and culture. Andrew Barry is Senior Lecturer at Goldsmiths College, University of London and Don Slater is Reader in Sociology, London School of Economics. Contributors: Michel Callon, Gordon L. Clark, Bob Jessop, Karin Knorr-Cetina, Celia Lury, Cécile Méadel, Vololona Rabeharisoa, Marilyn Strathern, Nigel Thrift, Adam Tickell.

The Technological Economy

Edited by Andrew Barry and Don Slater

First published 2005 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. "To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge's collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 2005 editorial matter and selection, Andrew Barry and Don Slater; individual chapters, the contributors All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-203-02245-9 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0–415–33605–8 (hbk) ISBN 0–415–33606–6 (pbk)

Contents

v

Contents

Contributors Acknowledgements

vii ix

Introduction

1

ANDREW BARRY AND DON SLATER

1

The economy of qualities

28

MICHEL CALLON, CÉCILE MÉADEL AND VOLOLONA RABEHARISOA

2

From calculation to alienation: disentangling economic abstractions

51

DON SLATER

3

Externalities in comparative guise

66

MARILYN STRATHERN

4

The anti-political economy

84

ANDREW BARRY

5

Technology, politics and the market: an interview with Michel Callon

101

INTERVIEW CONDUCTED BY ANDREW BARRY AND DON SLATER

6

From pipes to scopes: the flow architecture of financial markets

122

KARIN KNORR-CETINA

7

Cultural political economy, the knowledge-based economy, and the state BOB JESSOP

142

vi Contents

8

Performing finance: the industry, the media and its image

165

GORDON L. CLARK, NIGEL THRIFT AND ADAM TICKELL

9

The objectivity of the brand: marketing, law and sociology

183

CELIA LURY

Index

201

Contributors vii

Contributors

Andrew Barry is Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Goldsmiths College, University of London. He is the author of Political Machines: Governing a Technological Society (Athlone 2001) and co-editor of Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, NeoLiberalism and Rationalities of Government (UCL Press 1996). Michel Callon is Professor at the École des Mines de Paris. He is the author (with Pierre Lascoumes and Yanick Barthe) of Agir dans un monde incertain: essai sur la démocratie technique (le Seuil 2001). He is currently finishing a study, with Vololona Rabeharisoa, of French patients’ organisations. His main areas of interest are the anthropology of markets and the study of technical democracy. Gordon L. Clark is the Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography, Head of the School of Geography and the Environment, and is cross-affiliated with the Said Business School and the Institute of Ageing at the University of Oxford. An economic geographer, his research is at the intersection between global financial markets and national pension systems. Recent books include Pension Fund Capitalism (Oxford University Press 2000) and European Pensions and Global Finance (Oxford University Press 2003). He is also the co-director of the OxfordWorld Bank Conference on Global Pension Reform. Bob Jessop is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Lancaster University. His most recent sole-authored book is The Future of the Capitalist State (Polity 2002) and he is currently working on the contradictions of the knowledge-based economy. Karin Knorr-Cetina is Professor of Sociology at the University of Konstanz, Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago and a member of the Institute of World-Society Studies, University of Bielefeld. She has published numerous papers and books including, Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge (Harvard University Press 1999). Celia Lury is Professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Her most recent book is Brands: The Logos of the Global Economy (Routledge 2004).

viii

Contributors

Cécile Méadel is researcher at the Centre de Sociologie de l’Innovation, École des Mines, Paris and the author (with Vololona Rabeharisoa) of ‘Taste as a form of adjustment between food and consumers’, in R. Coombs, K. Green, V. Walsh and A. Richards (eds) Demands, Markets, Users and Innovation (Edward Elgar 2001). Her current research interests include the relations between consumers and marketing professionals. Vololona Rabeharisoa is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the École des Mines, Paris, and researcher at the Centre de Sociologie de l’Innovation. She is working in the sociology of health and anthropology of markets. She is the author, in collaboration with Michel Callon, of Le pouvoir des maladies: l’Association française contre les myopathies et la recherche (Les Presses de l’École des Mines de Paris 1999). Don Slater is Reader in Sociology at the London School of Economics. He is the author of Consumer Culture and Modernity (Polity 1997); Market Society (with Fran Tonkiss, Polity 2000), and The Internet: An Ethnographic Approach (with Daniel Miller, Berg 2000). Marilyn Strathern is Professor of Social Anthropology at Cambridge University and Mistress of Girton College. Nigel Thrift is Head of the Life and Environmental Sciences Division, Professor of Geography and a Student of Christ Church at the University of Oxford. His main research interests are in international finance, cities, information and communication technologies, non-representational theory and the history of time. Recent publications include Cities (with Ash Amin, Polity 2002) and Knowing Capitalism (Sage 2004). Adam Tickell is Professor of Human Geography in the School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol.

Acknowledgements ix

Acknowledgements

Many of these papers were given in earlier forms at two workshops (on ‘The Technological Economy’ held at Goldsmiths College and on ‘Innovating Markets’ at the London School of Economics). Our thanks to all who participated in the events for their contributions, to the Departments of Sociology at Goldsmiths and the LSE, and to Economy and Society, for their financial support. The following chapters have been published elsewhere, in whole or in part: Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 in Economy and Society 31, 2, 2002; Chapter 6 in Distinktion 7, 7–23, 2003; Chapter 8 in Review of International Political Economy. Permission to publish this material is gratefully acknowledged.

x Acknowledgements

Introduction

1

Introduction Andrew Barry and Don Slater

‘The technological economy’ is a pun whose multiple meanings reflect the complexity of new understandings of ‘the economic’. The many and diverse issues that connect ‘technology’ and ‘economy’ are indicated first by the increasing, and productive, convergences between science and technology studies on the one hand and economic sociology on the other. This intellectual agenda resonates with a wider range of relations between technology and economy that provide the stuff of contemporary attempts to understand the economic: economics as a technology; economies as material arrangements of technical devices; the nature of technological innovation and its role in socio-economic change; and models of contemporary society which draw on scientific and technological concepts, such as network and complexity. We begin with two commonplace observations regarding contemporary economic life. The first observation is that the production and consumption of knowledge, information and culture have become increasingly central to economic activity. We live in what has variously been described as a knowledge-based economy, a post-industrial society, an information society, a new economy, a cultural economy, an economy of signs or a network society (Bell 1973; Lyotard 1984; Lash and Urry 1994; Castells 1996; Webster 1996; du Gay and Pryke 2002). Within such a society, the generation of new knowledge and other immaterial goods is thought to be increasingly important to economic success. Economic growth over the long term is reckoned to depend on innovation and creativity. One sense of the title of this volume refers to the critical part that innovation and new technology have come to play in economic life. The second observation is that there has been a huge growth in the production of knowledge about economic life. Economic and financial analysts produce assessments of current and future performance of firms, industrial sectors, and national and global economies (Miller and Rose 1990; Knorr-Cetina and Preda 2000; Jessop, this volume). Political activists, policy makers and social theorists have sought to develop accounts of the globalisation of economic activity and the weaknesses of policies and politics that confine themselves to the level of the nation state. Firms and public institutions are increasingly subject to various forms of audit and monitoring. Campaigners try to make visible the negative effects of

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economic activity on the environment and the protection of human rights. Writers on business seek to find the key to the generation of successful managers, brands and creative organisations. Market researchers attempt to develop increasingly nuanced accounts of consumer behaviour, using the tools of semiotics, focus groups and ethnography as well as more conventional forms of statistical survey. Funding agencies try to measure the quantity and assess the quality of innovative activity using a variety of techniques and measures. Governments seek to remodel their economies as knowledge economies and information societies. A second sense of the title refers to the way that knowledge of economic life can itself be understood as what we might call, following Foucault, a technology of government (Barry et al. 1996; Rose 1999). What are the possible responses to these observations for economic sociology and, more broadly, for social theory? On the one hand, the increasing importance of new media, knowledge and information in economic life could be understood simply as a further stage in the development of a global capitalist economy. In this view the older form of industrial manufacturing society has become increasingly displaced by a new kind of economy and society organised around the production, consumption and global circulation of knowledge and information. Concepts such as the network society or post-industrial society seem to capture this transformation. On the other hand, from the perspective of academic sociology and anthropology, the forms of knowledge generated by the growing armies of auditors, brand consultants, economic forecasters, and market analysts are generally viewed as quite impoverished especially given the continued power and prestige of neoliberal and neoclassical economic perspectives. Viewed in this way, the task of social science has been to develop a different, deeper and richer account, which is able to demonstrate the intellectual weakness of such narrowly economic or instrumental forms of reason. Depending on the sociologist, what is thought to be required instead is recognition of the cultural embeddedness of economic activity and/or a critical attention to the changing structural forms of the capitalist economy. In so doing, economic sociology has marginalised or ignored the significance of economic knowledge itself. The chapters in this book question both of these orthodox responses, and point to the need for new approaches to economic sociology and anthropology. Consider the second observation that economic activity is the object of increasing levels of scrutiny and analysis. Our starting point is the recognition that the forms of knowledge produced about economic life are performative, and not just descriptive or analytical. Practices such as financial and economic analysis and market research are not just more or less bad descriptions of social and economic life. They are more than just indicators of the growth of instrumental rationality. They create phenomena (Osborne and Rose 1999). The idea of the ‘economy’ itself is a good example of this. As Timothy Mitchell argues, ‘the economy’ is an invention of quite a recent date. When Adam Smith, in the nineteenth century, used the idea of economy the word carried the sense of prudence or frugality. The notion that the economy referred to “the structure or totality of relations of production, distribution and consumption of goods and

Introduction

3

services within a given country or region … dates only from the mid-twentieth century” (Mitchell 1998: 84). At this time the contemporary idea of the economy developed, both as popular and political expression (‘the economy is in a mess’, ‘it’s the economy, stupid’) and as a term of social and economic analysis (‘the Egyptian economy’, ‘the global economy’). To say that the idea of the economy was invented does not mean that it should be thought of merely as a fiction or a social construction. An invention, after all, acquires a reality and a force, depending on how many come to adopt it as a practical tool, and how far it is imitated by others (Tarde 2001). Certainly, in the late twentieth century the idea of ‘the economy’ has come to be extraordinarily powerful, replicated globally (cf. Appadurai 1990). A whole range of efforts are made to measure and compare the performance and future prospects of specific economies within the global economy, and determine the causes of economic success and failure. At the same time, investors, governments, voters and consumers make judgements and perform actions on the basis of these measurements. Studies of the performative role of various forms of knowledge of economic life have developed from a number of related directions. First, anthropologists and sociologists of science and technology have increasingly focused their attention on economic analysis and financial knowledge, as well as natural science and engineering. The work of Karin Knorr-Cetina, Michel Callon, Donald Mackenzie, John Law, and others has demonstrated the value of science and technology studies to economic sociology (Callon 1998a; Law and Akrich 1994, 2002; Knorr-Cetina and Bruegger 2000, 2002b; Knorr-Cetina and Preda 2000; Mackenzie 2001, 2003; Mackenzie and Millo 2003). We focus, in particular, on the work of Michel Callon, whose approach provided the inspiration for this volume and its concerns, and our own collaboration (Barry and Slater 2002).1 In his book, The Laws of the Markets, Callon argued strongly that sociologists need to rethink radically their relation to economics (Callon 1998a). Rather than denounce economics for its ideological content or its impoverished account of culture, sociologists’ efforts might be better spent examining the role of economics in the constitution of markets. Instead of viewing economics as bad science it would be better to view it as a set of technical practices that have a stronger relation to real economies than sociologists have often imagined. Seen in these terms the concept of economics has to be understood broadly to include not just academic economic theory, but all the institutions, techniques and professional practices (such as accountancy and audit) that serve to make actions and objects calculable.2 “Social science [including economics] is no more outside the reality it studies than are the natural and life sciences. Like natural science it actively participates in shaping the thing it describes” (Callon 1998b: 29). Callon is less interested in the question of whether economics gives a good or bad representation of markets than in the part played by economics (in a broad sense) in performing markets. His approach demands not just an economic anthropology but also an attention to the history and anthropology of economics. The work of Callon and other sociologists and anthropologists of science, discussed in more detail later, intersects with broadly post-Foucauldian approaches

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to the study of the economic life (Miller 1994; Miller and Rose 1990; Power 1997; Rose 1992; Burchell 1996). Foucault’s lectures on governmentality, in particular, point to the historical formation of particular forms of economic actor. In this perspective, for example, economic freedom, competitiveness and rationality are conceived as the product of specific forms of technical artifice. Neo-liberalism, as Foucault argued, does not involve the absence of government, but is itself a form of government which is intended to operate through the constitution of particular economic arrangements (Barry, Osborne and Rose 1996). As Graham Burchell notes, “for neo-liberalism, the rational principle for regulating and limiting governmental activity must be determined by reference to artificially arranged or contrived forms of free, entrepreneurial and competitive conduct of economicrational individuals” (Burchell 1996: 23–4). Seen in these terms, economics forms part of the technology of neo-liberal government. It helps to constitute the kinds of person and market organisation that make neo-liberal government possible. In a similar way, Nikolas Rose has sought to interrogate the historical formation of what he has termed advanced liberalism: Gradually, a new diagram of the relation between government, expertise and subjectivity would take shape. This would not be a ‘return’ to the liberalism of the nineteenth century, or, finally, government by laissez-faire. It was not a matter of ‘freeing’ an existing set of market relations from their social shackles, but of organizing all features of one’s national policy to enable a market to exist, and to provide what it needs to function. (Rose 1999: 141) Much of the literature influenced by the anthropology of science and by Foucault has focused on the importance of quantitative and rational techniques of economic analysis, audit and assessment. This certainly reflects the growing importance of such techniques not just in domains conventionally understood as economic or commercial, but also within public institutions which had often been previously considered as outside the realm of the economy (Law and Akrich1994, 2002; Power 1996; Strathern 2000; Born 2004). Not only is economic activity increasingly subject to analysis and measurement, but also the domain of what is considered economic has widened. In practice, the question of what should be considered economic and what should not be is often contested. A related perspective, virtualism (Carrier and Miller 1998), focuses on the production by economic actors of ‘virtual’ objects of intervention: e.g. ‘the consumer’ as constituted through market research and strategy documents, the ‘developing economy’ as constituted through the machinery of the Washington consensus. Virtualism indexes the capacity of economic powers and technologies to make these hermetic constructions plausible and effective realities. Callon’s analysis of economics as a technology assumes a very broad definition of what or who counts analytically as economics or as an economist. ‘Economics’, in Callon’s original account, embraces the practices and knowledges instituted well beyond the academy in all forms of governmental and commercial regulation

Introduction

5

and audit and such professions as accountancy, law and marketing. This plurality indicates that rather than using the specific term ‘economics’, which connotes a fairly narrow domain of activity, it may be better to speak of a broad field of what we shall term ‘economic knowledges’ (cf. Knorr-Cetina and Preda 2000: 31). In many cases the production of economic knowledge may be highly professionalised, or dominated by particular commercial, governmental or academic institutions or regulatory bodies. But it is also important to attend to the variable significance of the forms of economic knowledge developed by non-experts and outside of formal institutions, by consumers, citizens, and political activists (Callon et al. 2001). Viewed more broadly, economic knowledges can destabilise as well as stabilise the formation of economic actors and markets. Economic knowledges can be both a technology of government, and a technology of politicisation (Callon, Barry and Slater, this volume; Jessop, this volume). We return to the question of the importance of non-expert forms of economic knowledge and the relation between economic sociology and politics later in this chapter. Here, we note that attention to the plurality of economic knowledges is necessary if we are to recognise the significance of non-quantitative approaches to the analysis of economic activity, including cultural analysis and anthropology. Nigel Thrift, in particular, has highlighted the critical importance of what he terms the ‘cultural circuit’ of capitalism. Business schools are keen to develop knowledge of, for example, financial risk but also the importance of such matters as games, creativity and disorganisation (Thrift 1997, 1998, 2001, 2002, 2003). Likewise, advertising, marketing and brand consultancy have become increasingly central to economic life (Lury, this volume). The economy has come to be known and acted on not just in relation to the values of efficiency and productivity, but in relation to ideas such as corporate social responsibility (Barry 2004a), ethics (Osborne 2004), empowerment, excitement, and fun. But if economic knowledges should be understood as performative and technological, then what implications does this have for our understanding of the place of knowledge and information in the economy? Here we put forward four claims that emerge from convergences between economic sociology and science and technology approaches. First, whatever the object of economic knowledge is – ‘the firm’, ‘the market’, ‘capitalism’, ‘the consumer’ – there is always something that is constituted as external to these objects. Outside of the domain of capitalism there always will be a variety of economic or non-economic activities which are generally considered marginal to the development of the capitalist economy (Mitchell 2000: xiii). And outside the domain of any particular market there will be a variety of forms of social and economic activity which are not governed by the laws of that market, and a variety of side-effects which may not be recognised or are ignored by participants in the market. In these circumstances, the object of economic knowledge is never clearly bounded. On the one hand, through a variety of means ‘non-capitalist’ economic activities and non-economic processes infiltrate into the domain of capitalism, and activities which are normally thought of as external to the market enter into the constitution of the market.3 On the other hand, the

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frame or boundary of a market, or capitalism, or any other economic object, is itself contestable and negotiable. If the objects of economic knowledge are invented, so also can they become contested, politicised and transformed. Consider, for example, the notion of class. As J.K. Gibson-Graham and others have argued, Marx’s analysis of class can itself be understood as a particular system of accounting which makes visible certain relations and processes as essential, while obscuring others (Gibson-Graham et al. 2001: 9). By contrast, many contemporary political movements have sought to draw attention to, and make visible, a range of other phenomena – environmental in particular – which have generally not been taken into account by dominant forms of economic knowledge.4 In this context, rather than view such terms as ‘the capitalist economy’ or ‘the market’ as given objects we should regard them rather as variable products of expert knowledge and political practice. We do not think it makes sense to think of capitalism or the global economy as unified totalities (Mitchell 2002; Thrift 2003; Callon, Barry and Slater, this volume). But we do need to analyse how such generalised notions have been both informed and operationalised through various specific forms of political and governmental practice. Second, recognition of the importance of innovation and creativity in economic activity points to the path dependency of historical change (Tarde 2001; David 1985; Foucault 1986; Callon 1991; Urry 2002). Sociologists and economists of technology have long pointed to the importance of social and economic forces in driving and shaping the direction of technical change (Mackenzie and Wajcman 1985). Yet although such arguments provide a corrective to technological determinism, it would be a mistake to imagine that the rate and direction of innovative and creative activity can be simply seen as an expression of wider social and economic forces. On the one hand, it is impossible to give a purely ‘social’ explanation of technical or artistic change because technical and artistic objects themselves (facts, objects, devices, infrastructures, performances) form a critical part of what the social is (Latour 1993, 1999). On the other hand, in so far as an invention is an invention it has to be understood as something that creates new objects and opens up new possibilities for thought and action, which cannot simply be seen as an expression of pre-existing social forms (Barry 2001). Rather than understand the social as a context within which invention happens, the social has to be understood as something which is itself transformed through invention. In short, a focus on the social and economic conditions of technical change fails to attend to what is inventive about invention itself. Third, the importance of innovation and creativity in economic life raises a broader set of questions concerning how the relation between social and material objects is conceived. In the social sciences, it is common to make a clear distinction between social entities (such as institutions, language, knowledge and ‘society’) and material entities (such as buildings and bodies). Yet this distinction is problematic, and arguably increasingly so. In part this is because what were once thought of as purely material objects are never purely material. Their force and effects depend on their relations with other elements, including information. This is clearly the case if we consider the kinds of material entities produced through

Introduction

7

scientific and technical research. A drug molecule, for example, should not be conceived just as a collection of chemical elements bound together by physical forces. It is a set of chemical elements which has been formed in a complex informational environment. This informational environment is not simply external to the drug: it enters into the changing identity of the object. In this way, it makes sense to understand a drug molecule as an ‘informed material’ (Bensaude-Vincent and Stengers 1996; Barry 2004b). Conversely, information has to be understood as much more than a set of signals. “The constant bombardment by signals, the ads of consumer culture and the like do not constitute information” (Lash 2002: 18). Information only becomes information (rather than mere noise) in so far as it becomes bound into a complex environment, including an environment of material objects. Fourth, economic transactions increasingly take place through technological mediation, and these technologies are not neutral tools of economic policy or practice. The contemporary prestige of such terms as ‘network society’ and ‘information economy’ point to the role of technologies in conceptualising and reconfiguring economic action. Similarly, contemporary agendas such as ‘globalisation’ rest on core technological presumptions about the impact of transport and communications on the spatio-temporal structure of economic transactions and organisational forms. Contrary to formalist economic theory, constituting markets, regulating markets and conducting market behaviour is inseparable from substantive knowledge of specific technical mediations: the mechanics of computerised trading, the mix of online and offline retail facilities in configuring contemporary consumer markets, the regulation of intellectual property rights and so on (Knorr-Cetina, Lury, Clark, Thrift and Tickell, this volume). All of these points indicate the possibility of fruitful connections between science and technology studies and economic sociology which we discuss in more detail in the remainder of this introductory chapter. The chapter is organised into two parts. In the first part we focus on the work of Michel Callon and discuss how his approach to economic sociology develops from a broader set of concerns in social theory. Since the first publication of the paper reprinted here, Callon’s approach has been the subject of a lively critical debate (Miller 2002; Fine 2003; Holm 2003). It has been criticised for being complicit with mainstream economics (Miller and Fine) and for a failure to analyse ‘structural’ features of economic life. Callon himself both responds to and anticipates some of these criticisms in the interview published in this volume. In the second part of the chapter, we extend our discussion in two directions. First, we discuss the politics of economic sociology, and the relation of economic sociology to the study of politics. The issue is a critical one, for many of the criticisms of Callon’s work, and related anthropological approaches, are framed as political and ethical ones. The chapters by Strathern and Barry address the question of politics explicitly. Second, we examine what has variously been described as the new economy, the knowledge-based economy, or the network society. On the one hand, as we have argued, this involves a recognition of the performative character of these ‘new economy’ discourses. This is an important theme of Jessop’s chapter in this volume.

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On the other hand, as Karin Knorr-Cetina has argued, there is a need for empirical analyses of the complexity of current economic transformations, which are attentive to the specificity of different forms of economic knowledge. Knorr-Cetina’s chapter in this volume also points to the critical importance of media in the production of economic knowledge. We also stress the importance of non-expert economic knowledge, an important theme in Celia Lury’s analysis of the brand and Gordon Clark, Nigel Thrift and Adam Tickell’s analysis of financial media.

Science and technology studies and economic sociology One of the starting points for what might be called the new sociology of technology in the 1980s was a desire to challenge the technological determinism that had characterised earlier sociological and economic accounts of technology (Mackenzie 1996). Rather than view technical change as an external force that had an impact on society and the economy, sociologists of technology sought to demonstrate the ways in which technology was socially shaped or socially constructed.5 In this account, the economy was understood to be one of a set of factors or forces which influenced the direction of technological change and the design of technological artefacts. In the context of the new sociology of technology Callon and his coauthors took a distinctive and heterodox position. In particular, they argued that the idea that technology was either socially constructed or shaped was problematic for two reasons. First, because the distinction between what was ‘social’ and ‘technical’ and what was ‘human’ and ‘non-human’ was itself disrupted through the process of technical change. Second, because the very idea that the social was something like a structure, environment or context within which technical change occurred was itself problematic (Callon 1987: 100). It was impossible to give a purely ‘social’ explanation of technical change because technical objects (facts, artefacts, devices) themselves form a critical part of what the social is.6 In brief, Callon and his co-authors argued that studies in the sociology of technology demanded a rethinking of the very idea of a social explanation. This argument revolved around two central ideas: the actor-network and translation. First, rather than assume a distinction between the (social) actor and the economic and cultural environment within which the actor and its actions were embedded, Callon and Latour’s approach took the identity of actors as always bound up with the networks of which they were a part. Instead of speaking of actors and their networks as if they were distinct objects, this approach suggested that it would be more accurate to speak of ‘actor-networks’. Actors were able to have the power to act in so far as they were elements of a network. In effect, the formation of actor-networks generated specific worlds of actors. The identity, capacity and strength of an actor were relational. Moreover, the concept of actornetwork implied a form of material ordering (Law 1994). It described the constitution of a reality forged from heterogeneous elements (materials, texts, bodies, skills, interests, experimental devices) (cf. Deleuze 1988). The process of innovation was a process of ‘heterogeneous engineering’.

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9

Second, in accounting for the dynamism of actor-networks, Callon and Latour had earlier adapted Michel Serres’ concept of translation (Serres 1974): “By translation we understand all the negotiations, intrigues, calculations, acts of persuasion and violence thanks to which an actor or force takes, or causes to be conferred on itself, authority to speak or act on behalf of another actor or force” (Callon and Latour 1981: 279). The notion of translation emphasised the way in which the identity of actors, and their relations, was always in process.7 But it also implied that translation was a political process in which politics was conceived not so much in terms of competing ideologies or interests, but as a calculated Machiavellian act. Seen in these terms, the process of technical change could not be explained by reference to the kinds of social, political and economic interests which determined it. Rather, technical change was itself a form of politics that both revealed and translated the identity of social and economic actors. What came to be known as actor-network theory was always much more than an approach to the sociology of science and technology. It was offered, rather, as a way of rethinking the very idea of society as a domain distinct from nature and from technical artefacts, and as a way of bypassing the distinction between social structure and agency. This conceptual apparatus goes to the very heart of what it means to understand economic processes. Economic formalism has been preoccupied with the boundaries of the economic: on the one hand, economic action is treated as occurring within a ‘social context’, the multiple ‘exogenous’ variables of material environments, given technological capacities, ‘cultures’ of needs, tastes, and preferences, social and political ‘impurities’ such as intervention in economic processes by governments, custom and tradition and social structures. On the other hand, within the boundaries of the economic, we are to find actors endowed with given capacities – above all, formal rationality, or ‘calculativeness’ as Callon terms it – and forms of social action that emanate from these capacities. Where most economic sociology approaches have simply tried to incorporate the exogenous within economic analysis, actor-network theory treats the constitution of these borders as itself constitutive of the technical assemblages that we come to recognise (and dispute) as ‘economic’. The constitution of rationally calculating actors is not to be understood in terms of either innate capacities or socialisation within an exogenous social context, but as a heterogeneous engineering of assemblages (‘markets’) that enlist specific social capacities. This is a technical accomplishment that is, again, a form of political action, requiring the configuration of objects, relationships, methodologies and knowledges into actor-networks that are identifiable as a specific form of social action and structure. Within this overall approach we can identify at least four specific points of contact between science and technology studies (STS) and economic sociology that have been particularly discussed. First, and most obvious is the phenomenon of technical change itself. Technology, after all, is one of the few real ‘social factors’ to impinge seriously on the hermetic models of formal economic thought. There is an important tradition of work on the political economy of innovation, from Smith and Marx to Schumpeter and his followers that addresses the question of the relation between

10 Andrew Barry and Don Slater economic and technical change. For writers within this tradition the direction of technological innovation is not autonomous from the economy. On the contrary, the dynamics of technical change both effect and are influenced by both economic processes and the specificity of national systems of innovation (e.g. Mowery and Rosenberg 1998). At a macro-level, Schumpeter developed Kondratieff ’s notion of long-waves of economic activity associated with revolutionary changes in consumer and producer technologies (Schumpeter 1943: 67–8). At the micro-level, case studies pointed to the role of users as well as producers in the innovation process. In the context of actor-network theory such a conclusion is not surprising: the development of technology will always involve a more or less radical reconfiguration of the identity of those human and non-human actors associated with it. Despite the existence of a substantial literature in the economics of innovation, most conventional economics – as well as most recent discussions of the ‘new economy’ – treat technology simply as an exogenous variable, and (partly for this reason) have been dominated by forms of technological determinism. In the case of ‘new economy’ (to which we return later in this introduction), although claims are constantly made about revolutions in the material basis of production, distribution and consumption, the underlying relationship that is posited between technology and economy is structurally unchanged: technological objects, conceived as independent variables, transform ‘society’ in ways that have then to be captured within formal models of the flow of economic values. At one level, sociologists and anthropologists of science and technology have introduced into the analysis of economic processes a framework that fundamentally deconstructs both the ‘independent’ and ‘determining’ character of technology. The relation between technology and economy is a subset of the ‘technology and society’ problematic which actor-network approaches have systematically destabilised. However – and this is the second point of contact between economic sociology and STS – the impact of this work immediately goes beyond the specific issue of technology. Economic processes can themselves be treated as just another kind of agencement,8 like cars or nuclear physics (or, indeed, religion or art as a set of technical practices; cf. Gell 1998), comprising heterogeneous actors whose properties emerge from specific but contested material arrangements. Economics is just one of the many elements within these arrangements, shouting for attention along with all the rest. In socio-technical studies, actor-network theory aimed both to open the ‘black box’ of the object, and to demonstrate how the constitution of objects could be accounted for by the way in which actors open and close them; in the case of economic objects, and the economy as an object, the issue, again, is how they are defined and contested at their boundaries, how they are internally formatted by being separated out. As Donald Mackenzie argues, such an approach is potentially a very demanding one. It may involve economic sociologists understanding much more about the technical details of economic and financial analysis than they have hitherto:

Introduction

11

The flowering in the last thirty years of the sociology of science began when it started to open the ‘black box’ of scientific knowledge, the contents of which had previously been held not to be an appropriate subject matter for the sociologist. … the continued flowering of economic sociology will require a similar opening of the black boxes of the economy. (Mackenzie 2003: 353–4) Mackenzie demonstrates the fruitfulness of paying close attention to the technical detail of economic knowledge in his study of the sociology of arbitrage. As he shows, financial markets are “not an imperfectly insulated sphere of economic rationality, but a sphere in which the ‘economic’ and the ‘social’ interweave seamlessly” (Mackenzie 2003: 373). Third, this position seeks to cut across the distinction between ‘macro’ and ‘micro’ levels of analysis. The emphasis is on case studies, although these are as far from the form of case study typically to be found in economics and management studies as they are from formalist economic analysis. The empirical examples addressed by this perspective (whether of economic processes or technoscience) are not placed in the context of a structural analysis. Rather they investigate the formation of economic realities through contingent, heterogeneous and local processes. The question of how contingent, or how local or global, particular economic forms are, is a matter for empirical investigation. There is a similarity here between Callon’s approach and Karin Knorr-Cetina’s (1997; Knorr-Cetina and Bruegger 2000; Knorr-Cetina and Preda 2000; Mackenzie 2003) work on financial markets or Viviana Zelizer’s (1997, 1998) on money, localised constructions of economic processes are accorded a primacy that is in profound conflict with, for example, the structural analyses of political economy. Knorr-Cetina’s chapter in this volume demonstrates how it is possible to understand a global market through a microsocial analysis of particular localised work practices. In particular, she points to the critical importance of the socio-technical arrangement of this market, which is constituted not so much through the network as through the traders’ screens. As she argues: “the screen ‘appresents’ the market, it brings the territorially distant and invisible near to participants, rendering it interactionally and response present” (Knorr-Cetina and Bruegger 2002b: 392). A fourth point of contact between science and technology studies and economic sociology concerns the importance of metrology and calculation. First, metrology itself creates new objects (Latour 1999). Metrological practices (such as those associated with quality control, financial analysis, audit or environmental monitoring) do not just reflect reality as it is. They create new realities (calculable objects) that can, in turn, be the object of economic calculation (Miller 1992). In principle, as sociologists have long argued, measurement tends to function as an ‘anti-political’ device: it reduces the space of possible political contestation. In practice, metrological and calculative practices may serve to open up new objects to political reflection and contestation (Barry, this volume). Second, calculations are always, in principle, contestable. Calculations effect a certain rationalisation of social and economic relations but the extent of this rationalisation should not

12 Andrew Barry and Don Slater be overestimated. “As AST came to admit for the natural sciences, there is no reason to imagine an end to these debates and controversies; [there is] no theory or concept that can provide a final solution” (Callon 1998a: 29). Third, calculation is both a technical and ethical practice. It is not something that agents are naturally able to do once markets are formed. Rather, the capacity to calculate depends on a set of technical devices and discursive idioms that make calculation possible. In the case of markets, ‘calculativeness’ depends upon the separation or individualisation of objects into discrete transactable entities, with (temporarily) stabilised properties, that can be placed within a frame of calculation. In the case of markets, this material reality includes legal inscriptions (of contract and ownership); spatiotemporal arrangements (institutional and architectural structures that separate out buyers, sellers and goods as discrete and independent); regulatory institutions that govern the form, shape and circulation of objects; as well as metrological devices that stabilise accounts of their properties. Such an approach is not individualistic, nor psychologistic. “From the fact that calculations are made in the quasi-laboratories of calculative agencies (the word agent places too much emphasis on the individual) we should not infer that there are calculative beings, no matter how well or poorly informed they may be” (Callon 1998a: 4–5, our emphasis). Despite criticisms that his work is complicit with mainstream economics (in assuming that ‘economic man’ exists) it is clear that Callon’s notion of economic calculation is very different. In the anthropology of science and technology, as understood by Callon, a laboratory is a place within which it may be possible for scientists to establish a distinction between facts about particular material objects and the complexity of the relations within which they are ordinarily entangled – that is, to disentangle a network. Scientists could not possibly achieve such a work of purification using their rational minds alone. They achieve it imperfectly, deploying a vast range of resources, material devices, calculating instruments, personal relationships and so on. Likewise, as the image of ‘quasi-laboratories of calculation’ suggests, economic calculation is not performed by isolated rational individuals but by complex socio-material arrangements in which humans may or may not be entangled (Law 1991: 183; Callon 1998b: 16).9

Issues with economic sociology While Callon’s approach constitutes a fundamental critique and repositioning of conventional economic thinking, it also challenges economic sociology, including its ‘cultural turn’, in several crucial respects. Here, his disagreement with many approaches to economic sociology parallels his criticism of socio-cultural approaches to science and technology studies (Callon 1995). In this account, calculativeness not only cannot be an assumed property of ‘economic man’, it also cannot be regarded as an exogenous social feature, as something to be accounted for by terms such as ‘socialisation’, ‘culture’, ‘embeddedness’, or any other ‘social context’. Calculativeness is not to be imported from somewhere else into the economic field. In this way, Callon clearly positions himself – particularly in terms of American economic sociology – against authors such as DiMaggio (1990, 1994)

Introduction

13

who seek to identify the cultural preconditions of observable economic behaviour. Polanyi is subject to the same criticism (Callon 1998: 8) in that he “assumes the existence of an institutional frame in which economic activities take place”. In this context, Callon is more closely aligned with network analysis, even when it is very far removed from actor-network theory or involves taking up positions that are not conventional within economic sociology (Granovetter 1973, 1985). We might expect similar points of difference to emerge in relation to several contemporary research agendas, such as work on organisational culture or risk and regulation, as well as some forms of institutional economics, where ‘culture’ may be invoked in the same way as ‘technology’, as an external explanation of economic action. In this approach, that which is ‘outside’ the economic does not relate to economic processes as a ‘social context’ but rather as a range of heterogeneous actors whose variable roles are registered through acting on the very boundary of the economic sphere or market institution. An ‘externality’, in Callon’s account, is very different from a social context: formatting market institutions in ways that entail specific modes of calculation involves framing a range of features as relevant, and by definition excluding others (these are no longer economic factors, but cultural or ethical or political). The latter are not a context within which market behaviour is conducted but are themselves a result of the very same operation through which a market is (provisionally) defined in the first place. Externality and framing describe the way in which ‘insides’ and ‘outsides’ emerge, and change, in relation to highly political and material processes. The very patterning of elements within the market that entail ‘calculativeness’ appear there because of (disputable and unstable) acts of separation and division, not because ‘values’ are imported from a pre-given outside to be applied to an equally given inside. In this way, Callon (1998b: 50–1) strongly argues against the ‘two pitfalls’ that economic sociology regularly stumbles into. On the one hand, it constantly tries to enrich homo economicus by giving this agent ‘a bit more soul’ by importing ‘value, culture, rules or passions’; in fact it should be trying to understand ‘his simplicity and poverty’. In effect, it assumes, like the economists it criticises, that calculation is actually asocial and amoral, and these deficiencies need to be corrected. On the other hand, economic sociology adopts the strategy of denunciation, treating economic theory as impoverished, to be replaced (not enriched) by a ‘sociology of real man’, as a totality. Both, argues Callon, avoid the real issue of explaining the emergence of calculative agency: Yes, homo economicus really does exist … Of course, he exists in the form of many species and his lineage is multiple and ramified. But if he exists he is obviously not to be found in a natural state – this expression has little meaning. He is formatted, framed and equipped with prostheses which help him make his calculations and which are, for the most part, produced by economics … It is not a matter of giving a soul back to a dehumanized agent, nor of rejecting the very idea of his existence. The objective may be to explore the diversity of calculative agencies, forms and distributions, and hence of organized markets. The market is no longer that cold, implacable and impersonal monster which

14 Andrew Barry and Don Slater imposes its laws and procedures while extending them ever further. It is a many-sided, diversified, evolving device which the social sciences as well as the actors themselves contribute to reconfigure. (Callon 1998b: 51) However, there is also a third area of contention which appears to place Callon and many economic sociologists and anthropologists on the same side in relation to the other major tradition in this area: political economy. Whatever conclusions he comes to about the reality of markets and economic rationality, Callon derives them from analyses of contingent social arrangements: they are not manifestations of ‘deeper’ processes. Are entities like money and markets to be understood in terms of their multiple molecular forms, or are there (as Marxist realists would have it) processes that – however contradictory – sustain both generalised economic forms and their diverse manifestations? Can the structuring of economic institutions and processes be accounted through the alignment of heterogeneous arrangements rather than by ‘capital’, ‘labour’, and other macro-entities? In the context of such an approach, does the notion of ‘capitalism’ have any meaning or value? Is it possible to knit together an ethnographic view of ‘monies’ as local constructs with a view of ‘money’ as a macro-phenomenon with potentially diverse manifestations (Fine and Lapavitsas 2000; Zelizer 2000)? For Ben Fine, Callon’s ‘bonfire’ of macrostructures is extraordinary. A continuing commitment to a structural account – preferably, political economy – is necessary if social science is to offer a genuine alternative to economics’ imperialism, rather than one which ends up being complicit with some of the main arguments of contemporary economics (Fine 2003: 481–2). In fact, these debates with political economy revolve around two distinct, if interconnected issues, both of which concern different aspects of the problem of generalising from local and contingent cases. On the one hand, the stress on specific and unstable assemblages may appear to eradicate the entire plane of macroeconomics. Callon’s response is to argue that the macro-structures that are customarily treated topographically as a higher level of abstraction can instead be analysed simply as another kind of locality, as a similarly heterogeneous assemblage of agencies. This would not be unfamiliar say to historians of the post-war international financial order. As we have noted, Knorr-Cetina’s analysis of international currency dealing convincingly treats the macro as an interconnected product of local practices. On the other hand, the focus on micro-level contingency does make it difficult to visualise the replication and transformation of structuring processes over time. Political economy has, of course, traditionally captured these structuring processes through the notion that there are certain economic forms which are intrinsic to capitalism. Capital, labour, and value for example may be manifested in very different, contradictory and changing ways, but there is thought to be an underlying logic that both makes sense of this diversity and actually constrains it. The epistemological and political grounds for refusing this form of ‘realism’ are well rehearsed. The difficulty is to write histories of capitalist economies that do not rely on the notion of

Introduction

15

capitalism as a unified totality, or the idea of a universal process of development or modernisation. Here, we make three observations. First, peripheral and non-capitalist economic activities should not be thought of simply as a set of residual and resistant forms. Rather, as post-colonial research demonstrates, such activities play a vital part in the development of contemporary forms of economic knowledge and administration (Mitchell 2002; Roitman 2003). In effect, the external environment of capitalism is constantly folded in, disrupting any identity. Second, capitalism can be viewed not as a system or a structure which can be framed as such, but a constantly mutating formation. Rather than view the history of capitalism in terms of an unfolding logic, such an approach points to the need to attend to the contingent effects of actions, political events, technological inventions, and fashion (Thrift 2003). Third, as we have argued, it is important to recognise the performative character of the discourses of macro-economics and political economy. In this volume, Jessop argues for what he terms a ‘cultural political economy’ an approach which, while informed by the political economy of Marx, incorporates many of the insights of actor-network theory and post-Foucauldian approaches. Such a post-disciplinary approach, he argues, “adopts the ‘cultural turn’ in economic and political inquiry but still affirms the importance of the interconnected institutional materialities of economics and politics” (Jessop, this volume). By contrast to classical political economy, anthropological approaches such as those of Callon and Miller meaningfully use notions such as markets and commodities while simultaneously leading us to question the extent to which we can meaningfully deploy any such analytical categories if the focus is entirely on instability, diversity emergence and specificity. In fact we might use such categories in quite different ways: as underlying forms (within political economy), as the virtualist projections of economic engineers, or as active forms of economic knowledge deployed by economic actors, including the social analyst. What is clear is that each strategy involves a dialectical relationship between ‘our’ categories and ‘theirs’, rather than a radical nominalism or avoidance of all abstraction. Slater’s chapter in this volume addresses the problem of how to define markets in a way that captures both diversity and generality. The argument proceeds by returning to the previous issue, the question of ‘calculativeness’: Miller is correct that much market behaviour involves more entanglement, more involvement of diverse social values. However, in market systems they enter into economic action in a very specific form, as objects of instrumental calculation. This arises from the more fundamental defining feature of markets – alienation – that also produces more diverse forms of calculation than Callon considers. In particular, Slater’s paper investigates the kinds of cultural calculation that are found in advertising and marketing, in which the more ‘totalising’ configurations of economic and social values are in fact placed within a market frame.

Politics In analysing the relation between politics and the economy, sociology tended to adopt a particular spatial metaphor.10 The economy is reckoned to be a more or

16 Andrew Barry and Don Slater less solid foundation on top of which rest political and ethical principles. The notions of frame and externality, central to Callon’s analysis in The Laws of the Markets, suggest a very different spatialisation of these relations. Seen in terms of the concepts of frame and externality, the key distinction is not between that which is below, and ultimately determining, and that which is above, and determined, but between those objects, ideas and practices that are internal and those that are external to the frame. How does Callon himself spatialise the relation between economics and politics? There are three elements to his account. First, in The Laws of the Markets, he notes how politics is generally placed outside of the frame of economic calculation. As Andrew Barry notes in his chapter, Callon understands measurement and calculation generally to have anti-political effects. Calculation is intended to have, and often has, the effect of cooling the temperature of political debate. Seen in these terms, Callon does indeed map the distinction between economics and politics onto the opposition between the internal and the external. Possible objects of political contention are placed outside the frame. Yet along with this argument, Callon advances a second one, which complexifies his position. This argument starts from the recognition that framing is always, in principle, contestable. Indeed, far from limiting the possibility for political conflict and negotiation, framing forms something like a surface on which forms of political reflection, negotiation and conflict can condense. No doubt, calculation effects a certain rationalisation of social and economic relations but the extent of this rationalisation should not be overestimated. In The Laws of the Markets and in his contributions to this volume, Callon understands this in historical terms. Increasingly, he argues, ‘hot’ situations in which scientific calculations are contested are becoming more common (Callon 1998c). Why is this the case? One influential argument, suggested by Ulrich Beck, is that we live in a ‘risk society’ (Beck 1992). In this account, the risks generated by the development of science and technology can no longer be addressed through scientific and technical means. Callon’s analysis has some parallels with Beck’s in so far as he, like Beck, emphasises the reflexivity of social and economic life and the increasing prevalence of political disputes concerning the development of science and technology. However, arguing against Beck, he questions both the contemporary importance of risk, and Beck’s assumption that a clear demarcation can be made between the expertise of experts and that of ordinary citizens (Callon et al. 2001: 310–13). Although there is nothing new in the politicisation of markets, he argues that this politicisation has come to take new forms. On the one hand, the rise of the service economy, or what he terms the ‘economy of qualities’, leads to an increasing focus on the quality, qualification and re-qualification of products. Although some of the qualities of products may be quantifiable and measureable this does not mean that they are uncontestable. Indeed, the reverse is true. Actors may become increasingly reflexive and critical about how qualification occurs and what it implies. Consider, for example, the increasing consumer interest in the ways in which food quality is monitored and guaranteed, and the development of the notion of the

Introduction

17

‘organic’ as a brand of quality and purity. On the other hand, there is growing sense of the plurality of market forms and the need to open up the question of the particular form that markets take: “the organization of markets becomes a collective issue and the economy becomes (again) political” (ibid.). In this complex situation, he argues that it would be a mistake to be simply opposed to markets or to marketisation. The problem is to develop forms of political institution that make it possible to debate the question of how markets should be organised. Seen in these terms, the debate is not between those who favour markets and those who favour state ownership. Rather there are a series of debates both concerning the form of market regulation and control, and the particular role of economic experts and laypersons in economic government.11 The third dimension of Callon’s analysis of the relation between politics and markets develops from this historical argument, and is explicitly normative. Like Habermas, Callon’s normative position is a procedural one although, unlike Habermas, it does not revolve around an opposition between lifeworld and system, or between instrumental and communicative rationality. On the contrary, in an analysis that draws some inspiration from ethnomethodology and symbolic interactionism, Callon seeks to level the difference between sociological expertise and everyday knowledge.12 The kinds of questions generally posed by the sociologist are, Callon argues, also posed by actors themselves. In these circumstances, rather than take up the position of the ‘engaged intellectual’, the critical theorist or the scientist, he advocates a sociology that both recognises and follows the trajectories of the actors themselves (Callon 1999: 71; Rabeharisoa and Callon 1999: 3). But which actors?13 This question is crucial for those concerned with the politics of economic sociology. In their earlier work the actor-network theorists’ analysis of politics as a Machiavellian process of intrigue and calculation was criticised for its identification with the position and strategies of the powerful (Star 1991; Lee and Brown 1994). In their most recent work, by contrast, Callon and his colleague Vololona Rabeharisoa have followed the work of those involved with a social movement organisation, the French muscular dystrophy association (AFM) (Rabeharisoa and Callon 1999; Callon and Rabeharisoa, 2003).14 Part of the interest of AFM is precisely its inventiveness in creating new relations between scientific researchers and laypersons, in raising the visibility of disabled bodies, in forging new identities and collectivities, and in using public media. The effect of the actions of AFM has been the constitution of hybrid forums that cut across established distinctions between experts and non-experts and open up questions concerning the politics of the bodies and materials as well as forms of social organisation. Likewise, in relation to the increasing reflexivity of economic markets, Callon argues for the possibility of new forms of association between sociologists and social actors: “the key argument … is the suggestion that, in the economy of qualities … cooperation between scholars and economic agents and the constitution of hybrid forums are inevitable, for the questions they raise are largely identical” (Callon, this volume). The role of the economic sociologist is neither legislative nor interpretative, but experimental (cf. Bauman 1987). The task is to cooperate with actors in a process of experimentation, innovation and learning. This can be understood as a particular form of reflexive modernisation (Lash 1999).

18 Andrew Barry and Don Slater Strathern’s chapter presents two case studies – one of which is a particular form of hybrid forum – a Commission (in her case, the Canadian Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technologies). As a specific form of institution that is intended to inform action, a Commission relies on the existence of oppositions that are conventionally made between government and market and government and politics. The idea of a Commission relies on the idea that government is distinct from the government of the market economy (even though markets are, in part, constituted through legal regulation) and that government is distinct from politics (if politics is conceived of as disagreement). Commissions are the institutional form in which agreement can be reached without having to engage in what is normally called politics. They are ways of circumventing the messy ‘circumstances of politics’ which tend to be encountered in parliament or the mass media.15 Although this is not the central focus of her argument, Strathern’s chapter demonstrates how other (noneconomic) experts may themselves come to dominate a hybrid forum. Strathern’s chapter extends Callon’s notion of externality in three significant ways. First, she shows how the notion of externality can be applied to an act of socio-political framing (by a Commission). Second, she argues that in the case of industrial patents, the act of framing anticipates externalities that have an ethical aspect. Third, just as Callon conceives of economics as a set of practical techniques, Strathern conceives of ethics as a set of practical forms of moral reasoning. However, there is a crucial difference between ethics and the more calculative techniques associated with economics. Whereas economic calculation may involve the generation of a great deal of information, ethics derives from general principles that are understood by the ethicists themselves. For Strathern, ethics can be understood as a particular form of externality, an internal externality, which derived from the moral reasoning of the Commission itself: “They were not simply adding their own voice to the mix; they called down a justification for their views which lay within themselves” (Strathern, this volume, our emphasis). In his work, Callon insists that economics must be understood as performative. The level of its abstraction from the world also serves to effect new relations in the world. The social sciences are, in his account, a productive enterprise. Likewise, Strathern suggests that we need to think of ethics in terms of its orientation to action despite its recourse to the abstractions of moral philosophy. Action is always implied in the ethical norm, “yet action … does not belong to the discursive framing of the norm itself ” (ibid.). While Strathern’s chapter points to the need to rethink the anthropology of ethics, Barry’s chapter points to the anthropology of politics that is concerned with the technical practice of the political and the messiness of political circumstance. At one level, the chapter simply extends Callon’s approach from economics to politics. Following Callon, Barry is concerned with the question of framing and the ways in which the division between politics and economics is itself framed. Just as economic activity depends on a vast exercise in framing, so do forms of political activity such as voting or acting as a politician. Whereas many sociologists and anthropologists find politics (and ethics) everywhere, Barry argues that politics is a rather specialist, and located, activity. The chapter revolves around two arguments. The first emphasises the importance of various forms of

Introduction

19

‘anti-political’ activity that are oriented towards a reduction in the space of politics. The second argues that metrology and calculation can, in practice, have political rather than anti-political effects, shifting and opening up the space of politics, and establishing a conduit for the cross-contamination of the economic and the political.

The new economy As noted, we intend our title – ‘the technological economy’ – to draw together a range of issues connecting technology and economy: economics as a technology; economies as material arrangements of technical devices; but also new approaches to the traditional issue of the place of technology in socio-economic change. All of these issues have been given a new urgency by contemporary debates about the so-called ‘new economy’ and its many cognate terms – information society, network society, knowledge-based economy, cultural economy, and so on. This diversity of labels and metaphors points not only to confusion but also to seemingly inevitable convergences between technology and economy, technology studies and economic sociology, that develop (and proliferate) the more theoretical convergences discussed above. In particular, according to the new economy theorists, technological innovation (above all in new media and biotechnologies) places information and knowledge at the centre of economic processes (e.g. Leadbetter 1999; Quah 2004). However, partly through extremely broad definitions of information and knowledge, new economy and associated terms point to claims about the increased centrality of cultural and social relations in economic processes, whether through new forms of (networked) economic organisation, or the ‘dematerialisation’ of economic factors (for example, the centrality of branding, consumer culture or the rise of services and ‘non-material’ or less material commodities) (Thrift 2002). As we have noted, Karin Knorr-Cetina’s exploration of the terminal screen in financial trading rooms moves in the opposite direction from Castells’ global account of network society (Castells 1996). Electronic linkages do not lead to a web of social interconnections, or a disaggregation of markets into specific flows of information, but rather to a concentrated yet flowing representation of ‘the market’ that embodies it as a ‘life form’ or ‘greater being’. The terminal as mediation subsumes Castellian networks but the latter do not provide the metaphors or procedures that constitute the lifeworld of the social actors or the forms of their transactions. This precise attention to the specific instantiation of technology and economy allows KnorrCetina to develop a different analytic language, more appropriate to this market and its historical development. The metaphor of the network, so readily embraced by many, is inadequate to the task. As she has argued elsewhere: Networks are sparse social structures and it is difficult to see how they can incorporate the patterns of intense and dynamic interaction, the symbolic improvements, and other specificities that we observe in concrete domains … the emphasis on ties, their character, and what flows through them leaves out the details of how the connections are implemented. (Knorr-Cetina and Bruegger 2002b: 392)

20 Andrew Barry and Don Slater Second – to return to our opening discussion of economics as technology – terms such as ‘new economy’ and ‘the network society’, are best approached not as a good or bad account of actual transformations, but rather as a way of framing socio-economic processes. In this light, such notions should not be understood as (falsifiable) descriptions of an increasingly dematerialised and networked economy. On the contrary, they form part of attempts to establish new material economic arrangements. They are models of the political and economic future (Barry 2001: 87). To take but one of a multitude of contemporary examples, the Ghanaian government’s recently published Information Technology policy document (2003) not only examines the transformation of every area of governance (administration, health, education, etc.) through ICTs but also frames this in terms of an epochal shift in which Ghana, having missed the industrial revolution, will leap from agricultural economy to knowledge-based economy. This document – as so many others, including those produced by the development agencies and donors on which Ghana depends – assumes as given and ineluctable an historical narrative as well as a set of techno-economic concepts that also constitute a programme. Jessop’s chapter in this volume directs us to investigate the heterogeneous social agencies that install new economy as a master narrative and the equally heterogeneous apparatuses through which these narratives are to be realised (or not, as in the case of so many Southern countries). As Jessop argues, the performativity of the ‘new economy’ cannot be grasped by a culturalism that simply addresses these discourses as discourses. In the Ghanaian case, what is salient is not simply the prestige of a new economic narrative but the way in which it is imbricated in the material structures of relationships with development agencies, the practical arrangements of commercial trading partners and financial institutions, the popular practices of local SME entrepreneurs drawn to a local ICT sector that is already formatted in terms of business models and practices that draw on information society metaphors and concepts. We have earlier referred to the breadth of the field of economic knowledges, which not only include economics, accountancy, law, marketing and management theory, but also the knowledge of non-experts such as citizens, workers, and consumers. The significance of these sources of knowledge has been variable and contested, and mediated by other forms of expertise, and through various forms of collective political practice. Historically, political parties, trade unions, intellectuals, political economists, anthropologists, sociologists, ethicists and market researchers have all claimed to be able to re-present the knowledge of social actors, and to speak on behalf of ‘society’ (Rose 1999; Strathern 2004). At the same time, political practices such as strikes, direct actions and consumer boycotts have been used to express the knowledge and demands of non-experts. Rather than draw a clear distinction between the practices of experts and non-experts, one might point to a continuum of different forms of social scientific and political practice through which economic knowledge is demonstrated to others. In this collection, two further chapters make clear the importance of the economic knowledge of non-experts in contemporary economic life.

Introduction

21

First, as Clark, Thrift and Tickell’s chapter indicates, an important meaning of ‘new economy’ might be the further proliferation of economics through its mediatisation (or simply popularisation) eroding boundaries between professionalised expertise and general publics, or setting up new dynamics between them. In their example, different financial consumers and producers are watching the same financial infotainment screens, though often framing them in different ways. Financial experts have always wanted to know which way ‘the common herd’ will move (especially during bubble periods) and therefore want to know what they know. Clark et al., however, are describing a further twist in which the general public and their infotainment pundits are exerting demonstrable force on the decisions of financial experts and in which PR management of financial information is a significant aspect of corporate operations. Moreover – intriguingly akin to Knorr-Cetina’s terminal traders – we are asked to understand economic processes through the power of new representations of the economy made possible by new forms of technological mediation (financial television networks or Reuter’s information ‘pipes’). That is to say, at least in this sector, the ‘new economy’ may have an analytical reality in describing new socio-technical arrangements for representing ‘the economy’ that structure economic practice. Lury’s chapter develops four intersecting arguments. One is an argument about the history of marketing, and the increasingly critical importance of the brand as an object of marketing. As she notes, the notion of the brand is increasingly associated with global companies (Nike, Starbucks, Virgin) rather than specific products. Second, and crucially, the development of brands has come to rely on the knowledge of the consumer, and not just on that of the marketing professional. The relation between marketing and the consumer was “no longer viewed in terms of stimulus response … [but] as an exchange, or perhaps better, an interaction” (this volume). Third, despite this, she notes the continuing reluctance of both marketing and the law (in different ways) to acknowledge the knowledge of the consumer. Fourth, Lury makes a more general argument about how it is possible to understand the brand as an object and global life form (Franklin, Lury and Stacey 2000; Lury, this volume). For Lury, the brand has to be understood not as a stable entity but as an object which is both dynamic and indeterminate: ‘an abstract machine for product differentiation’. In developing this argument, Lury’s analysis of the brand questions the simplistic oppositions between the materiality of the ‘old’ economy and the immateriality of the ‘new’. Moreover, like Knorr-Cetina, Lury stresses the critical importance of understanding the market as an object which is continually being remade in time. Read together, the chapters by Lury and Clark et al. also point to the growing importance of brands as an object of both financial journalism and collective political action.16 We have framed this book in terms of the encounter between science and technology studies and economic sociology. However, the chapters might also be re-read in the context of a developing encounter between media studies and economic sociology. Of course, media studies has had a strong interest in the political economy of the media, as well as in the ideology of media representations

22 Andrew Barry and Don Slater of the economy (Garnham 1990). There has also been an increasing interest in the wider economic importance of the media and cultural industries (Negus 2002). However, the chapters here indicate the possibility of a different form of intersection between media studies and economic sociology. Barry’s chapter can be understood as a study of how media events may destabilise the distinction between the economic and the political. And Lury, Knorr-Cetina, Clark, Thrift and Tickell all indicate the need to analyse the mediatisation of what we have termed economic knowledges. Rather than view the economy simply as a context within which the media operate, or view media representations as ideological, these chapters point to the critical importance of mediatised knowledges in the formation of economic actors and markets, as well as their politicisation. As these chapters suggest, there are potentially fruitful convergences between the concerns of sociologists and anthropologists of science and technology and media theorists in the field of economic sociology.

Conclusions How does the knowledge of the social analyst relate to the plurality of economic knowledges? What kinds of interventions will a reconstructed economic sociology make into the technological economy? First, this book, following Callon’s argument, constitutes a case for placing the anthropology of economic knowledges at the centre of economic sociology. The set of approaches explored here needs to be sharply distinguished from the customary stances of economic sociology towards economics as a discipline: it has tried to ‘humanise’ economics by embedding it in socio-cultural lifeworlds; it has tried to critique economics as wrong or ideological; and – in the form of political economy – has tried to reconstruct economics as a revolutionary politics. These engagements with economics have had little impact on economics as a discipline and at the same time have failed to attend to the totality of plural economic knowledges that – alongside the formal economics which it ironically fetishises – are actively framing what comes to be recognised as ‘the economy’. It is high time for economic sociology both to address the full range of economic knowledges in a sociological, rather than a merely critical, agenda and to acknowledge itself as yet another agency of economic knowledge and intervention. Second, the approaches explored here point to the value of a radical empiricism which is attentive to the particularities and complexities of places, events and actors. We acknowledge that this approach must address problems of generalisation (which we have explored through the issues of macro-economy and economic forms). Nonetheless, it is through the analytical embrace of the empirical, of the particular case and event, that we can disentangle our own economic constructs from the grand and virtual narratives produced by other economics while at the same time connecting them (politically and analytically) to the economic knowledges of actual social actors. This demands more complex ethical and political positioning than in earlier days, and a messy engagement with social realities. Rather than modelling virtual social agents (e.g., the rational man of neo-liberalism or the proletariat of Marxist political economy), this indicates the need to understand the formation of

Introduction

23

markets and economic processes through heterogeneous arrangements of ethically impure agents, entangled in contingent circumstances, and evolving dynamically. It is significant that many economic sociologists, including the authors of this article (just like many science and technology researchers before them) are increasingly engaged in messy and impure research – in policy, in politics, in development work, in market research – in which our economic knowledges work alongside others in the generation of new knowledges. The task is to conduct this work with ethical reflexivity and without becoming complicit with economic ‘facts’ or with the ‘objectivity’ of dominant economic narratives.

Notes 1 The chapters by Callon, Méadel and Rabeharisoa, Slater, Strathern and Barry were originally presented at a workshop held at Goldsmiths College, University of London in December 2000. 2 Thrift (1998: 163) argues that academic economics does not have a great deal of importance for business, although it does have significance for states: “[political economy and economics] are important as discursive elements of states, justifying action in producing arenas that the state enacts as ‘economic’”. 3 In this volume, the chapters by Lury and Strathern also seek to reconceptualise the relation between the internal and external, although not in relation to this specific issue. 4 Consider, for example, the efforts of environmentalists to make the effects of development projects on global warming the object of explicit calculation by international financial institutions in determining funding decisions. 5 Two influential anthologies were titled The Social Shaping of Technology (Mackenzie and Wajcman 1985) and The Social Construction of Technological Systems (Bijker et al. 1989). 6 Callon and Latour 1992: 348. 7 Translation could come to follow predictable paths. “A network becomes irreversible to the extent that its translations are consolidated, making further translations foreseeable and inevitable. Under such circumstances, embodied skills, experimental devices, and systems of statements become increasingly dependent and complementary” (Callon 1995: 59, see also Callon 1991). 8 The notion of agencement, used by Deleuze, is usually translated as assemblage or arrangement. These translations do not, however, convey the sense of agency and process suggested by the French term. 9 Writers on governmentality, influenced by Foucault, have made a similar argument. See, for example, Burchell 1996. 10 This image persists. Despite a mass of empirical evidence, and his protestations to the contrary, Manuel Castells finds it impossible to move beyond the vision of structural Marxism in which technology and the economy are ultimately determining. According to Castells: “a technological revolution, centred around information technologies, is reshaping, at accelerated pace, the material basis of society” (Castells 1996: 1). 11 Cf. Rose 1999: 142–5. 12 Callon’s approach can also be distinguished from Habermas in its stress on the right to resist the normative demand for participation in the public sphere. Writing about a patient who refuses to identify with or participate in the politics of a patients’ organisation, Callon and Rabeharisoa note the following: “The triple demand underlying the establishment of a public arena (demand for visibility, demand for debatability and demand for participation and articulation) and which, once accepted, legitimises its existence, is replaced, by the collective, by three counter-demands, a demand for opacity

24 Andrew Barry and Don Slater

13 14 15 16

… a demand for non-argumentation (‘that’s how it is and nothing can be done about it’) and a demand for exclusion (the collective is not trying to articulate itself to the outside)” (Callon and Rabeharisoa 2003: 28–9). “Homo sociologicus has become a hybrid, at once actor and sociologist … Consequently the choice of actors with which the sociologists is associated is crucial” (Callon 1999: 72). L’Association Française contre les myopathies (AFM). On the “circumstances of politics” see Waldron (1999) and Barry (this volume). Since political actions against specific brands (such as Nike, Esso, Starbucks) may affect share prices the distinction between “financial” and “political” reporting may be hard to draw. Demonstrations conducted at company Annual General Meetings are likely to be reported in the financial pages of newspapers.

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26 Andrew Barry and Don Slater Knorr-Cetina, K. and U. Bruegger (2002b) ‘Inhabiting technology: the global lifeform of financial markets’, Current Sociology, 50, 3, 389–405. Knorr-Cetina, K. and A. Preda (2000) ‘Postsocial knowledge societies: the epistemic embeddedness of economic action’, in K.S. Althaler, M. Lehmann-Waffenschmidt and K.H. Müller (eds) The Socio-Economics of Long-Term Evolution. Advances in Theory, Complex Modeling, and Methodology, Berlin: Fakultas Verlag. Lash, S. (1999) Another Rationality, Another Modernity, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Lash, S. (2002) Critique of Information, London: Sage. Lash, S. and J. Urry (1994) Economies of Signs and Space, London: Sage. Latour, B. (1993) We Have Never Been Modern, Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Latour, B. (1999) Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Law, J. (1991) ‘Power, discretion and strategy’, in J. Law (ed.) A Sociology of Monsters, London: Routledge, 165–91. Law, J. (1994) Organizing Modernity, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Law, J. (2002) ‘Economics as Interference’, in P. du Gay and M. Pryke (eds), Cultural Economy, London: Sage, 21–38. Law, J. and M. Akrich (1994) ‘On customers and costs: a story from public sector science’, in M. Power (ed.) Accounting and Science: Natural Inquiry and Commercial Reason, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 195–218. Leadbetter, C. (1999) Living on Thin Air: the New Economy, London: Penguin. Lee, N. and S. Brown (1994) ‘Otherness and the actor-network: the undiscovered continent’, American Behavioural Scientist, 37, 6, 772–90. Lyotard, J.-F. (1984) The Postmodern Condition: a report on knowledge, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Mackenzie, D. (1996) Knowing Machines: Essays on Technical Change, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Mackenzie, D. (2001) ‘Physics and finance: S-terms and modern finance as a topic for science studies’, Science, Technology and Human Values, 26, 115–44. Mackenzie, D. (2003) ‘Long-term capital management and the sociology of arbitrage’, Economy and Society, 32, 3, 349–80. Mackenzie, D. and Y. Millo (2003) ‘Constructing a market, performing theory: the historical sociology of a financial derivatives exchange’, American Journal of Sociology, 109: 107– 45. Mackenzie, D. and J. Wajcman (eds) (1985) The Social Shaping of Technology, Buckingham: Open University Press. Miller, D. (2000) ‘Turning Callon the right way up’, Economy and Society, 31, 2, 218–33. Miller, P. (1992) ‘Accounting and objectivity: the invention of calculating selves and calculable spaces’, in A. Megill (ed.) ‘Rethinking Objectivity II’, Annals of Scholarship, 9, 1–2, 61–86. Miller, P. (1994) ‘Accounting, “Economic Citizenship” and the Spatial Reordering of Manufacture’, Accounting, Organizations and Society, 19, 15–43. Miller, P. and N. Rose (1990) ‘Governing economic life’, Economy and Society, 19, 1, 1–31. Mitchell, T. (1998) ‘Fixing the economy’, Cultural Studies, 12, 1, 82–101. Mitchell, T. (ed.) (2000) ‘Introduction’, Questions of Modernity, Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press. Mitchell, T. (2002) Rule of Experts: Egypt, Technopolitics, Modernity, Berkeley: California University Press.

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Mowery, D. and N. Rosenberg (1998) Technological Change in 20th-Century America, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Negus, K. (2002) ‘Identities and industries: the cultural formation of aesthetic economies’ in P. du Gay and M. Pryke (eds), Cultural Economy, London: Sage, 115–31. Osborne, T. (2004) ‘Ethical capital in the creation of human capital’, paper presented at workshop on Inside/Outside Markets, Écoles des Mines, Paris, June. Osborne, T. and N. Rose (1999) ‘Do the social sciences create phenomena? The case of public opinion research’, British Journal of Sociology, 50, 3, 367–96. Power, M. (ed.) (1996) Accounting and Science: Natural Inquiry and Commercial Reason, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Power, M. (1997) The Audit Society: Rituals of Verification, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Quah, D. (2004) ‘Digital goods and the new economy’, in D. Jones (ed.) The New Economy Handbook, London: Academic Press. Rabeharisoa, V. and M. Callon (1999) Le Pouvoir des Malades: L’association française contre les myopathies et la récherche, Paris: Écoles des Mines. Roitman, J. (2003) ‘The pluralization of regulatory authority in Central Africa’, paper presented at Economies at Large workshop, New York University, November. Rose, N. (1992) ‘Governing the enterprising self ’, in P. Heelas and P. Morris (eds) The Values of the Enterprise Culture: The Moral Debate, London: Routledge. Rose, N. (1999) Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schumpeter, J. (1943) Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, New York: Routledge. Serres, M. (1974) La Traduction: Hermes III, Paris: Éditions de Minuit. Star, S.L. (1991) ‘Power, technologies and the phenomenology of conventions: on being allergic to onions’, in J. Law (ed.), The Sociology of Monsters, London: Routledge, 26–56. Strathern, M. (ed.) (2000) Audit Cultures, London: Routledge. Strathern, M. (2004) Commons and Borderlands: Working Papers on Interdisciplinarity, Accountability and the Flow of Knowledge, Wantage: Sean Kingston. Tarde, G. (2001) Les Lois de L’imitation, Paris: Les Empecheurs de Penser en Rond. Thrift, N. (1997) ‘The rise of soft capitalism’, Cultural Values, 1, 1, 29–57. Thrift, N. (1998) ‘Virtual capitalism: the globalisation of reflexive business knowledge’, in J. Carrier and D. Miller (eds) Virtualism: A New Political Economy, Oxford: Berg, 161–86. Thrift, N. (2001) ‘It’s the romance not the finance that makes the business worth pursuing: disclosing a new market culture’, Economy and Society, 30, 412–32. Thrift, N. (2002) ‘Performing cultures in the new economy’, in P. du Gay and M. Pryke, Cultural Economy, London: Sage. Thrift, N. (2003) ‘Knowing capitalism’, paper presented at ‘Economies at Large’ workshop, New York University, November. Urry, J. (2002) Global Complexity, Cambridge: Polity Press. Waldron, J. (1999) The Dignity of Legislation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Webster, F. (1996) Theories of the Information Society, London: Routledge. Zelizer, V.A. (1997) The Social Meaning of Money: Pin Money, Paychecks, Poor Relief and Other Currencies, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Zelizer, V.A. (1998) ‘The proliferation of social currencies’ in M. Callon (ed.), The Laws of the Markets, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 58–68. Zelizer, V.A. (2000) ‘Fine tuning the Zelizer version’, Economy and Society, 29, 2, 383–9.

28 Michel Callon, Cécile Méadel and Vololona Rabeharisoa

1

The economy of qualities Michel Callon, Cécile Méadel and Vololona Rabeharisoa

As Charles Smith, one of the pioneers of “new” economic sociology, so rightly pointed out, forms of organization of economic markets and their modes of functioning are becoming an explicit issue for multiple actors and especially for economic agents themselves (Smith 2000). Markets evolve and, like species, become differentiated and diversified. But this evolution is grounded in no pre-established logic. Nor is it simply the consequence of a natural tendency to adapt. Economic markets are caught in a reflexive activity: the actors concerned explicitly question their organization and, based on an analysis of their functioning, try to conceive and establish new rules for the game. This reflexivity is evident mainly in the proliferation of hybrid forums in which the functioning and organization of particular markets (e.g. transgenic colza or breast cancer predisposition gene tests) are discussed and debated (Callon et al. 2001).1 “Forums” because they are public spaces, the specific structuring of which is yet to be defined. “Hybrid” for two reasons. The first is the variety and heterogeneity of the actors involved. In debate on the organization of markets we find: professional economists from different schools of thought, anthropologists and sociologists; economic actors (industrialists, consumer associations and social movements protesting against the increasing control of certain centres of power, etc.); international or national organizations such as the IMF, IRDB and ERDB which have their say in the structuring of markets; specialists of intellectual property, experts in management techniques and, more and more often, researchers in the life or natural sciences. The second reason they are hybrid is because the questions raised concern the economy,2 politics,3 ethics,4 law5 and, finally, even science.6 In these hybrid forums it is impossible to separate or dissociate the different components of the issues, even for the sake of simplifying the analysis. The forms of organization of markets defended by the actors engaged in the controversy vary, depending on those actors’ political or ethical points of view or the way in which they evaluate the reliability of scientific facts or the efficacy of available technology. Isolating problems and solutions that could be considered purely economic would lead to socially illegitimate solutions.7

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There is nothing new about markets being the subject of debate and their modes of organization depending on (non-commercial!) transactions between groups with differing and sometimes even opposing views and interests. Studies attesting to this are starting to become available, although they are still too few (Dumez and Jeunemaître 1998; Gao 1998; Miller 1998; Cochoy 1998). What seems to be new is the fact that the locus of these debates and resulting decisions is more and more frequently (relatively) open public arenas. One of the most visible consequences of public debates on questions that tend usually to be monopolized by specialists (or by professional decision-makers who rely on expert opinions) is the resulting redistribution of competencies and the increasing role granted to economic agents themselves. Professional economists no longer have the direct or indirect monopoly (assuming they did ever have it) on authorized and legitimate discourse. This does not mean that they are excluded from the debate. On the contrary, they are cordially invited to participate, but they are no longer alone. Next to them we find not only specialists from other scientific disciplines (anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists and, depending on the nature of the markets under consideration, biologists, chemists or climatologists) but also, and above all, the actors concerned with the markets under discussion. Economists, sociologists and biologists can no longer confine themselves to an outdated form of epistemology. The actors are now colleagues whom they have to take into consideration and who contribute in their own right to the production of knowledge and its transcription in reality which sometimes ends up corresponding to theories about it.8 The forum creates an arena in which the great divide between specialists and laypersons is redistributed. It creates material conditions for cooperation between laboratory research performed by experts and specialists, on the one hand, and research “in the wild” that makes it possible for laypersons to be vigilant and sometimes prompts them to propose guidelines for new research (Callon et al. 2001). As far as it concerns markets and their organization, this reflexive – because collaborative – research should progressively be focused on a small number of questions, including what we suggest calling the qualification of products. Real markets and the agents inhabiting them have in common with the stylized markets of economics textbooks the same core question: the classification of goods offered to consumers. Economic agents devote a large share of their resources to positioning the products they design, produce, distribute or consume, in relation to others. Any theoretical and formal description of a market starts with the inevitable statement: take goods p1, p2, p3, etc., without which no stylized model would be possible. How could we talk about supply and demand, in practical or theoretical terms, if there were no agreement, at least tacit or even imaginable, on the list of products and their characteristics?9 How could we describe, in practice and theory, the structures of competition within the same market or between related markets, if relations of similitude or dissimilitude between the goods that circulate could not be established?10 One of the most visible manifestations of this shared concern (how to classify and position goods?) is reflected in the upsurge in debate on the concept of a service. The distinction between manufactured goods and services, which has

30 Michel Callon, Cécile Méadel and Vololona Rabeharisoa generated recurrent and endlessly open debates, is becoming central again, probably because it is at the heart of a set of questions on the transformation of the economic system and/or on the appearance of new models of growth and regulation (Gadrey 2000). Whether one talks about the new economy, the information economy, the knowledge economy or even, more directly, of the service economy, one is expressing the possibility of a profound transformation of the rules by which markets function, a transformation that is thought to be related essentially to radical changes in the characteristics of the goods traded. Our view in this chapter is that the emerging convergence between the interests of researchers and the preoccupations of economic agents, around the question of services, warrants encouragement and clarification. It is likely, eventually, to promote the constitution of hybrid forums in which new forms of organization of economic activity could be discussed. To show the advantages of such convergence, we shall take a detour via the general question of the definition of goods and products. Then, based on both the economic tradition and on sociological and anthropological work, we shall put forward a product definition that will lead us, in the second part, to show the active and reflexive role of economic agents in the qualification of products. This will enable us to demonstrate the emergence of new forms of competition and to emphasize the advantages of the concept of a service for describing and explaining them we suggest calling this new form of organization of markets the economy of qualities. The key argument in this chapter is the suggestion that, in the economy of qualities, that can also be called the service economy, because the questions posed by researchers and economic agents are to a large degree identical, cooperation between them is inevitable. The organization of markets becomes a collective issue and the economy becomes (again) political. One of social sciences’ objectives might be to contribute, as far as possible, to that development.11

The product as a variable: conflict and negotiation around the qualification of goods What is a product? When one consults political economics textbooks one is struck by the diversity of terms used to denote the objects of commercial transactions.12 Faced with this semantic proliferation and resulting imprecision, it is out of the question to try to control the use of concepts, especially since each of them sheds particular light on the reality in question. To better understand the emergence of new forms of organization of markets and new modes of competition, it nevertheless seems useful to make a distinction – necessarily arbitrary but nevertheless rooted in etymology – between a good and a product (two concepts which are often used interchangeably in the vocabulary of economic theory). Talking of a good means emphasizing the fact that the aim of any economic activity is to satisfy needs (what is good, sought after, wanted). Qualifying these goods as economic means adding that their production and circulation involves the mobilization of necessarily rare resources, or that these goods can be attached to property rights which are transferable from one agent to another. The concept

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of an economic good implies a degree of stabilization of the characteristics that are associated with it, which explain why it is in demand and why, being wanted as such, it is traded. A product, on the other hand, is an economic good seen from the point of view of its production, circulation and consumption. The concept (producere: to bring forward) shows that it consists of a sequence of actions, a series of operations that transform it, move it and cause it to change hands, to cross a series of metamorphoses that end up putting it into a form judged useful by an economic agent who pays for it. During these transformations its characteristics change. The product is thus a process, whereas the good corresponds to a state, to a result or, more precisely, to a moment in that never-ending process. As an economic good a car is an object, a thing with a well-defined shape, which is used to meet specific needs and which has an established value in a market context. But it is more than that. It is also an object that has a life, a career. Seen from the angle of its conception and then production, it starts off by existing in the form of a set of specifications, then a model, then a prototype, then a series of assembled elements and, finally, a car in a catalogue that is ordered from a dealer and has characteristics which can be described relatively objectively and with a certain degree of consensus. Once it is in the hands of its driver the car continues moving, not only on roads but also, later, for maintenance purposes to workshops, then to second-hand dealers. At times it becomes an object on paper again which takes its place alongside other cars in the guide to second-hand car prices in specialized magazines. The product (considered as a sequence of transformations) describes, in both senses of the term, the different networks coordinating the actors involved in its design, production, distribution and consumption. The product singles out the agents and binds them together and, reciprocally, it is the agents that, by adjustment, iteration and transformation, define its characteristics. Once the distinction between goods and products has been established, the question of their relations remains. These can be considered from a dual point of view: that of the process of qualification of goods, and that of the product considered as a strategic variable. To deepen and enrich the proposed distinction between product and good, we shall start with the definition of a good, as given in most economics manuals. “A good can be described as a bundle of characteristics: quality, location, time, availability, consumer’s information about its existence and … so on. Each consumer has a ranking over the mix of variable” (Tirole 1989). In other words, a good can be defined by a combination of characteristics that establish its singularity. This singularity, because it stems from a combination, is relational. In fact, the selected characteristics can be used to describe other goods, with which relations of similitude or proximity are likely to be established. Defining a good means positioning it in a space of goods, in a system of differences and similarities, of distinct yet connected categories.13 How are these characteristics established, which make it possible to say that two goods are relatively similar but different or else totally dissimilar and radically incomparable?

32 Michel Callon, Cécile Méadel and Vololona Rabeharisoa First, these properties are not observed; they are “revealed” through tests or trials which involve interactions between agents (teams) and the goods to be qualified. The fact that a wine is syrupy, that it matures with age, that it has a high or low alcohol content, that it comes from the Médoc region or Tourraine, are all properties which will be used to characterize it but which, to be identified and objectified, require the implementation of certified tests and the realization of codified measurements.14 The same applies to a car. Its road-holding, engine capacity, consumption and comfort, the resistance of its paint to corrosion, and its delivery time are all parameters which, to be appreciated, evaluated and objectified, need a battery of tests, test benches, approved measurement instruments, documents guaranteeing traceability, etc. The characteristics of a good are not properties which already exist and on which information simply has to be produced so that everyone can be aware of them. Their definition or, in other words, their objectification, implies specific metrological work and heavy investments in measuring equipment. The consequence is that agreement on the characteristics is sometimes, in fact often, difficult to achieve. Not only may the list of characteristics be controversial (which characteristics ought to be taken into consideration?) but also, above all, the value to be given to each of them. Once agreement has been reached it will be characterized by a degree of robustness if the procedures used were objective. Second, the definition of these characteristics is modified as the product develops and changes. The characterization of a vehicle in the research laboratory is obviously not the same as that on the sales brochure distributed by the dealer, even if the two lists of characteristics are related. It is also different from the one proposed to a sub-contractor who designs and manufactures parts. The notion of a characteristic in its standard sense (and particularly in the definition proposed by Tirole) tends to mask both the existence of progressive metamorphoses of the product and the necessity for successive investment to organize the trials required for characterization. That is why I prefer to talk of qualities and of a (continuous) process of qualification–requalification, for they are simply two sides to the same coin. All quality is obtained at the end of a process of qualification, and all qualification aims to establish a constellation of characteristics, stabilized at least for a while, which are attached to the product and transform it temporarily into a tradable good in the market.15 A good is defined by the qualities attributed to it during qualification trials. These qualities are therefore twofold. They are intrinsic: the good is engaged in the qualification trial and the result obviously depends on the good in question. But they are also extrinsic: not only are the qualities shaped by the device used to test and measure the good (and therefore depend on the choice and characteristics of that device) but their formulation and explanation also generate evaluations and judgements which vary from one agent to the next. The notion of quality has the advantage of closely binding these two meanings and of including the classical question in both economics and economic sociology, of the hierarchy of comparable goods (as when one talks of the quality of a service or second-hand car). Talking of quality means raising the question of the controversial processes of qualification,

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processes through which qualities are attributed, stabilized, objectified and arranged. It therefore consists of giving oneself the means to go with no solution of continuity from the good to the product, from the result to the process and its organization. Being by definition variable, the product is a strategic variable for the different economic agents engaged in the process of its successive qualifications– requalifications. Seen from the point of view of its conception, a good, as noted above, moves through different stages: the Twingo presented by Renault’s design department has qualities which will progressively be transformed and adjusted, until the version available on the market is obtained. That final version will, moreover, have qualities that differ depending on the place in which it is sold, the year in which it is licensed, the fact of being first- or second-hand, and so on. Products, to borrow Appadurai’s apt expression, are goods with a career (Appadurai 1986). Conversely, goods are (temporarily) stabilized products. In the former case the list of qualities is open; in the latter it is (temporarily) closed. The process of qualification–requalification, as described by the good–product twosome, is at the heart of the dynamics of economic markets. It was on the existence of this very process that Chamberlin based his theory of monopolistic competition (Chamberlin 1946 [1933]). He started with the idea, proposed above, that the qualities that allow goods to be differentiated from one another constitute a very open list. They may be characteristics that common sense would automatically describe as intrinsic, but may also be brands, packaging or special recipients, particular sales conditions such as location, seller’s reputation or personal relations between the salesperson and customers. Chamberlin underscored the fact that all these qualities constitute the good, in the following striking sentence: the customer buys not only the “material” good but also the reputation and honour of the seller. Even if Chamberlin does not explicitly say so, this means that all these qualities have the same ontological status, and that it would be wrong to distinguish between primary and secondary qualities, for example, or between the “real” good and its successive presentations. Yet, Chamberlin adds, these qualities which define a good and make it possible to position it in relation to other goods are not established once and for all. They have the strange characteristic of being constituent of the good but nonetheless reconfigurable. Chamberlin’s conclusion is essential in our argument. The good, as a moment in the life of a product, as a configuration likely to vary in a continuous process of qualification–requalification, must be considered as an economic variable in the same way that prices are: “By variation (of the product) we may be referring to a modification of the quality of the product itself – technological changes, new model, better raw materials; we may mean the packaging or a new recipient; or, finally, we may mean better and more friendly service, a different way of doing business”. In his introduction to the French translation, Perroux stresses the point. He notes that for the firm, the ability to modify the list of qualities is a strategic resource since it is a matter of positioning the good in the space of goods (a space comprising all possible dimensions and qualities). Expressed in our categories the good, a point in time in the career of a product which starts before it and continues after it, is an economic variable in its own

34 Michel Callon, Cécile Méadel and Vololona Rabeharisoa right that the different economic agents can manipulate to suit their strategic goals.16 Of what do these manipulations consist? Or, put differently, what are the economic implications of the qualification–requalification of products? Once again, we turn to Chamberlin, for his answer here is also central to our approach. The qualification of goods is at the heart of economic competition and the organization of markets. According to him, the establishment of the list of qualities of a good involves the linking up or, rather, the co-construction of supply and demand. With hindsight this mutual adaptation between what a firm proposes and what consumers want always seems somewhat miraculous. Chamberlin points out that it is based on a double movement. On the one hand, it leads to a singularization of the good (so that it is distinguished from other goods and satisfies a demand that other goods cannot meet). On the other hand, it makes the good comparable to other existing goods, so that new markets are constructed through the extension and renewal of existing ones. Different and similar, singular and comparable, such is the paradoxical nature of the economic good constituting the dynamics of markets. It is of course economic agents, from either the supply or demand side, or involved in either distribution or marketing, that construct these singularities and substitutabilities. The challenge which they share and which divides them is to establish this difficult adjustment between a supply and a demand that is formed around a list of qualities – an adjustment that is temporary and constantly threatened because it operates against a background of substitutability and comparability. The good relates to a certain structuration of competition, which acts both as a constraint and a resource for the collective qualification–requalification of products. This strategic game of positioning or, as we proposed, of qualification– requalification of goods, has two important consequences for forms of organization and modalities of competition. First, the contrast between a situation of monopoly and one of pure competition no longer has meaning. Through construction, a product is always both singular and similar to other products, because it is immersed in a space of qualities that makes comparisons possible. Chamberlin proposed the concept of monopolistic competition to describe this dynamic. Chamberlin synthesizes this point in the following assertive statement, often cited: “It is to be recognized that the whole is not a single market, but a network of related markets, one for each seller”.17 From this point of view, consumers are just as active as the other parties involved. They participate in the process of qualifying available products. It is their ability to judge and evaluate that is mobilized to establish and classify relevant differences. There is no reason to believe that agents on the supply side are capable of imposing on consumers both their perception of qualities and the way they grade those qualities. Interactions involving complex and reciprocal influences, to which we shall return, are the rule rather than the exception. Second, and Chamberlin makes this point in passing, the requalification process can be carried out either “gradually and unconsciously”, taking into account the reactions of the different agents involved, or in an organized manner. In the latter case, economic agents, that is the firm, but also the spokespersons of intermediaries

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and consumers, are explicitly defined as being involved in the strategic management of product qualification. They attempt to answer the following questions: how products are positioned in the sphere of goods; how they are distinguished from other goods and to what extent they can be substituted, at least partially, for some of them. This strategic management starts from the design stage and is seen as a governable process in which all agents participate, from the research and design departments right down to the end users, through the production, purchasing and marketing divisions.

The economy of qualities To consider the qualification of goods as one of the central issues in the dynamic organization of markets makes the situations in which this qualification–requalification constitutes an explicit challenge for all the agents involved particularly interesting. For reasons that will emerge clearly further on in this chapter, we suggest using the term “economy of qualities” for this (dynamic) economy of the product (as opposed to a more static economy of the good) in which the modalities of the establishment of supply and demand, and forms of competition, are all shaped by the organized strategies deployed by the different actors to qualify goods. These highly reflexive markets are organized around two structuring mechanisms: the singularization of goods and the attachment of goods to (and detachment from) those who consume them. The singularization of goods The economy of qualities is based above all on the singularity of the goods offered to consumers. In other words, what is sought after is a very close relationship between what the consumer wants and expects, on the one hand, and what is offered, on the other. Many authors have emphasized these interactions between supply and demand, as well as the personalization of products they allow and the progressive adjustments to which they give rise.18 But the perspective adopted here, that of the qualification of goods, allows us to enrich and complete existing analyses. Let us consider the question from the demand side first: how do consumers perceive differences between products and how do they evaluate them? In other words, how do they qualify products and classify them by giving them an order of preference? The answer to this question should avoid the explanation that immediately comes to mind which accepts the idea of a radical separation between supply and demand, with the product serving simply as an intermediary between the two. In this widespread view, the qualities of products are intrinsic characteristics, inseparably attached to the products. Consumers are supposed to perceive these qualities (hence, the importance of information) and it is assumed that the way in which they appreciate, evaluate and classify them depends on their own preferences. The latter can be considered as strictly individual (as in the standard neo-classical model) or (as in the extreme sociologizing version) related to membership of a

36 Michel Callon, Cécile Méadel and Vololona Rabeharisoa group or social class that tries to distinguish itself or form an identity by adopting a position in relation to the preferences of other groups.19 From our point of view, this is impossible. The qualities of a product depend on the joint work of a host of actors and there is no reason to believe that consumers do not participate, like the other actors concerned, in the objectification of those qualities.20 How, in these conditions, can we explain consumers’ participation in the qualification of the goods for which they (finally) express a demand? The best way of avoiding difficulties associated with the traditional concept of preference is to introduce the more realistic and now well-documented concept of distributed cognition (Hutchins 1995; Mallard 1996). The perception of differences and their evaluation, a dual operation that constitutes the exercise of judgement, implies a consumer immersed in a socio-technical system of which the different elements will each, in its own way, participate in the implementation of that dual operation. F. Cochoy’s ethnography of supermarket customers is very instructive from this point of view (Cochoy 2002). Cochoy is interested in the particularly disturbing case in which the consumer has to choose between two almost identical products.21 As he shows, this situation is very common. Moreover, advertisements often influence the paradox by adding a strange injunction: between these two identical products choose ours! Chamberlin was right. The singularization of a product, which allows its attachment to a particular consumer, is obtained against a background of similitude. The difference that enables a product to capture the consumer always involves the prior assertion of a resemblance which suggests an association between the consumer’s former attachments and the new ones proposed. How do consumers manage to grasp differences when products are so similar? How can I explain why I choose a Philips VCR rather than a Sony or, even more ordinarily, fruit yoghurts made by Danone rather than Nestlé? To explain why and how consumers end up opting for one or the other, F. Cochoy points to the part played by two decisive mechanisms. The first of these is the establishment of a socio-cognitive arrangement that situates the different products in relation to one another: a particular point on a shelf; packaging, the semiotic analysis of which shows that it helps simultaneously to characterize the product and to compare it with other seemingly similar products; and references added by the distributor. Advertising, studied so well by Chamberlin, is another element in this apparatus. Consumers are not alone, facing a product, left to determine its qualities. They are guided, assisted by material devices which act as points of reference, supports, affordances in which information is distributed. But consumers also have a life outside the supermarket. For example, they have a family. The products they buy are tested in their home; collective evaluations are made; learning takes place, which gives rise to evaluations. More broadly, our consumers are caught in social networks in which tastes are formed, discussed and imitated. Moreover, these networks are not purely social. Tests and evaluations are always based on material devices in which bodies are involved (Teil 1998; Thévenot 1993). The lessons learned from them are sometimes synthesized in lists that consumers draw up with the people they live with before going shopping. When

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faced with a shelf offering a profusion of similar products, the list will enable them to rely on elements external to the situation. For some products and markets our consumers can also consult magazines or guides produced by specialists or consumer associations (Mallard 2000). In the case of high-tech goods or, more generally, products that are difficult to qualify (because objective tests are more difficult to carry out), these intermediaries play a crucial part, in some cases going so far as to organize what Hatchuel calls a prescriber’s market (Hatchuel 1995). We thus see the complexity of the process of judgement through which properties are attributed to products and evaluations are made. It is always, as Chamberlin so clearly saw, through the comparison and explanation of differences that these judgements are made. Such comparisons and explanations suppose the existence of a complex socio-technical device that supports the consumer in her evaluation work. Let us now turn to the supply side. It has in common with demand the obsession with positioning products. How is it possible to ensure that consumers identify properties that they then evaluate positively? This question is crucial, as the consumers’ attachment and consequent profits depend on the answer! This clearly explains why all the firm’s activities and those of everyone involved in it turn around the positioning and qualification of the product. And the only way to go about it is by trial and error and the progressive learning it allows: trying some positions, observing consumers’ evaluations, trying to clarify their judgements, taking them into account when repositioning the product etc.22 As we have seen, and Chamberlin stressed this point, this work of requalification can concern either what common sense would tend to consider to be the materiality of the product (orange juice, its acidity, the origin of the pulp) or its presentation (its wrapping, its position on the shelf, or advertisements for it). Yet, in the approach adopted here, there is no reason to distinguish between the two. In both cases what counts is the qualification of the product: one involves work on the orange; the other involves work on the bottle, its label or its place on the shelf. But from the point of view of interest to us here, there is no need to distinguish between these two types of qualification that contribute equally to the singularization of the product.23 The distinction between supply and demand is useful for emphasizing the symmetry and similitude of behaviours of the different economic agents engaged in qualification. Yet it does have a major drawback: it makes the anonymous and collective work of market professionals invisible, despite the key role they play in the qualification–requalification of products. In the mass market these professionals working behind the scenes are legion and far more numerous than omnipresent, designers, packagers or merchandisers. Cécile Méadel and Vololona Rabeharisoa followed the career of orange juice from the orange groves of southern Spain to the display of the juice in a bottle in a range on a shelf (Méadel and Rabeharisoa, 1999). Different actors come onto the scene at different stages in the orange juice’s career: the taster who, in close collaboration with the buyer, stabilizes the properties of the juice when production first begins; the sales manager who displays the plastic from which the bottles are made; the advertising agency and its brief; the marketing services and the market surveys that prompt it to segment supply and demand so as to take into account profound changes; the tasting sessions organized with

38 Michel Callon, Cécile Méadel and Vololona Rabeharisoa different panels of uninformed consumers or informed professionals who are put into a position to reveal their tastes and judgements (Méadel and Rabeharisoa 2001). All these people working on qualification share a product which they shape and transform: the orange and its juice constitute their world. But they are simultaneously in a distant relationship. They pass the product around and on to the next in line so that, on the basis of work already done, they can propose and prepare other qualifications. The final adjustment is always in the hands of the newcomer (Barrey et al. 2000). That is why the coordination of these professionals is difficult: the maintenance of their difference is essential but too much distance could cause errors as the product moves between them. All in all, what is being produced is a progressive “profiling” of products that, through successive adjustment and iteration, ends up profiling both the demand and the consumer. This profiling which, when successful, results in the qualities of products corresponding exactly to those that consumers want, is concluded with consumers’ attachment to the goods they buy and consume: it is that particular bottle, that orange juice, that the customer in the supermarket prefers. This attachment to a singularized product cannot be disassociated from the configuration – through supply and demand – of an apparatus of distributed cognition in which information and references are spread out between many elements. The consumer’s preferences are tied into this apparatus. This is why they can be both stable and reconfigurable. Detachment and different attachment All attachment is constantly threatened. This mechanism is central in the question under consideration here. Competition between firms occurs precisely around this dialectic of attachment and detachment. Capturing or “attaching” consumers by “detaching” them from the networks built by rivals is the mainspring of competition. How does this form of detachment occur? Answer: by getting consumers to requalify the different products offered to them, that is, by repositioning products in such a way that it becomes visible to consumers, so that they are prompted to embark on a new effort at evaluation.24 One can speak of a calculative supply. But calculations do not simply concern prices and profits. They are mainly about products and their qualities. A fairly simple way of understanding how this requalification operates is by turning once again to the demand side and adapting March’s distinction between decision-making based on consequences (logics of consequences) and routine decision-making (logics of appropriateness) (March 1994). It would be a mistake to have to choose between two opposite conceptions of the economic agent in general and the consumer in particular. Agents who follow routines and those who calculate and decide on the basis of the consequences of their choices, both exist. Moreover, those same agents, for example supermarket customers, generally swing from one position to the next, rapidly and sequentially. Attached consumers are ones who are caught up in routines. They are driven by the distributed apparatus of qualification. The differences they perceive and the evaluations they make are stabilized, objectified. They buy goods, the qualities

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of which are familiar. They grade them and then use those scales. In the case of the supermarket, consumers functioning according to routines push their trolleys around, always use the same list, when they use one at all, and go from shelf to shelf, never hesitating on the choice of the products they buy. It is always the same information that is mobilized and treated by the collective to which they belong. Consumers engaged in the requalification process hesitate. They wonder what they should buy, are puzzled when faced with an impressive range of orange juices or when they notice a new product standing out among the others. How does this switch operate? How is the same consumer, caught until then in routines, turned into a decision-maker? This is where one needs to turn to the supply side and towards professionals of qualification. They constantly try to destabilize consumers, to extract them from routines and prompt them to re-evaluate the qualities of products, hoping that that requalification might be favourable to them. Cécile Méadel and Vololona Rabeharisoa take the example of an orange juice producer whose sales declined. To remedy the situation it decided to launch a product requalification project with the aim of changing the position of its products in the market. The origin of the oranges, the taste of the juice and its packaging (among other things) were changed. But customers still had to be informed of these changes. The strategy chosen, both simple and common, clearly illustrates the nature of the mechanisms at play in this switch. To the questions: “How to break the consumers’ attachment to their favourite brands? How to extract them from the routines they follow with a certain delight, and get them to grasp the bottle without thinking?” the solution devised by (re)qualification professionals offered an exemplary answer. The strategy consisted of reactivating the network in which customers were immersed by focusing, for example, initially on those consumers who were accompanied by their children. The idea was to attract the children’s attention by means of a prominent feature, for example a bottle offering a free Pokemon. The child would predictably detach herself from her father, pull him by the arm, force him to leave the routine he automatically followed, and put him in front of a product which, strictly speaking, he had not seen. A discussion between father and child would follow, which was likely to end in a purchase and, eventually, in attachment to a new brand. If the children’s network was effective, the new attachment would spread well beyond that single family unit. This scene, so ordinary and obvious, is instructive. By acting on the collective in which consumers are immersed, that is, by giving weight to children’s evaluation, the supplier is in a position to attach consumers after detaching them from another network in which they are caught. The orange juice proposed, one quality of which is perhaps the slightly sweeter taste, but which has, above all, a connection with the Pokemon network, has been differentiated and has attached a new consumer. This clearly illustrates the general mechanism we wish to describe. It is through a reconfiguration of the socio-cognitive apparatus (the new orange juice stands out on the shelf and modifies the circle of those with whom customers are to interact and deliberate in revising their preferences and finally ending up with new judgements and evaluations) that detachment and reattachment are effected.

40 Michel Callon, Cécile Méadel and Vololona Rabeharisoa In the economy of qualities, this struggle for attachment and detachment is at the heart of competition. It entails the collective (re)qualification of the products that become strategic variables. The positioning of products and the shaping of preferences are endogenous variables that agents manipulate and calculate.25 What we propose to show now is that the modalities of the organization it implies resemble those of the service economy as described by Jean Gadrey. Service activities as the basis of the economy of qualities Until now the validity of the subject of this chapter has been general. At no point did we raise the question of the distinction between material goods and service provision. The process of (re)qualification, whether it concerns an insurance contract, home care for the aged, a transport service, a fruit juice, a motor car or an apartment, follows the same logic. Forms of competition that are set up and centre around the struggle for attachment and detachment of customers to the goods offered to them likewise follow the same logic. Is it useful and of any interest, in these conditions, to revive problematic distinctions? Why not stick to the good– product twosome, rather than adding confusion by introducing criteria that flirt with metaphysics, like those of materiality or non-materiality of products? That could be a possible strategy. But it would have the drawback of overlooking the concerns of actors who talk increasingly about services or service relations, stressing the importance of users and the quality of the services offered. The service economy exists in reality, in official classifications and in the categories used by agents. Ignoring that would run counter to our aim which enjoins us to consider those agents as competent colleagues who know what they are saying and doing. It would also amount to not seeing that the economy of qualities, as defined above, easily encompasses what actors call service provision. What we would like to suggest hereafter is precisely that what we mean by the term service or service activity increasingly corresponds to forms of organization of markets in which the qualification of products is a central and constant concern. Perhaps the service economy is just another name given to the economy of qualities by the agents concerned and certain economists. To demonstrate this in rough terms, let us start with Jean Gadrey’s definition (Gadrey 2000). According to him, any purchase of services by an economic agent B (individual or organization) is a purchase from an organization A of the right to use, for a specified period, a technical or human capacity possessed by A to produce (on agent B or on the goods that agent possesses) useful effects that do not have the form of new economic entities. On the basis of this definition, Jean Gadrey suggests distinguishing three service logics: request for intervention, making available and show, the definitions of which can be summarized as follows: •

In the case of the logic of a request for intervention, B (for example the owner of a car) addresses a request for intervention to A who is the owner of a set of human and technical capacities (the garage or mechanics workshop) the mobilization of which will allow B’s demand to be satisfied.

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In the case of the logic of making available, B, based on a simple decision, uses a technico-human capacity which functions and which A makes available to B in mutually agreed conditions.26 Examples of such logics are transport, telephone and electricity. In the case of a show (or spectacle), B decides to attend, in conditions proposed by organization A or negotiated with it, a human performance (a play, an amusement park, a show on a river cruise, etc.) generally supported by technical devices.

The advantage of this definition, and of the resulting classification in three logics, is that it clearly demonstrates the link between service activities and the economy of qualities. The particular frame of the service relationship in which the service provision takes place has two consequences. First, it facilitates the setting up of the (reflexive) work through which the different agents engaged in the process pose and solve the problem of the singularization of products. Second, it facilitates the formulation and implementation of strategies aimed at managing consumers’ attachment to and detachment from the products offered to them. In his definition, Jean Gadrey introduces the key concept of socio-technical capacity. This socio-technical capacity consists in human competencies and material devices that have been designed and arranged in a way in which they can be mobilized in order to achieve desired results. In the request for intervention logic, it consists of a set of means for the purpose of investigation, control, maintenance and reparation, which combine instruments and machines but also specialized technicians who are mobilized in an organized way to produce the expected effects on B. In the making available logic, this technical capacity, often invisible to the user, may be considerable, as in the case of connection to an electricity, telecommunication or the domestic water supply network. B, by lifting her telephone receiver, opening a tap or switching on her washing machine, sets in motion a complex arrangement of humans and non-humans whose actions have been adjusted in relation to one another and prepared for mobilization at any time and at any point of access to the network. The property of that socio-technical capacity is sometimes shared between different owners. A car rental network makes available its vehicles, its rental sales agents, its agencies and its maintenance and insurance services, but also takes advantage of the road infrastructure (a public good) that will enable its customers to travel about. In the logic of show, the manager of a theatre or amusement park and the organizer of a pleasure cruise on the Seine group together a series of participants, each of whom plays a part in a script or scenario prepared in advance and the realization of which would be impossible without the engagement of material mediums participating actively in the show (the Seine and the boat are needed, as are the theatre, its stage and comfortable seats, the projector: each of these non-human entities contributes, in its own unique way, to the show) (Akrich 1992). In all these situations the beneficiary B acquires – and this is what the commercial transaction is about – a right to (specified) use of that socio-technical capacity. It is to repair B’s car that the garage is mobilized. It is to enable her to light her apartment

42 Michel Callon, Cécile Méadel and Vololona Rabeharisoa that the turbines generate electricity year after year, that agencies carefully monitor her consumption and that high-tension lines criss-cross the countryside. It is for the audience’s pleasure that the actress repeats her monologue for the hundredth time, that the usherette leads people to the seats they have reserved on the Internet, etc. Service provision consists in the effects produced by the mobilization and reasoned use of this socio-technical capacity. Thus defined, service provision is not radically different from other forms of goods placed on the market.27 But owing to the key importance it gives to the relationship between the socio-technical capacity (in the seller’s hands) and the customer (who uses it), it allows greater reflexivity on activities of qualification and singularization. What we have suggested calling a socio-technical device, a device that enables us to think of qualification in terms of distributed cognition, is in fact very similar to what J. Gadrey calls socio-technical capacity. In the case of service provision, this socio-technical device occupies a central place, for the success of the service depends on it directly and quasi-perceptibly. This can be expressed differently by emphasizing the fact that service provision, by allowing consumers to use this socio-technical capacity, organizes a system of action in which consumers participate personally in order to benefit from that use. In the course of the interaction thus constructed, they become elements in this system of action. They act, react and, most importantly, interact, thus gradually constructing and clarifying their preferences. Service provision is a machine (sometimes a machination) designed to reveal what customers want and progressively to construct the irreducible singularization of their demands along with their satisfaction. It is with the use of new information and communication technologies that this logic of singularization reaches its peak. Take the pragmatic case of the Internet user. When she goes onto the Web through a portal, the Internet user is faced with a distributed cognition device that, in every sense, is comparable to the one described when we presented a supermarket customer hesitating in the choice between several orange juices. She first chooses between different providers and then between the different services proposed by the chosen provider. Most of her activity will consist of qualifying (i.e. classifying, evaluating and judging) the products offered to her, by comparing and relating them to others. This qualification, the generality of which we discussed above, is even more present, in a purer form, in the case of the Internet. With information renewed on the screen, with links and cross-references, and with scroll menus that multiply options from which users can and must choose, the Internet is a machinery that is entirely oriented towards the singularization of products. Whether the user is visiting the site of a supermarket or Club Internet, this qualification takes place within a distributed cognition device. But, in the latter case, it takes place through programs whose only function is to provide and link information so that consumers are in a position to make choices. Not only do providers create and provide this system in which Internet users are immersed, they are also in a favourable position to monitor users, observe their preferences and, based on these observations, singularize the products offered to them. E-commerce companies hope to base their competitive lead on their ability constantly to observe customers making choices, linking products and

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showing their preferences. Since they are able to record customers’ previous purchases and their reactions to new offers, suppliers end up knowing as much as customers themselves do about what they want and expect. This shared knowledge, which evolves as new experiences accumulate, is based on consumers’ engagement in a socio-technical device with which they interact and evolve. In service provision, as defined by Gadrey, business is structured around this qualification process made possible by the establishment of the device and by the right granted to the customer to use it. From this point of view, new ICTs make an irreplaceable contribution. Between supermarket X and E-bay there is a difference not of nature but of degree. By mobilizing new ICTs, e-commerce makes the qualification and requalification of products the central concern in service provision.28 The work of attachment is an obsession explicitly shared by all the actors, including the end user. Paraphrasing La Boëtie, we could talk of consumers’ voluntary attachment to the products they qualify in close interaction with supply intermediaries, whether they are human or non-human. It is not by coincidence that, to describe these opportunities provided by e-commerce to qualify the userconsumer’s position, the two contradictory words “independence” and “dependence” are used: independence, because the Web multiplies openings, facilitates comparisons, etc.; dependence because it conversely promotes singularization and the attachments it allows.29 We could multiply examples and consider the logics of show and intervention in order to demonstrate that service provisions are always part of the economy of qualities, because they focus on socio-technical capacities or devices, and promote their mobilization by customers prompted to participate in the process of qualifying the products intended for them. This is just one way of saying, in a more precise form, that what is important in the service business is the relationship or, rather, system of relationships which, on a material and collective basis, organizes the qualification of products. The emblematic nature of services is increasing even further with the development of information networks and computer technology. The second characteristic of service provision, as defined by Jean Gadrey, is the character, both lasting and limited in time, of the consumer’s right to use the socio-technical device. This temporal framing facilitates the reasoned control and management of operations of attachment, detachment and re-attachment. It constitutes a sound base for the establishment of lasting relations, constantly reevaluated, between service provider and customer. Take the case of the car market. As Jean Gadrey points out, buying a car is fundamentally different from renting one.30 Of what does this difference consist? Obviously, of the consumer’s lesser attachment to the product he consumes. As the owner of his car he will have to make greater investments to detach himself than if he were simply renting the car. A weaker attachment enables him, moreover, to participate more actively (because more frequently and on the basis of more recent experiences) in the singularization of the product he buys. Seen from the service provider’s point of view, rental enables him to concentrate on qualification of the product and on its renegotiation to answer questions such as: what are observable uses? how do they evolve? in what kind of business is such or such a type of customer?

44 Michel Callon, Cécile Méadel and Vololona Rabeharisoa This example, which has a general value, shows that the joint advantage for consumer and supplier in establishing a lasting use of the socio-technical capacity, while setting a limit in time to the relationship, is that it allows the increasingly intense and profound qualification of products and the singularization they afford. This relationship simultaneously encourages agents to focus on the returns from ongoing experience and to take them into consideration when renewing the contract and the service. This collective work on the qualification of products and, consequently, on users’ attachment, implies consumers who are calculating rather than set in routines. This in itself implies a risk, for consumers with routines are unquestionably an advantage in the short term for the service provider: they remain attached, loyal, reliable. On the other hand, any attempt to experiment with what they want and hence to model their preferences is more difficult, if not impossible. In an economy where competition concerns the qualification of products (for the purpose of their singularization and the consumers’ attachment), a “routinized” consumer31 is a constant threat since interaction that has been interrupted can be taken up and reestablished by a rival, who will thus adopt a position to detach the consumer by giving him back his ability to calculate, in order to swing him, with his active and calculated participation, towards new attachments. The paradox is clear. In the economy of qualities it is preferable for the service provider to cooperate with the consumer and therefore to deal with a calculating consumer, at least on a regular basis without long intervals in-between. This is possible only by limiting the periods of routine attachment and by constantly calling into question the singularization of products proposed in order to launch new negotiations and adjustments of their (re)qualification. Service provision, as defined by Jean Gadrey, facilitates the detailed and regular management of this delicate balance between attachment and detachment. The right to use socio-technical capacities belonging to the service provider, for a limited period of time: this definition describes a frame that allows compatibility and complementarity between the entanglement of personal relations (and the collective deliberations they allow), on the one hand, and the possibility for agents to get out of these relations, to detach themselves in order to evaluate the advantages of new attachments, on the other.

Conclusion The organization of economic markets and the formulation of their rules of functioning are an increasingly explicit issue not only for social scientists and political decision-makers but also for economic agents themselves. The upsurge of this reflexive activity is reflected in particular in the emergence of what we have suggested calling the economy of qualities. In this economy, inhabited by actors who are real professionals in product qualification and the profiling of goods, consumers are constantly prompted to question their preferences and tastes and, finally, through the explicit debates that that implies, their own social identity. As the anthropology of consumption has so clearly shown, classifying products,

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positioning them and evaluating them inevitably leads to the classification of the people attached to those goods. Consumption becomes both more rational (not that the consumer is more rational but because (distributed) cognition devices become infinitely richer, more sophisticated and reflexive) and more emotional (consumers are constantly referred to the construction of their social identity since their choices and preferences become objects of deliberation: the distinction of products and social distinction are part of the same movement). As for suppliers, one of their main concerns is to facilitate and organize to their own advantage this process of (re)qualification. The functioning of the economy of qualities involves the establishment of forms of organization that facilitate the intensification of collaboration between supply and demand in a way that enables consumers to participate actively in the qualification of products. The establishment of distributed cognition devices, intended to organize real-life experiments on preferences, tends to blur habitual distinctions between production, distribution and consumption. Design, as an activity that crosses through the entire organization, becomes central: the firm organizes itself to make the dynamic process of qualification and requalification of products possible and manageable. In the economy of qualities, competition turns around the attachment of consumers to products whose qualities have progressively been defined with their active participation. The dynamic of reflexive attachment implies consumers who are calculating, that is, capable of perceiving differences and grading them, and who are accompanied and supported in this evaluation and judgement by suppliers and their intermediaries. Competition between firms plays on the formatting of socio-technical devices which, distributing and redistributing the material bases of cognition, format the bases of calculation and preferences. We have suggested that the economy of services, especially where new ICTs are involved, is emblematic of this economy of qualities. It is reflected in forms of organization and competition that encourage reflexive behaviours in actors, especially those relating to the qualification of goods. The beneficiary and service provider cooperate closely in the singularization of the services proposed. To be sure, the modalities of this cooperation differ, depending on the logic. In the logic of intervention, the consumer adjusts to the socio-technical device whereas in the logic of making available it is the device that goes to the user. In the logic of representation the two meet each other half-way, so that forms of life and emotions are shared. Having the user at one’s place, being at his place, or building a place to be with him: in all three cases, the economy of goods gives way to an economy of relations. It has been possible to demonstrate the emergence and diffusion of the economy of qualities, and to suggest the existence of a link between this economy of qualities and what is commonly called the service economy, owing to a frame of analysis that can be traced back to Chamberlin and sociological and anthropological work on markets. This dual detour has led to the observation that it is possible to bring together the preoccupations of actors who, in the economy of qualities, devote a large part of their resources and cognitive capacities to the qualification of goods,

46 Michel Callon, Cécile Méadel and Vololona Rabeharisoa on the one hand, and questions that certain economists and sociologists ask, on the other. This link attests to the reflexive dimension of the economy of qualities. Once established, it should promote the constitution of hybrid forums capable of holding debates on the organization of markets, that have become all the more open both to debate and governance, that they deliberately inscribe themselves in a service economy that uses new ICTs on a massive scale.32

Notes 1 C. Smith gives the example of e-commerce where the organization of auctions is constantly the object of debates, experiments and evaluations. These markets are highly reflexive (see also Giddens 1998). 2 The issues debated are, for example, the granting of property rights, the setting of prices, the organization of competition, the regulation of international trade and the modalities of intervention by public authorities. 3 As, for example, questions of national independence and sovereignty or of social equity. 4 The organization of markets and ethical considerations cannot be dissociated in the case of biotechnologies. Can human organs be transformed into merchandise and, if so, under what conditions? Should the cloning and commercialization of secondary products be allowed? Should genetic tests be allowed as a condition for insurance contracts? 5 Here again, biotechnology multiplies subjects of controversy such as, for example, those on the conditions of gene patentability. 6 Socio-technical controversies analysed by science studies more and more frequently include the subject of markets, for non-human entities constantly flow over established frames, producing externalities that have to be taken into account. By crossing the barriers of species, do prions connect two markets, that of beef and that of aquaculture salmon, previously considered to be separate? What protocol should be chosen to establish incontestable figures for the impact of greenhouse gases on global warming or to calculate possible penalties? 7 When talking of the social acceptability of technologies, one has to include social technologies and talk of the social acceptability not of markets in general but of a particular form of market. 8 The social sciences, like the other sciences and perhaps even more than them, are performative. They contribute to the existence of the realities they describe. Being aware of this performative dimension implies a reflexivity that should lead specialists to agree to collaborate with the actors themselves. 9 The aggregation of demand is not a theoretical problem; it is above all a practical problem that has to be solved by economic agents. The solutions devised are multiple. For a suggestive analysis, see Salais and Storper (1993). 10 Apart from Chamberlin and White (1981), very few authors have considered the products of their qualification as strategic variables for economic agents. We note, however, the significant and original contributions of the French school and especially of Salais (Salais and Storper 1993), Eymard-Duvernay (1994) and Thévenot (1989). 11 In his introduction to The Laws of the Markets, Michel Callon emphasized the performative role of the economic sciences, going so far as to say that “economic activities are embedded in economics” (Callon 1998). This expression should not be misunderstood. Two observations warrant attention. First, economics as a discipline is not alone in accomplishing this performing and framing. It is helped by other disciplines in the social sciences but also, and above all, by the actors themselves and especially by professionals of the market (marketing specialists, accountants, managers, etc.) who readily mobilize lasting material devices to make these frames irreversible.

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14 15 16

17

18

19

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(As Weber remarked, there could be no possible encounter between supply and demand without technical and material arrangements such as the supermarket with its shelves and tills, etc.) Second, the role played by economics as a discipline increases along with hybrid forums within which the organization of markets is debated, and which supply a vast audience for specialists who were previously more or less in the background. Economic agents have re-appropriated this concept which had disappeared from the vocabulary of political economics. In the service sector today engineers and sales people frequently talk of use values as opposed to utility. The incommensurability of goods (as in the classical example of butter and cannons or in that of wine and canvas between which the agents in economics textbooks establish necessarily random preferences) is an outcome of the classifications themselves. In reality, it is by a series of small gaps, tiny shifts, that, starting with a given category of goods, we end up with one or more radically different categories. In its great wisdom, economic theory leaves agents to answer the question by introducing concepts such as that of crossed elasticity. As we shall see below, not all the properties of products are necessarily obtained in metrological networks. For a subtle analysis of the different mechanisms, see Bessy and Chateauraynaud (1995). One of the advantages of this definition is that it enables us to apply the same analysis to the production of “bads” – the name traditionally given to “goods” that produce negative externalities. Economic theory distinguishes between markets where agents are “price takers” and those where they are “price makers”. This distinction could, and should, be extended to products by contrasting markets where agents are “product takers” and markets where they are “product makers”. H. White is one of the only authors to have followed the programme thus outlined by Chamberlin. This programme jettisons the two concepts of monopoly and competition which, as ideal types, are simply useless and even result in a profound lack of comprehension of the functioning of real markets. Chamberlin synthesizes his demonstration as follows: “Price adjustments are, in fact, but one phase, and often a relatively unimportant phase, of the whole competitive process … The fact of such competition should at least be brought into the open by including the ‘product’ as a variable in the problem … For a complete picture, indeed, each element of the ‘product’ should be regarded as a separate variable” (Chamberlin 1946: 73). It is interesting to note that, in Annex C to his book, Chamberlin discusses at length the seminal article by Hotelling (1929) in which that author lays the foundations of an economy of quality (products differ according to a variable which is the seller’s location). We borrow the concept of singularization from L. Karpik (1989). It is preferable to the more common one of personalization or customization, for it maintains the unity of a process which concerns goods and agents in such a way that they cannot be dissociated. Yet the economy of quality studied by L. Karpik tends to prefer configurations in which the main issue is the quality of products (e.g. a lawyer’s or teacher’s service). By choosing to talk of an economy of qualities, we consider the most general case in which it is the (necessarily multidimensional) qualification of products and especially of processes of their (re)qualification that are the key issue. This enables us to include all productive operations in the analysis without neglecting forms of competition. For an exhaustive review of the literature on preferences, see F. Cochoy (2002). He shows the limits of the classical approaches of Samuelson, of Sen, of Ackerloff and of Lancaster, and highlights the importance of situations in which the qualities of products are variables and their characterization is dynamic. A cogent demonstration of this was done by C. Smith in his work on public auctions (Smith 1989).

48 Michel Callon, Cécile Méadel and Vololona Rabeharisoa 21 As he shows, this situation is only a particular case of a more general paradox, studied for a long time: that of Buridan’s donkey. 22 One of the emblematic forms of this life-size experimental work is that of supermarkets, from every point of view identical to ordinary supermarkets but transformed into real laboratories in which a number of parameters can be varied and in which customers’ behaviours are observed in detail. 23 The definition of a good as a “bundle of characteristics” is very valuable, for it establishes no ranking of characteristics. 24 The consumer in question is not necessarily the final user. The process of (re)qualification involves many stages. At some of those stages markets may be organized, binding a supply and a demand around the good thus defined. 25 The concept of calculation must be understood here very generally, as proposed by Michel Callon in The Laws of the Markets. Calculating implies: a) that different options are open; b) that conceivable decisions are known, and c) that it is possible to associate each decision with the realization of a particular option. As shown, these situations imply framing. It is easy to check whether distributed cognition devices, considered above, produce such frames. Saying that markets are reflexive is obviously not asserting that agents are calculating (they are always calculating to some degree, but in different ways); it is emphasizing the fact that the design and implementation of framing devices become key concerns for the different agents involved. 26 Again according to Gadrey: “the conventions and contracts corresponding to them consider in general: a) that A is responsible for the smooth functioning of the capacity in question, according to prevailing standards, and b) that B must use these capacities well. In terms of property law he does not have the right to use and abuse them as he feels fit”. 27 Gadrey shows, however, that there are economic differences between the purchase of socio-technical capacities and the purchase of their use (modalities of appropriation, storage, evaluation of production and of performance, etc.). 28 Qualification is at the heart of the customer’s strolling around in a supermarket, along the rows of shelves. With the Internet and e-commerce, it becomes the very matter of market relations. E-consumers scroll menus and supermarket clients stroll around in alleys. 29 In the case of the Web, these attachments are inscribed in navigation software which proposes bookmarks but also favourites to go to. 30 Between these two eventualities there exists a whole series of intermediate situations. For example, contracts can be drawn up in which the user is not the owner but may become the owner after a predetermined number of years. Clauses can also be added which provide for replacement cars in case of breakdowns or maintenance. The product becomes more complex; it becomes a “bundle of qualities” that allow singularizations and differentiations ad libitum. 31 N. Thomas says “entangled” (Thomas 1991). On the relationship between entanglement and disentanglement (calculation), see Callon (1998). 32 This chapter was first published as ‘L’économie des qualités’, Politix, 52, 2000, 211– 39.

References Akrich, M. (1992) ‘The de-scription of technical objects’, in W. Bijker and J. Law (eds) Shaping Technology/Building Society. Studies in Sociotechnical Change, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 205–24. Appadurai, A. (1986) The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Barrey, S., F. Cochoy, and S. Dubuisson (2000) ‘Designer, packager et merchandiser: trois professionnels pour une même scène marchande’, Sociologie du Travail 42(3 Numéro spécial: les professionnels du marché), 457–82. Bessy, C. and F. Chateauraynaud (1995) Experts et faussaires. Pour une sociologie de la perception, Paris: Métailié. Callon, M. (ed.) (1998) The Laws of the Markets, Oxford: Blackwell. Callon, M., P. Lascoumes and Y. Barthe (2001) De la démocratie technique, Paris: Le Seuil. Chamberlin, E.H. (1946) The Theory of Monopolistic Competition: A Reorientation of The theory of Value (5th edn), Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cochoy, F. (1998) ‘Another discipline for the market economy: marketing as a performative knowledge and know-how for capitalism’, in M. Callon (ed.) The Laws of the Markets, Oxford: Blackwell, 194–221. Cochoy, F. (2002) Une sociologie du packaging ou l’âne de Buridan face au marché, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Dumez, H. and A. Jeunemaître (1998) ‘The unlikely encounter between economics and a market: the case of cement industry’, in M. Callon (ed.) The Laws of the Markets, Oxford: Blackwell, 222–243. Eymard-Duvernay, F. (1994) ‘Coordination des échanges par l’entreprise et qualité des biens’, in A. Orléan (ed.) Analyse économique des conventions, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Gadrey, J. (2000) ‘The characterization of goods and services: an alternative approach’, Review of Income and Wealth, 46 (3, September), 369–87. Gao, B. (1998) ‘Efficiency, culture, and politics: the transformation of Japanese management in 1946–1966’, in M. Callon (ed.) The Laws of the Markets, Oxford: Blackwell, 86–115. Giddens, A. (1998) The Third Way, Oxford: Blackwell. Hatchuel, A. (1995) ‘Les marchés à prescripteurs’, in A. Jacob and H. Warin (eds) L’inscription sociale du marché, Paris: L’Harmattan, 223–4. Hotelling, H. (1929) ‘Stability in competition’, Economic Journal, 39(41), 41–57. Hutchins, E. (1995) Cognition in the Wild, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Karpik, L. (1989) ‘L’Economie de la qualité’, Revue Française de Sociologie, 30: 187–210. Mallard, A. (1996) ‘Les instruments dans la coordination de l’action’, Thèse: Ecole des Mines de Paris. Mallard, A. (2000) ‘La presse de consommation et le marché. Enquête sur le tiersconsumériste’, Sociologie du Travail, 42 (3 Numéro spécial: les professionnels du marché), 391–411. March, J. G. (1994) A Primer on Decision Making: How Decisions Happen, New York: Free Press. Méadel, C. and V. Rabeharisoa (1999) ‘Consommateurs et produits alimentaires: la construction des ajustements’, Partie II: Le consommateur mis en bouteille. L’équipée de Pampryl et Bangua, Paris: Centre de Sociologie de l’Innovation. Méadel, C. and V. Rabeharisoa (2001) ‘Taste as a form of adjustment between food and consumers’, in R. Coombs, K. Green, A. Richards and V. Walsh (eds) Demand, Markets, Users and Innovation, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 234–53. Miller, P. (1998) ‘The margins of accounting’, in M. Callon (ed.) The Laws of the Markets, Oxford: Blackwell, 174–93. Salais, R. and M. Storper (1993) Les mondes de production, Paris: Editions de l’EHESS. Smith, C.W. (1989) Auctions: the Social Construction of Value, New York: Free Press. Smith, C.W. (2000) ‘Understanding real markets: confronting old fallacies, emerging possibilities and imminent challenges’, unpublished manuscript.

50 Michel Callon, Cécile Méadel and Vololona Rabeharisoa Teil, G. (1998) ‘Devenir expert aromaticien: y a-t-il une place pour le goût dans les goûts alimentaires’, Sociologie du Travail, XL(4), 503–22. Thévenot, L. (1989) ‘Equilibre et rationalité dans un univers complexe’, Revue Economique, 2, 147–97. Thévenot, L. (1993) Essais sur les objets usuels. Propriétés, fonctions, usages. Les objets dans l’action. De la maison au laboratoire. Raisons Pratiques n°4. Paris, Editions de l’EHESS, 85–111. Thomas, N. (1991) Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture and Colonialism in the Pacific, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Tirole, J. (1989) The Theory of Industrial Organization, Cambridge: MIT Press. White, H. (1981) ‘Where do markets come from?’, American Journal of Sociology, 87, 517–47.

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From calculation to alienation Disentangling economic abstractions Don Slater

Introduction The sociology and anthropology of economic life keep threatening to dissolve a tension that seems both necessary and yet very difficult to sustain: how can we talk about ‘markets’, or ‘the economic’, in any meaningful sense when we have resolved their key elements into processes of social and cultural construction? The problem is, first, one of a double abstraction: there is the false abstraction of economic formalism but there is also the real abstraction of economic processes. Critique the former and one might miss the latter; formulate the latter wrongly and one is likely to make a return to economic formalism. Second, this tension is refracted through methodological divisions between, on the one hand, an ethnographic particularism that focuses on the diversity, contingency and emergence of local organizations of exchange and therefore treats economic categories, such as ‘markets’ as at best useful abstractions; and, on the other hand, macro-formulations (such as political economy) which accord these categories both reality and explanatory power. The problem (which in many respects is a rerun of the formalism versus substantivism debates) is that the critique of economic formalism partly depends on arguing that economic abstraction is not an actual fact of contemporary life. If economic relations really have become abstract, we need to acknowledge that markets have a systemic character that cannot be reduced to the broader social relations in which they may be embedded. Michel Callon’s work – particularly as it has been received in much Anglo-American economic sociology – seems poised at precisely this point. Some would charge that he has already slid too far down the formalist slope, that he concedes far too much to economic models of rational calculation, which appear as the point of departure for the entire analysis as well as the endstate that is to be explained. The central question Callon poses could be taken to be: ‘how is the formally rational behaviour (“calculativeness”) described by neoclassical economics actually achieved?’, whereas the focal point of economic sociology and anthropology has been a denial that they have ever existed or ever could exist.

52 Don Slater This chapter is an attempt to negotiate this tension between economy and culture, the abstract and the substantive. The first part of the chapter argues, against more culturalist positions, that it is valid to distinguish markets from other modes of exchange according to a formal property. In order to articulate the more culturalist side of the story, the discussion starts with Daniel Miller’s (2002) critique of Callon, and particularly his hypothetical example of a highly culturally entangled market event. The conclusion of this discussion will be that what is crucial to market exchange is the way in which these increasing entanglements become the objects of instrumental rationality. This is because the fundamental defining feature of a market is a kind of transaction rather than a purified form of calculation: the ‘alienation’ of goods in the form of property, which entails limits on the kind of social relationship formed between transactors. Callon’s framework is most successful when it focuses on the mechanisms through which these limits are established and contested. However, it is less successful when it tries to specify markets in terms of a mode of calculation. Although Callon explicitly emphasizes diversity in the kinds of calculativeness and market structures that emerge, it is arguable that he does not capture sufficient diversity or the right kinds of diversity. Hence the second part of this chapter explores ambiguity and contradiction within and between modes of calculating, partly drawing on Callon’s dialectic of framing and overflowing, and specifically considers cultural calculation in marketing and advertising.

Sophie and the salesman Let us start with a powerful image developed by Daniel Miller (2002) in an earlier critique of Callon’s perspective, that of Sophie and the car salesman. Sophie is buying a car, and Miller asks if Sophie’s process of choosing a car, and the salesman’s actions in selling to her, can be regarded in terms of ‘disentanglement’. Miller builds up a very plausible picture of the entanglement of both object and transaction in a broad material culture and social context: the appearance, function, price and every other attribute of the car mean something to Sophie in terms of such things as her recent divorce, single motherhood, being a professional woman and so on. Far from being a moment of disentanglement, Miller describes the car purchase as a moment of ‘aesthetic totalization’ – a wide range of values are brought into correlation with each other so that Sophie comes to her decision through a process of increasing entanglement. At the same time, the other market actor – the salesman – equally pushes towards totalization rather than disentanglement. For a start, his economic behaviour is embedded in his own complex world of family, colleagues and corporation. But, more than this, he aims at an increasing entanglement of the car in the meanings that make up Sophie’s world. Both he and the huge corporate sales drive that stands behind him aim to produce a ‘car’ (in the widest cultural sense of the term) that is already so entangled in her aesthetic, functional, relational, rational world that it is in some sense already Sophie’s car. The most telling line is: ‘The problem is whether business could ever be entangled enough to reflect the totalizing acts of the purchase.’

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The disagreement between Callon and Miller is not over whether there is a diversity of forms of markets and of calculation. Callon is very clear that, although ‘homo economicus really does exist’ (Callon 1998: 51), this figure takes many forms and the task is to find the different devices that produce them. However, while Callon and Miller agree on diversity, for Callon it is a diversity of forms of ‘calculativeness’, a kind of performance that emerges from different mechanisms of disentanglement, all of which Miller denies. Callon’s market diversity is produced by contention over the institutional delineation of frames which mark out what is relevant or not to specifically economic calculation; the specific character of that calculation – however various its ‘content’ in particular cases – involves actors who pursue their interests, resolved through prices, by assessing and ranking resources and goals. For Miller, this disentangled notion of calculation owes more to the economists than to the real diversity of economic life. On proper ethnographic investigation, any actual piece of market behaviour dissolves the separations that economists (and Callon) are focused upon; the result is a diversity of calculation, but certainly not a diversity of specifically economic calculation. Moreover, Miller seems willing to accept the consequence of this line of thought, that if disentanglement does not actually occur, then ‘markets’ and ‘economic calculation’ as general social types simply do not exist, or we cannot identify them in any analytically useful way. At one level, which has been particularly well explored within anthropology, Miller is correct: attempts to characterize either modern markets or a modern economic order (capitalism) in terms of a purified mode of calculation have largely failed. Supposedly non-market forms of exchange such as gifting involve highly complex modes of calculation, including abstracting quantifications such as the timing of events and the interpretation of relative magnitudes (Bourdieu 1989). Commodity exchange is always intermixed or hybrid. Second, we cannot distinguish socio-historical formations by the complete dominance of particular modes of exchange. It is untenable to argue that in contemporary life, as opposed to something called traditional society, all forms of exchange other than a pure market type have been either eradicated or subordinated. In the course of a single day we enter into an immensely wide variety of exchange relationships, with complex relations between them (Carrier 1994; Carrier and Miller 1998; Slater and Tonkiss 2001). Let us accept for the moment that, first, Miller’s hypothetical example is a plausible one, which Callon needs to accommodate; and, second, that it suggests that Callon is employing an overly restrictive notion of calculation. Is there a way of reformulating Callon’s position that retains its analysis of markets as formatting economic behaviour but without identifying markets with a particular form of calculation? Indeed, there is an earlier step in Callon’s argument that identifies contemporary exchange and distinguishes it from gift exchange – as many anthropologists would – in terms of a kind of transaction rather than any one kind of calculation. Callon begins with the anthropologist Nicholas Thomas (1991), who originally provided the terminology of entanglement and disentanglement. In this formulation, what distinguishes market transactions from non-market transactions

54 Don Slater is alienation, rather than calculation. Market exchange is commodity exchange. It presumes a form of property right in which a transfer of ownership ends all claims of the previous owner: the object is thoroughly alienated. When we finish the transaction, we are quits. As opposed to gifting, commodity exchange does not aim to perpetuate a social bond between buyer and seller but, indeed, to get it over with as quickly and cheaply as possible. It certainly aims to repeat the procedure in large aggregate numbers (repeat sales, customers who come back for more and are described as ‘loyal’) but not in order to sustain some broader social connection beyond the immediate market transaction. Let us go back to Sophie and the salesman. Miller’s description is completely plausible. Her market calculations can include as relevant a vast range of considerations and entanglements that are officially excluded both by economic theory and indeed by the devices described by Callon (policy, law, architecture, metrologies). Moreover, as Miller has explored elsewhere (Miller 1998), her market behaviour may appear more like gifting in that her shopping and buying behaviour is constructed to reproduce substantive social relationships (she may enact love and care for her family through an act of shopping as through an act of giving, and, conversely, acts of shopping need to be contextualized through consumption into a meaningful social life). But this is not what defines the act of exchange. When the shop assistant hands over the goods, the shop has no further claim on them. It cannot go back on the sale, and cannot appeal to any wider context of obligation save that which has been internalized through contract or law. In fact, the whole history of consumer rights, for example, is about writing some longer obligation and hence relationship into the transaction: internalizing what is otherwise external, stretching the moment of exchange across a longer temporal statute of limitations. If we take this step backwards from ‘calculativeness’ to alienated transactions, we might want to understand the market situation in terms of Weberian rationalization rather the existence or not of homo economicus. The individualization of objects, actors and exchanges establishes a stable and reliable context in which objects and obligations are clearly mapped out and can be intersubjectively recognized. The stability of legal entities and frameworks allows for reliable and predictable encounters, and in this much broader sense allows ‘calculation’: if I go to court over a contract, I want to believe that the upshot will be non-arbitrary and impersonal, hence calculable in the sense that I can assess my chances of success. The issue, then, is broader than the question of formal price rationality. This kind of transaction clearly requires the kind of separative technology that Callon describes: it presumes individuated objects that can be materially and conceptually disentangled from their context as discrete and transactable things, items that can be passed from one context to another as property. It presumes buyers and sellers as individual socio-legal entities, such that property has a clear initial and final owner. And it presumes that each transaction is separated from others in terms of the obligations of the transactors. This has to be accomplished through a social technology of framing and individuating, but it does not necessarily presume that the upshot is pristine formal calculation, and it need not identify calculation with quantitative calculation. Most importantly it does not assume that for the actors the

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object loses its meaning or cultural connection in the process of exchange, only that this particular piece of matter can indeed be transferred to someone else’s ownership. Callon’s externality argument is about one aspect and consequence of this individuating technology. The concepts of framing and externality identify the limits of a transaction by identifying consequences and liabilities. What responsibilities or consequences should be registered within individual exchanges? Where should the obligations incurred in that exchange end? This involves identifying and measuring agents and processes, and therefore involves forms of knowledge, among which Callon is particularly concerned with technical expertise (but there are many others that we need to consider). This entire issue arises solely because private property detaches parties to an individual exchange from any sense of obligation beyond the immediate transaction. It is through the cut-off represented by externality, the limits that are imposed on obligation, that what we recognize as the economic is accomplished. What Callon has really helped us see is that these limits, this cut-off, is a matter of considerable negotiation, and that to understand the boundaries of markets and market behaviours we need to attend to the fuzziness, instability, negotiability of these limits. Market exchange might be characterized by the fact that at the end of a transaction ‘we are quits’, but the externalities argument indicates how difficult it can be to agree on when we are quits.

Transacting strangers However, there is another aspect of alienation which Callon tends to summarize in terms of market exchange as ‘transactions between strangers’. This way of putting things apparently contradicts much that contemporary economic sociology and anthropology has tried to establish: that modern markets are embedded in enduring networks, moral frameworks and chains of transaction. These factors belie the notion that economies can be understood in terms of individual exchanges between individual strangers. However, although the term ‘strangers’ is not entirely helpful (simply because transactors might know each other very well over time), Callon’s underlying point is crucial: in gifting, the act of exchange is inseparably the reproduction of the social relationship in which it is embedded. In the mundane process of putting food on the table, I am reproducing family relationships, roles and obligations. Sophie and the salesman, on the other hand, insofar as they are engaged in a market transaction, reproduce no social roles other than that of buyer and seller. Sophie will very definitely reproduce far more aspects of her life through the process of consumption, and that will have informed her process of shopping – precisely as Miller depicts it – but not in the exchange itself. It is in this sense that Sophie and the salesman are strangers. This has huge consequences for the way in which Sophie’s and the salesman’s entanglements relate to the transaction. It may well be the case that the salesman needs to understand Sophie’s world in great detail, and even that he is a better salesman to the extent that his understanding is more profound. This may even result in significant gains to Sophie (for example, a better choice of car) as well

56 Don Slater as to company profits and his own commissions. But there is no sense in which the salesman – in order to complete the transaction – must share Sophie’s world, or agree with it, respect it, treat it as an end in itself. It is merely a condition of sale; Marx would have said that it was the presence of use-value that is necessary in order to realize exchange value. The relationship between Sophie and the salesman is an instrumental one, and it is technical rationality – rather than quantification – that needs to be at the centre of defining ‘calculativeness’ in markets. The structure of the transaction involves an instrumentality which can take very wide and blurred forms and which allows for the market to be the site of quite mixed calculations. This objectification of the lifeworld of the other is quite compatible with core claims of economic sociology. As market transactors, Sophie and the salesman are involved in reproducing their buyer and seller roles, and these require a moral framework, a non-contractual basis for contract (e.g. a sense of just price or of ethical obligations). Therefore, Sophie and the salesman do share an ethical order, but they need share only one that applies to the transaction; the transaction as such does not require any wider moral bond, or one that links the market transaction to other ways in which they might be socially connected to each other. Except that, as Callon argues, the limits of each transaction (and therefore the limits of their shared ethical framework) involves ethical, political and cognitive contestation. These limits are not only fuzzy, but establishing them involves reaching ever outwards from the market to wider social technologies and institutions. This is precisely where framing and externality come in: decisions have to be taken and institutionalized as to what is formally to be included within the notion of a market transaction. For example, consumer laws that enforce after-sales service, or return of goods, or corporate liability are precisely points at which the ethical framework which Sophie and the salesman share specifically as market actors is negotiated in ethico-legal terms. The entire point of this kind of framing is that it is completely compatible with (and necessary to) an essentially instrumental relationship between strangers rather than the reproduction of other social identities. They are the object of technologies which isolate them and their world as strangers within a strategic relationship. Moreover, this is quite compatible with seeing market exchange as having blurred boundaries with networks and more enduring trade relationships over time: in such cases, a key issue is precisely the relationship between individual transactions and longer-term commitment, and how this is to be consensually framed and formalized. Miller would like to dissolve the market into broader social entanglements on the grounds that the purified modes of calculability that Callon describes simply do not exist. I am arguing rather that there really is such a thing as a market (however multi-form) because there is such a thing as commodity exchange which is characterized by specific forms of property right. This form of contract means that exchange is disembedded in seriously consequential ways. It does not mean that objects and people become formal and abstract as in homo economicus, but it does mean that their substantive nature, their ‘entangledness’, becomes the object

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of instrumental calculation. Sophie and her salesman are certainly entangled in complex social worlds; they just are not the same worlds, and each wants to get the most out of the other’s.

Market actors: framing and ambiguity If we shift the focus within Callon’s own work away from ‘calculativeness’ and concentrate instead on his concepts of framing and disentanglement, we can concentrate on the most fundamental framing (property and ownership) without presuming any specific form of calculation. This would seem to be in accord with the underlying thrust of Callon’s own notion of framing. It concerns the structure of a type of transaction, how it is individualized (insulated and limited) as an event, and what is formally to be included in any individual transaction. At the same time, it characterizes that type of transaction in terms of a process (disentanglement) which does not cut economy from society, but rather renders understandings of social relationships central to the way in which market borders are identified. By the very same token, it renders them unstable, negotiable, sites of conflict. This would seem a long way from the position that ‘homo economicus really does exist’. The implication of Callon’s notion of market instability is that social actors are as involved in disputing the boundaries and identities of markets as they are in operating within them. If that is the case, then an economic actor has to be seen simultaneously as within and without the market frame, as one who is able to calculate in specific ways, but who is also engaged in the framing process itself. And if actors do not take these market boundaries as given frames, rationally calculating within them, then they cannot be neo-classical economic actors. In Callon’s account, there are two particular features through which this theme might be pursued: ‘overflowing’ and reflexivity. Actors and objects remain connected with networks ‘outside’ the economic frame, therefore remaining potentially open to questions about its boundaries and potentially aware of those boundaries as actively produced and enforced. Callon tends to explore these features in relation to ‘hot’ conflicts (and largely in order to assess the role of scientific and social scientific expertise in constructing markets). In the present discussion, however, they might lead us to think about mundane, ordinary market experiences: perhaps ‘calculativeness’ is more various and ambiguous in everyday market behaviour than is allowed by the notion that ‘networks configure ontologies’; perhaps some of the ‘totalization’ described by Miller can be accommodated within Callon’s framework. I should like to pursue the implications of this aspect of Callon’s work by taking up three issues which particularly concern the relationship between markets and culture: ‘disembeddedness’ and the ambiguity of framings; economics as culture and as ideology; and marketing and cultural calculation. Each issue points to more diverse, contradictory and ambiguous forms of calculation than those which Callon usually cites.

58 Don Slater ‘Disembedding’ and ‘disentangling’ The first section of this chapter approached the notion of calculativeness by a different route, that of commodities, alienation and therefore instrumental rationality, the process by which one lifeworld becomes the object of calculation to another, a possibility which is premised on the sharp separation or disentanglement that arises when transactions are framed in terms of limited property rights. What makes markets specific, and different from the moral totalization of other forms of exchange, is that the meanings in which the object is entangled are moral for the other in a transaction, but not for me. As Miller in fact puts it, ‘Much of commerce consists of each player trying to second guess the entanglements of the other. How can we sell the car as though it was already part of the purchaser’s life?’ The transactors and objects come to the transaction absolutely steeped in meaning. They never lose their meanings in the sense of being abstracted formally and quantitatively; but they are framed in a way that is quite different from much of the rest of social life. It might help here to distinguish sharply between ‘disembedding’ and ‘disentangling’. As Jessop argues, ‘disembedding’ has been bound up with Polanyi’s macro-sociological argument about the relation of economy to culture and the extent to which modern economy can be properly treated as an autonomous object of analysis. Callon is clearly critical of Polanyi, citing him as an example of a ‘social context’ approach to explaining the emergence of economic forms. In the embedding/disembedding argument, society appears as a container or framework that assigns a particular location to the economic, and is therefore capable of separating out culture and economy in a global way. ‘Disentanglement’ is quite different. It is frankly dialectical, and this dialectic is played out, with only temporary stabilization, without cease: framing ‘extricates’ (Callon 1998: 253) agents and entities from the networks of interaction in which they have achieved some kind of social existence, in order to ‘push them onto a clearly demarcated “stage” ’. However, like a prop or actor placed on a theatrical stage, these entities retain their links with the outside world (as do all the actors, or audiences); indeed, to continue the theatrical metaphor, it is hard to see how any entity could continue to be meaningful on the stage or in the market without continuing to draw on its ‘cultural’ meanings. This goes for the objects that are transacted as well as the transactors who, Callon argues, never cease to be simultaneously involved in other worlds, outside the frame. Disentanglement, therefore, does not signify the disembedding of economy in the sense of a separation of economy from culture; it is rather a reframing of culturally meaningful items that never cease to draw on their ‘external’ meanings. Indeed, as argued further below, acts of framing and disentanglement necessarily involve cultural knowledge, and actually bring cultural issues into the heart of economic action. Callon explores the ways in which this dialectic renders market boundaries permanently unstable. However, it would seem that this entire analysis is also an argument for the impurity of market calculation, rather than its purity and abstraction. We might expect to find quite heterogeneous and contradictory

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considerations brought to bear within the market frame, as individual actors and objects operate across its borders. Hence, on the one hand, the market frame looks more like a set of official and unofficial rules and regulations as to what is admissible in interactions, and less like a uniform patterning of what cognitive resources and considerations people actually bring to bear when they are, say, shopping or buying. I know that there is no point in haggling with the cashier at the supermarket (I know enough about the regulatory structure of modern retailing to know that there is no point), but that does not stop me from importing such notions as just price in to my own calculations. At the same time, we can put this more strongly: the impurity of actors, objects and calculations is a crucial strategic tool for market actors themselves, all of whom have as much interest in destabilizing markets as in stabilizing them (Slater 2003). Framings are political and strategic battlelines – over liabilities, profits, ethical and political interests. Callon’s examples of technical disputes, in which knowledge claims can be adjudicated by identifying and quantifying causal relations, are only a special case. If we turn instead to advertising and marketing, for example, as we shall below, we find that these entire practices are constituted by the project of destabilizing market boundaries and competitive relationships as the basis of their market behaviour, and they do this on the basis of cultural calculations. These practices operate directly on and across the framing/overflowing process; they therefore exemplify the impurity of kinds of calculation, but they look quite pure if considered as instrumental rationality. One possible reason why Callon tends towards an overly objectified and abstract version of calculation is because he does not go far enough with Goffman’s frame analysis. Callon rightly emphasizes the Durkheimian aspect of Goffman, which sociologists often ignore when they interpret him as simply a variety of symbolic interactionist. Goffman’s dramaturgical metaphor, however, is very literally about social technologies of staging, about social rituals with an objective character that make for an ethical order. At the same time, Callon largely ignores the interactionist Goffman, who is concerned with the cognitive, interpretative character of people’s engagement with these rituals. To return one last time to Sophie and the salesman: Miller’s story makes intuitive sense because we know that in carrying out an economic action these economic actors may not perceive any or many elements of it in economic terms. Certainly, there is no reason to assume that Sophie perceives the presence of a ‘market’ in any meaningful sense, and therefore really does not frame her calculations ‘properly’, although, as stated above, she will simply have to do so when she comes to sign the contract and write her cheque. Her own framings of what is relevant in deciding on a car can be highly personal to her up to the point at which an actual market transaction is accomplished. This hardly gives us a warrant to say that the market does not exist: independently of Sophie’s perceptions, there is a technology of alienation that does indeed individualize exchange and even produces a social mathematics (prices) that seems to add up independently of her perceptions. At the same time, however, we need to accept that social actors themselves operate with multiple and contradictory framings of market behaviour as well as

60 Don Slater different concepts of markets. For example, Karen Knorr-Cetina’s (Knorr-Cetina and Bruegger 2000) accounts of financial markets include an analysis of how the same actor can talk about the market as both entirely without form and at the same time as a meaningfully totalized entity; that is to say, they may operate within a permanently split perspective as to what kind of frame contains them, and what holds it together. Similarly, Nicholas Thomas (1991) gives a suggestive example of an exchange of goods between Europeans and Indonesians in which the two parties to the exchange each see the same transaction entirely differently. One perceives it as a market transaction, the other more in the mode of gifting. One party is astounded by the low price, the other is oblivious to the presence of any price. But price was produced and a transaction concluded despite utterly different understandings. This ambiguity of framing, or even multiple framing, surely has consequences for the idea that agency is entirely configured by the network, partly because we may be dealing with intersecting networks, but also because people do indeed transfer understandings across social locations: there is an interpretative moment to the arrangement, as well as emergent objective structures. Economists and economies The possibility of ambiguous and multiple framings raises another set of issues, about the role of economics in establishing this peculiar framing. What Callon offers is a vision of markets as a kind of technological accomplishment: alienation and calculability (whether quantitative or instrumental) have to be engineered, and Callon’s example of the strawberry market gives a clear image of this engineering. Division, display, timing, legal and other definitions, are all orchestrated to produce collections of things which may be traded at prices. However, I use the term ‘orchestrated’ quite consciously: there is a sense of both marshalled organization and governing plan, of uniformity and direction, which is at odds both with Callon’s own sense of the complexity of these accomplishments and with our increasing empirical knowledge of the diversity of markets and market behaviours. This sense of ‘orchestration’ comes to a head in his claim that markets are the product of economists. It is difficult to reconcile this assessment of the power of economists with Callon’s broader contention that the framing of markets is a contested and unstable arrangement established across numerous technologies and agent networks. Even highly planned markets, like the strawberry one, are not only more overdetermined than this, but also do not necessarily behave the way economists planned once they open their doors to real market actors. We also have to recognize that markets successfully emerged long before neo-classical economists were invented. At certain points in Callon’s argument the claim that economists construct markets is supported by a much broadened definition of economics. The claim makes greater sense if one treats ‘economics’ in the same way that Foucauldian perspectives understand ‘government’, a dispersal of discourses and practices that, in this case, involves everything from academic theory and ideology, through policies enunciated across a wide range of agencies, down to the logics informing the most

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mundane economic practices. Economics is not a set of falsifiable claims about the economy, or an ideological construction of the economy, but rather a participant in its construction. This makes huge sense in terms of the diffusion of neo-liberalism through virtually every social institution over the last twenty years, with very real effects on the marketization, and consequent abstraction, of social relationships. As in governmentality, such economic discourses have some kind of analytical unity (though it is unclear how), yet they are at the same time diffused through countless institutional spaces. They operate not as directives but as reconfigurations of subjectivity as practised. However, there are at least two problems here. First, the very process of disaggregating economics into a broad swathe of embedded knowledges dilutes any sense of what we mean by economics. There is a difference between the formal structures of macro-economic modellers and the practical knowledges of a car salesperson in their showroom. They are not economists in the same sense, although it is true that both can be treated as operating social technologies from which economic structures emerge. Paradoxically, this way of defining economics both understates and overstates the coherence of economics as a social force. On the one hand, it makes it difficult to grasp neo-liberalism as an ideology, which it is, and yet at the very same moment all economic practices appear unified – as if macro-economists and car salesmen are all pushing in the same direction, with the same interests, technologies, understandings and so on. Indeed, if it is pushed too far, the entire argument appears to be circular or even tautological. If one defends the idea that economists construct economies by defining economics as ‘all forms of economic practice and knowledge’, then surely one is simply asserting what needs to be explained. Second, Callon seems to take the familiar Foucauldian step of presuming effects from discourses. The relation between theory and practice is an issue that cannot simply be dissolved. Even if we assumed that all ‘economists’ are pushing towards alienated and calculative social transactions and spaces, we cannot read the effects of these practices off their own discourses. We need to take an open-ended and indeed ethnographic approach to the way specific markets are constructed. By the same token, we need to expect the appearance of contradictory and ambiguous forms of calculation. It is interesting to connect this argument with the notion of virtualism as propounded by Miller and Carrier, which also has a strong affinity with major themes in Strathern’s work. Virtualism argues that central economic models and policies are developed in relation to an idealized or virtual concept of the economy, and by those with the power to make these in some way effective. We might compare Bourdieu’s (1998) recent formulation of neo-liberalism as a ‘strong discourse’, one which has ‘the means of making itself true and empirically viable’ because it orients ‘the economic choices of those who dominate economic relationships’ and hence constitutes a ‘scientific programme, converted into a plan of political action’. Miller and Carrier both start from something much closer to the notion of ideology, which has a certain kind of unity and also some relation to issues of truth and falsity. Most importantly, whereas Callon seems to presume that economics is

62 Don Slater realized in economies, Miller argues that virtualism and capitalism may be quite opposed. This has the advantage of not presuming effects from discourses. The central problem in the case of relating economics to economies – as in the issues of disentanglement and ambiguous framings – is that we need to make space not only for a diversity of modes of calculation within the overall structure of market exchange, but also for contradictory and multiple framings, some of which might very well approximate to the situation described by Miller, at least in the way market actors understand their situation.

Markets and marketing While Sophie may have no reason to look at what she is doing in terms of markets and isolated moments of exchange, the salesman certainly does, and so does the corporation that stands behind him. I want to focus on one particular actor, or aspect, of the corporation, which Miller also discusses: the marketing and advertising functions and departments. They make an interesting test case for my line of discussion because they differ from the kinds of disentanglements that Callon is talking about. Callon’s examples are largely technocratic: there are experts who become strategic at certain moments of framing because they can produce knowledges of what events in the world should properly be linked (causally, as consequences) to events within market frames. Marketing, I want to argue, is a framing process, and one that involves strategic disentanglements, but it is based on quite other kinds of knowledges. These are interpretative, cultural knowledges that should look and behave more as in Miller’s examples, yet also have to be understood within a framework of instrumental rationality. My example is about marketing strategies (Slater 2002, 2003). When advertising and marketing agents devise marketing strategies they aim to produce definitions of objects that simultaneously accomplish two interlinked goals: they must make sense in terms of relations of consumption and they must look capable of achieving profitable positions in relation to other products (relations of competition, the marketplace). The object has to be produced conceptually before the various branches of the sales effort are deployed to try and produce it socially. A product concept is therefore the basis for strategic action. In this conceptual production, it is very hard to separate out cultural and economic issues; indeed, marketers spend a lot of their time explicitly connecting them. In global terms, this is simply because culture becomes the object of technical rationality. The marketer treats relations of consumption – the embeddedness of the object in a world – as the object of profitable intervention: can this object be made meaningful and desirable within specific social relations. The calculative, disentangling question is: can this object be culturally entangled? Can it be defined and represented in terms of consumer lifeworlds? And this requires deep cultural knowledges of the objectified other. It is not necessarily empirically correct knowledge (advertisers may be wrong, and infamously can never really know when they are wrong), but it must be knowledge that makes sense to the marketers as a cultural embedding of

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the product, and which therefore makes sense as a strategy for marketing (it makes sense in terms of uses, users and the materiality of the object itself). However, this is only part of the story. Cultural and economic thinking are inseparable in a deeper sense: they are analytically opposite sides of the same coin in a way that marketers are aware of at every moment. When I define an object in cultural terms I am also defining it competitively and vice versa. To use an example from a previous paper: to define Johnson’s baby oil (this was a strategy exercise) as an eye-makeup remover rather than a facial cleanser means to relate different aspects of the same object to different social practices (cosmetics versus health care) enacted by different social actors (in this case younger versus older women). At the very same moment, to be selling a makeup remover rather than a cleanser is also to enter into different markets, because each object is competitive with different products. Any definition of the product makes it more or less substitutable for another product. This is conventionally what we mean by a particular ‘market’. The boundaries of a market are defined by what is perceived as substitutable for what, and by whom. It is an act of social categorization, but one in which the categories as well as assignments are constantly renegotiated, redefined and intensively battled over. This is basically what marketing is: defining the product in such a way as to position it within the competitively optimum definition of a market as well as the most culturally entangled relations of consumption. That is to say, marketing is not only about competition within markets, within given structures. It is a competition over the structures of markets and market relations themselves. The cultural calculations of marketers are attempts to frame and stabilize objects as given individual items, which then compete with other objects in rationalizable ways. They are, if you will, disentangled from the broad range of social relations to be isolated as individual, transactable entities. This attempt (more often than not a failure from any individual firm’s point of view) is strategic: every firm wants to redefine the boundaries of markets by reframing goods. That is how they compete. They aim at a profitable stabilization of the market, but they do this by persistently destabilizing it. Finally, the disentanglements they attempt to effect are precisely not a disembedding, in the sense of a separation of economy from culture. Rather, it is a specific instrumentalizing of culture in order to profit by a very specific form of transaction. In fact, one can think of marketing as playing another, more complex framing role, something beyond even the framing of objects, hence of market structures. Marketing is not just one of the many framing technologies through which markets are defined. It also tries to act as something like a meta-technology, a technology that tries to manage or orchestrate the technologies of cultural framing. It orchestrates such commercial technologies as pricing, design, packaging, consumer education and so on in such a way as to manage people’s framing of goods in relation to commerce. As noted earlier, in the act of buying and consuming, I may think of myself as only minimally engaged with markets or commodities at all; I may largely frame my actions in terms of the meaningful constitution of everyday life. Marketing employs a range of technologies that individually and together establish commercial frames in the first place; it tries not only to produce specific

64 Don Slater market structures, but also to impose the very idea of a market and of commerce in relation to other object relations.

Conclusion: are there any markets out there? Economic sociology seems to face two impossible alternatives: either the market is absolutized as abstraction or it is dissolved into ‘culture’; economic rationality approximates to neo-classical calculations or it merges with ‘life’. We seem to miss the turning into a critical space in which markets are neither uniform nor dominant yet are still identifiable. In order to map out this space we have to do something which Callon is pointing to: we have to find some of the parameters and border disputes through which markets take endlessly contingent and unstable shapes. Externality is probably only one line of analysis/definition. It is a fruitful one if you are interested in following the relationship between technical knowledges and market boundaries. It might not be quite so useful in thinking about cultural matters where the inside and outside of the market are not defined by issues of cause and effect or empirical consequences but rather by the cultural stability of the entities themselves (actors, commodities, relationships): markets define themselves to the extent that they can stabilize objects, but every attempt to do so invokes meanings and processes that threaten to reopen the market structure. The power of the notions of disentanglement, framing and overflowing (and their real gain over simple ‘disembedding’) is that they focus us on the impurity of market behaviour – including the mixture of economic and cultural calculation involved in constituting economic action – while at the same time being able to acknowledge its basic structural forms. This conceptual apparatus is most useful, however, when it is not inextricably aimed at accounting for an expected and presumed form of calculation. Instead, such concepts give us a clearer grasp of the one feature that seems to be reliably useful in analytically delineating markets – the alienation of objects in the form of property that can be detached from the networks in which they originate – and which allows for diverse, unpredictable and contradictory modes of calculation.

References Bourdieu, P. (1989) Outline of a Theory of Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1998) ‘The essence of neoliberalism: what is neoliberalism? A programme for destroying collective structures which may impede the pure market logic’, in Le Monde Diplomatique, Paris. Callon, M. (ed.) (1998) The Laws of the Markets, Oxford: Blackwell. Carrier, J.G. (1994) Gifts and Commodities: Exchange and Western Capitalism since 1700, London: Routledge. Carrier, J.G. and D. Miller (eds) (1998) Virtualism: A New Political Economy, Oxford: Berg. Knorr-Cetina, K. and U. Bruegger (2000) ‘The market as an object of attachment: exploring postsocial relations in financial markets’, Canadian Journal of Sociology, 25(2): 141–68. Miller, D. (1998) A Theory of Shopping, Cambridge: Polity Press. Miller, D. (2002) ‘Turning Callon the right way up’, Economy and Society, 31 (2).

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Slater, D. (2002) ‘Capturing markets from the economists’, in P. du Gay and M. Pryke (eds) Cultural Economies:Cultural Analysis and Commercial Life, London: Sage. Slater, D. (2003) ‘Markets, materiality and the “new economy” ’, in S. Metcalfe and A. Warde (eds) Market Relations and the Competitive Process, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Slater, D. and F. Tonkiss (2001) Market Society: Markets and Modern Social Thought, Cambridge: Polity Press. Thomas, N. (1991) Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture and Colonialism, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

66 Marilyn Strathern

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Externalities in comparative guise Marilyn Strathern

In his contribution to The Laws of the Markets, Michel Callon (1998) turns to the phenomenon of externalities, putting it in both negative and positive light. In the negative case, market transactions simply exclude interests which may be affected by their operations but do not appear in the calculations; in the positive case such effects will be recognised, a characteristic for example of situations where business activities lead to the generation of information in a technological and thus a knowledge-based economy. Introducing this exposition, Callon tells us that he wishes to extend a concept familiar from economics in order to enhance the sociological understanding of markets. He suggests that externality overlies the more fundamental concept of framing (ultimately from Goffman) and its complicating counterpart, overflowing. If I add an anthropological twist (of a British kind), it is to offer a comparison between two situations amenable to this re-visioning of how phenomena come to have internal and external aspects. I do so with an agenda of my own, which appears to have little to do with the subject under discussion but is nonetheless affected by how we describe the technological economy. I am interested in its location of ethical principles. My two examples take up possibilities on the positive side. Both echo situations on which Callon also draws. Thus he points to the way in which industrial patents inspire external competitors. He instances a pharmaceutical company which invests heavily in research and then, in the course of filing a patent, necessarily discloses information which becomes ‘freely’ available for others to use. This overflowing cannot be prevented. Because its competitors are likely to be working from similar knowledge bases, they are able to use the information in their own research, ‘invent around’ the patented invention as the phrase goes.1 This enhances their competitiveness – a commonplace, he says, for businesses who are involved in the production of information capable of wide application. A little later he refers to a different order of externalities, whose visibility has become commonplace in a technoscience regime perceived to throw up problems ‘for society’. At one level, no common informational field is shared; at another, the object is to create one. The huge proliferation of bodies concerned with ethics – the social, legal and ethical implications of particular technologies – is an example. The scientist cannot remain in his laboratory but has to engage with other specialists

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and with non-specialists of all kinds, for ‘society as a whole must agree to take action’ (Callon 1998: 262). The effort to reduce the number of non-calculable decisions, and thus to contain a constantly overflowing situation, is part of the phenomenon of overflow itself. Now overflows are no longer a by-product of transactions and negotiations but have become the rule. The contrast with patents is clear. The patent is a device to make calculable likely future benefits resulting from an invention, protecting the patent holder’s claims by framing the information that led to it. The overflow of information into competitors’ hands cannot be helped. But, and giving us the second example, there are many situations – often the results of just such an invention being released into the world at large – where quite different kinds of information from beyond the domain of technoscience itself are needed to calculate the manifold effects of technological products or their application (Callon cites the ramifications of mad cow disease). It is here that information bursts its frames, and all kinds of externalities jostle one another. I lay out two approaches to ethical resolutions, then, which use Callon’s reworking of ‘externality’ and draw on his illustrations. One overtly involves the market while the other does not. The obvious point is that in both cases there are external considerations that purportedly lie outside the immediate frame of negotiation. In the first, which touches briefly on competitive patenting, these are initially drawn into the agents’ calculations in the way in which Callon speaks of internalisation (1998: 251, 259). However, in the second case, an overt debate about ethics, there is a quite unexpected exclusion of information which turns out to be ‘at the centre’ of negotiation (1998: 263). There all along, it only becomes salient at certain moments. This is not a matter of internalisation, and we might seek a fresh vocabulary to describe it. Here I adopt spatial terms derived from elsewhere altogether to talk about an internal externality. Information on the two cases is derived from secondary sources generated by public interest in the technological economy. Typical of present times, public interest takes the form of identifying ‘ethical issues’, actual or potential. One belongs primarily to the late 1990s/early 2000s, although did not begin then, while the other comes from a decade ago, the late 1980s/early 1990s, although the issues it raises continue to reverberate.

Case 1: common knowledge The duty (a duty owed to progress and prosperity) to share information is already inscribed in the patent.2 This is a prime example of an external ethical principle that has been thoroughly internalised. It is so taken for granted as one of the axiomatic conditions of patent holding (it is of course formally impossible to acquire patent rights without fully publishing information related to the invention in question) that it is generally flagged as at once a justification for and the prime benefit of the patenting system. The principle is constantly evoked in the new public agora (Nowotny et al. 2001) attuned to the increasing visibility of patent regimes in both business and the life sciences. For the principle retains its external status as an effect or outcome of the patenting system that belongs to the realm of general

68 Marilyn Strathern contributions to the public good, and is not part of the negotiations that ordinarily take firms to the Patent Office.3 However, there is a further outcome of this internalisation, the desirability of publishing technoscientific information, which produces the obverse effect and projects internal motivations outwards. It derives from routine assumptions about behaviour: information is a desirable insofar as people expect to act on it. Such an expectation has the effect of speeding up the extent to which people then act with others in mind; they take anticipatory action precisely because they can predict – or imagine they can – what effect the information will have on these others, namely that they will desire to use it. Andrew Barry (2000: 64) comments on one kind of anticipation, and I shall develop his example. As a cumulative effect of patenting under conditions of rapid technological change, ‘Patents are acquired in order that others may not acquire them’, with the consequence that ‘Invention by others has to be stifled, or anticipated in advance, for rapid technical change to occur in the present.’ Barry continues: ‘Moving things rapidly may increase a general state of inertia; fixing things in place before alternatives have the chance of developing’ (2000: 64), that is, framing becomes a blocking device. It contributes to what he calls the anti-inventive logics of industrial development: technical change that allows no pause thereby guards against the unpredictable. Under technical changes we may subsume business techniques.4 Competitors are kept out of the market by pre-emptive patents. In the US, after the prevention of copying ‘the prevention of rivals from patenting related inventions, which we call patent pre-emption or blocking, [is shown] to be the most pervasive motive for patenting’ (Cohen et al. 2000: 21).5 Patent blocking takes one of two forms. First, the target may be potential substitutes created by others ‘inventing around’ the original invention. ‘In this setting, firms wishing to protect some patented core invention may patent substitutes to foreclose that possibility to rivals, building what is sometimes called a “patent fence”’ (Cohen et al. 2000: 22). Such patent blocking, they add, is nothing new, and they cite the famous 1940s case of du Pont’s patenting of over 200 substitutes for nylon to protect its own core invention. This is the defensive patent put into place for the kinds of reasons to which Barry’s arguments apply. In essence, the intention is to stop others from calculating the likely advantage of inventing around another’s patent by claiming as large a cognate field as possible, ‘laying claims to a territory in order to ensure that others do not get there first’ (Barry 2000: 65). In short, the pre-emptive strike lies in preventing competitors from acting on information that is released into the world; for those who take action project the possibility of so acting onto their competitors who themselves become the reason for companies taking out patents. In the second type of patent blocking practice, traffic is often two-way. Patent holders may instead try to force entry into areas being developed by their rivals. ‘Because no one firm can move ahead on developing and commercializing new technology without access to rival technology, incumbents can use their patents as bargaining chips either to compel their inclusion in cross-licensing or at least secure the freedom to move ahead on similar technological efforts without being

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sued’ (Cohen et al. 2000: 22). This kind of patent may thus earn money for the patent holder (through license fees) regardless of whether it in itself leads to a direct product. It has been called ‘block to play’. The situation typically arises when it is impossible to proceed with any single invention because the development to product stage will depend on a complexity of inter-related inventions, and firms must dovetail their patent portfolios. So a firm will hold on to access to a piece of knowledge that may be useless by itself, in order to be able to trade on its usefulness for others. Again, this is nothing new: creating utility has always been true of industrial production (without the factory the worker’s labour has no value). Patents measure the significance of each item of information and give it value. Equally to the advantage of the patent holder has become the issue of how narrow or how broad any one patent will be. The tinier the fragment of information which will qualify as an invention, the more patents will multiply;6 the broader the patent, the more a single firm will attempt to underwrite or encompass the efforts of many others.7 Disease gene patents are a growing phenomenon here; these are patents which lay universal claim to methods for diagnosis of a particular genetic condition, that is, they cover all or any methods of looking at a disease-associated locus for the purpose of diagnosis (Merz 1999).8 These may lead to ‘the imposition of stifling reach-through conditions on licensees … (e.g. rights of first refusal or compulsory cross licensing of related discoveries)’ (1999: 326).9 At any rate, in this scenario competitors are also co-patent holders. They become collaterals in the enterprise. Either way, competitors thus become drawn into one another’s domains of action. We are back in the market where calculative agencies inevitably attend to the calculations of others: ‘once framed, each agency is able to integrate the already framed calculations of other agencies into its own calculations’ (Callon 1998: 32). The defensive patent highlights the process, thereby drawing attention to a persistent externality of a kind. If competition emanates from the agent’s own sense of agency, a firm’s fear of or readiness for battle, then this internal motivation (competitiveness) is being externalised. To be precise, it is externalised insofar as competition is anticipated, even imagined. The blocking patent can even create competitors in the abstract, firms who do not yet exist but who might exist. Agents thereby generate externalities for themselves. For the potential rivalry of imagined others is a projection of agency (from within) that has to imagine – by virtue of that very projection – agency lying beyond itself. Among other things, we might note the obvious: an original ethical impulse (to make information public) has market effects that hardly bear on ethics at all, as presently understood. Its external character is thereby conserved.

Case 2: incommensurate knowledge I turn now to an arena that is all about ethics, indeed explicitly about the determination of ethical principles. But while we can recognise similar processes of internalisation and externalisation, it throws up another kind of externality altogether. Exploring this calls for some detail, and its own introduction.

70 Marilyn Strathern Let me start with Callon’s observations on what he calls hot entanglements. These are conditions of extreme overflowing as one might find in crises or dilemmas that seem to have many ramifications. And the usual remedy, making more and more elements of the situation explicit, often makes hot things hotter.10 Not only are ‘hot’ situations becoming more commonplace, it is becoming exceedingly difficult to cool them down, i.e. arrive as a consensus on how the situation should be described … Externalities are at the centre of public debates [i.e. the focus of them] with no obvious conclusions. (Callon 1998: 262–3) The desirability of putting information into the public domain, the ethical principle we have already encountered, is doubled in the further desirability of stimulating open debate on ‘ethical issues’ as such. In relation to controversies over science, Nowotny et al. (2001: 202–3) call this risk feeding off risk: ‘The creation of ethics committees, the development of ethical guidelines and an apparently endless stream of regulations, procedures and protocols’ is at once a symptom of unease about the application of science, a signal of social conscience and a proliferation of the perspectives that clamour to be taken into account.11 Add to Callon’s description of the ‘hybrid forums’ which result from such hot entanglements of diverse facts, interests and knowledge bases12 Siegler’s (1999) description of multidisciplinary approaches to ethics committed to bringing together a spectrum of views,13 and we have attempts to frame heterogeneity through creating heterogeneity. I point to a type of enterprise, a Commission of Enquiry, generally framed off from the market that measures, frames and disentangles the values of products.14 It belongs to the type of forum which seeks to measure, frame and disentangle flows and counterflows in the values generated by public concern. As it turned out, a field of potential, anticipated action was laboriously created out of diverse domains of information only to be pre-empted by a set of ‘externalities’ that had all the time lain within at the heart, at the core, of the enterprise itself. This is what I call an internal externality. I intend the idiom not as a psycho-dynamic but as a spatial or structural one. The inspiration here, the externality at the heart of my own exposition, are the Mekeo people of Papua New Guinea (Mosko 1985) who imagine insides and outsides as each having their outside and inside. Thus the relationship between a village, an ‘outside’ place to which visitors come, and the clan territory it lies within, which is an ‘inside place’, is repeated within the village, between the village street where the houses are (‘inside’) and its centre, a plaza, an ‘outside’ place into which, for example, rubbish is swept and from which it is evacuated over the village fence. The plaza can be thought of as the outside’s inside or an inverted outside; the area over the fence as an inside’s outside or everted inside. I have thus taken Callon’s ‘externalities at the centre of public debate’ not in the sense of contingent issues that suddenly require focusing upon but in the sense of an unexpected discontinuity in the decision-making process. It is a locale for the voices, which speak with authority, which is what the whole enquiry was about.

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Background A public inquiry, which unfolded over four years between 1989 and 1993, deliberately tackled heterogeneity and the multiplicity of interests that ethical issues call up.15 At stake was appropriate legislation for the ‘social, legal and ethical’ effects of technoscience applied to human reproduction. ‘Society’ needed to find out what its ‘members’ thought. On an unprecedented scale, the Canadian Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technologies set about consulting the Canadian public. The final report (Canada 1993) of 1275 pages states that over 300 scholars participated in the exercise, across 70 disciplines, involving more than 40,000 Canadians, with a newsletter, research studies, public hearings, symposia, written submissions and 6,000 individuals leaving their views on toll-free telephone lines. It also involved the distribution of over 250,000 ‘pieces of information’, such as brochures and press releases.16 The Report acknowledges the iterative process of information and regulation – the interplay between policy-makers, the public and general perceptions (1993: 45). And entanglement is from the outset attributed to the population under study. As Canada becomes more heterogeneous, it will become increasingly important to make core values transparent and to ensure that consensus on technologies takes into account the diverse nature of the country. (1993: 29–30) This Canada was the nation that would recognise core values, the government that would reach a consensus, and (their hope) the federal state which would give backing to provincial legislatures. The Commission interpreted its mandate as being asked to speak on behalf of ‘Canadian society as a whole’ (1993: 20). It wished to be equipped with information drawn from a wide range of social sources within the population, and thus indeed intended a ‘total society’ approach (Massey 1993). Now when Callon argues that any framing produces overflowing, and any disentanglement produces new attachments (1998: 38), he describes a condition familiar to anthropologists. Above all, they have pointed out how, as overarching abstractions, Euro-American notions of ‘society’ and ‘culture’ precipitate a world full of incidental and intransigent particulars (e.g. Wagner 1976). This is especially true of the way information about society is marshalled. Notably, the more you describe ‘society’ the more you create the counter problem of ‘the individual’. But the precipitations that may, from one point of view, seem external to the descriptive project, from another may seem constituent parts of a totality. Thus the indigenous (Canadian) view is that society is made up of individuals. Indeed one could write that it is their very individuality that constitutes Canada.17 A Canadian ‘national’ voice lies in the way that the ‘diversity’ of Canadian society is constantly noted, at once needing to be articulated and needing to be regulated. From the Commission’s point of view, the ‘Canadians’ whom they wish to consult are not others in the way competitors can be (in part at least a reflex of one’s own

72 Marilyn Strathern agency) but agents whose calculations may be as yet unknown. The Commissioners could not act without information, and they wanted to find out what Canadians thought in order to report the answers to the Canadians themselves. No blocking here: the information they collected was (in suitable form) to be relayed back to the public. In what follows I imagine some of the processes that might have lain behind the massive Report, and the information it marshalled, and thus how the Commissioners in turn might have imagined their task, that is, the character of the calculating agency they had to acquire. Evidence is drawn almost entirely from the text of the Report.

Four frames The Commission knew that it was going to find itself faced with conflicting values. With its enlightened approach to making all kinds of fertility treatment available to all kinds of women and men, it wanted to endorse the legitimacy of individually held wishes, to give voice to minority as well as majority views, and to convey the depth of feeling that Canadians have about these important issues. It was thoroughly aware that it must broach social diversity directly – two civic languages, several distinctive immigrant populations, First Nations peoples, the advantaged and disadvantaged, quite apart from experts in medical and reproductive fields, religious spokespeople, interest groups and lobbies. In short, the Commission would be criss-crossing many different knowledge bases. What this meant is that over this first frame (Canadian society and its core values) would be put a second frame, the distillation of specific opinions, of specific values and attitudes, thrown up by people in all walks of life. It would consult widely and thoroughly across a truly diverse range of opinion.18 So they set out to consult a society imagined as heterogeneous at every level. I speculate that it was able to present or manage such a vision through creating a certain kind of person. A third framing device, then, was the figure of the calculating ‘individual’. In the same way as the law posits the individual as a bearer of rights, the Commission posited the individual Canadian man or woman as a decisionmaker. A central goal of our recommendations is to enable individual Canadians to make personal decisions about their involvement with the technologies, confident in the knowledge that mechanisms are in place to assess their safety and effectiveness and to consider their ethical, legal, and social implications. (Canada 1993: xxxv) Since they already have ‘views and attitudes’, an oft-repeated phrase, individual Canadians were thus the kinds of persons19 whom society (‘Canadian society’) could consult. Commenting on the Royal Commission itself, Weir (1996) refers to the ‘constrained conflict’ of a liberal rationality: pre-structured for conflict, liberal government must be seen to tussle both with minority views and with criticisms of its own actions. If the Commission were to be liberal in this sense, it must both

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channel and celebrate the contrariness of different positions. Its third frame, identifying the individual as a decision-making bearer of views and attitudes, would help do this job. A final frame – from several others – is considered here: the opinion. Views, attitudes and opinions were at times run together (e.g. Canada 1993: 426). It is assumed that it was through investigating ‘views and attitudes’ that one could elucidate significant values. While views and attitudes are sedimented in the culture of a population, one potent way in which Euro-American people at large, and Canadians proved no exception, give them voice is as ‘opinions’ – and opinions can be surveyed. Moreover, views or attitudes enunciated in the form of opinion give something of an elective quality to values. Heterogeneous values will show up as ‘diversity’, and that diversity as a function of the choice-informed diversity of individual persons. (Individuals are in turn rendered diverse through the opinions that differentiate them.) This frame not only provided an enumerable counterpart to the third frame, the individual decision-maker, but picked out the contours of the second frame, the distilled values of Canadians, as an inevitable precursor to the first, Canada or Canadian society. At the end of the road were the decisions that Canada must make as to its future policy directions, the ‘choices’ over health care treatment facing it as a nation (1993: 103). Can such an approach also deal with people when they are the representatives of minority groups and lobbies? What about cultural diversity? The answer, it would seem, is yes. The opinion as a common frame appeared to enable numerous ‘groups’ to be accommodated. For the opinions of minorities and Aboriginal communities (say) could be put alongside those of individuals, treating them like so many ‘collective individuals’ (Foster 1995). ‘The increasing diversity of Canadian society means that we cannot make assumptions about the impact of new reproductive technologies on society as a whole. Different groups will be affected in different ways by the technologies’ (Canada 1993: 35), and one cannot give either individual or group values precedence over one another (1993: 64). The Report thus identified women as one such ‘group’ with opinions to express, and the special needs of women came to stand for all kinds of special needs. (It was recognised that women had diverse experiences, sometimes speaking for themselves and sometimes, in the Report’s parlance, for their communities.) If in general social groups are seen to express opinions in the way individuals do, this does of course separate the frame of ‘Canada’/‘society’ from the individual entities that constitute it. However, views and attitudes create ‘groups’ of their own, majorities and minorities based on the opinion they hold, and minorities proved more troublesome than this exposition suggests; I return to them in a moment. The Report by and large favours quantitative summaries (‘most’, ‘many’) rather than statistics, although it points to numerical data collected in its research reports and produces percentages at certain junctures. Either way, opinions can be counted. Instead of imagining the co-creation of diversity and hegemonic cultural assumptions, then, the Report imagines that differences can be enumerated. Enumeration makes certain trends visible. ‘Along with this greater cultural diversity have come new perceptions and new attitudes toward family, kinship and parenthood’

74 Marilyn Strathern (1993: 29). So what kind of action does the knowledge require? It requires the Commissioners to recommend guidelines for regulation, the first step of which is weighing up the evidence. That was not to be straightforward. Apropos IVF, they state (1993: 501–2) that the national dialogue they had mounted gave them ‘a rich and multifacted basis from which to consider the issues’, a ‘multidimensional perspective … necessary because no one vantage point can provide a comprehensive picture’. There is no single formula for weighing individual and collective interests that would allow us to resolve all these issues. Rather, we need to look at given situations and consider how individual interests affect society’s values, norms, and resources, and vice versa. (1993: 65) So what will the Commissioners ‘resolve’ and how will they ‘look’? We may ask about the relationship between these regulative intentions and the four frames I have singled out. Will the process of resolution amount to a fifth frame? If so, it is a rather different kind of frame. For I suggest that it points to the contours of an externality that cannot be seen at all because it lies in the eyes of those looking through these other frames. It consists in the normative intentions of those holding the inquiry. It takes the form of moral reasoning. Producing externalities20 In the last resort, it is the reasoning of those who have encompassed all aspects of the inquiry as such – that is, of the Commissioners – which prevails. One example is deliberation over donor insemination (1993: 431). We gave great thought to this … guided by … what Canadians said about both their fundamental values and their attitudes towards specific issues. … Where there was divergence on specific policy questions, we decided that our moral reasoning should have greater weight if it was in line with fundamental values endorsed by Canadians, because we had spent much time weighing the evidence and thinking through the implications of different policies on such specific questions. In making the choice as to what is to be decided, the Commissioners remind the public that they are liberal persons who, in the name of government, do what governments have to do and depend on their own reasoning. How, after all, could it be otherwise? But they will publish in full the scope of the enquiry that gave voice to so many people. The example of donor insemination, which is about the ethics of making information public, is worth pursuing further. The issue is that of disclosure to interested parties. We may note the convergence between the value put on openness applied to considerations of anonymity and the value put on openness that characterises

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enquiries of this kind. The Report was emphatic that method of conception should be open knowledge, thereby creating a new category of family (‘DI families’) (Eichler 1996). Several of the comments in favour of openness came from professionals and experts in adoption and other practices: ‘evidence before the Commission shows that secrecy in families can be very harmful’ (Canada 1993: 444). At the same time, ‘many donors’ were in favour of anonymity (1993: 441); in addition, the needs of the DI family had to be taken into account. What had been created through open information (on the technology of conception) had to be held in place by concealing other information (the donor’s social identity). In short, openness had to be balanced against other considerations. In the end, the Canadian Royal Commission determined to allow non-identifying, but not identifying, information to be accessible to DI children. The Commission believes that this is the best way to balance the needs of children and families. It is a system that acknowledges the need of individuals for social, genetic and medical information about their biological parent, but it also acknowledges the need for DI families to flourish and form a strong unit if the best interests of the child are to be served … [It] accords greater importance to family relationships and actual parenting than to the source of genetic material. (1993: 445) In the balancing of the two approaches, we might ask what value was being given to balance itself. It would appear to invoke the balance of individual/society and state/multiple constituent groups that underlies the writing of the whole Report itself. This diversity could itself be produced as reason enough to cut through it with judicious opinion. There were a few occasions … when our moral reasoning led us to conclusions that were not strongly supported by the responses to some specific questions in our surveys of Canadians. This kind of situation usually arose when a value that Canadians strongly endorsed … such as equality, was not upheld in answer to a question on a specific situation, such as whether single women should have access to donor insemination. (1993: 431) Perhaps their judicious opinion can be understood as an externality: at the centre of this huge field of diverse opinions lay a normative process that could work only according to its own principles. I call it an externality because although the populace would have recognised the process, and would be subscribing to norms themselves, the grounds summoned for adjudication (for the purposes of distilling information about and representing a spectrum of Canadian values) would be different from the context in which such values were normally enunciated. The Commissioners’ knowledge base, for a start, was different from those on whose behalf they were adjudicating (although the Commissioners saw the next step as

76 Marilyn Strathern sharing as much of that knowledge as possible, hence the publication of the Report). Yet in the end the vast quantity of data was barely used,21 and only in rather general terms drawn on to support the Commissioner’s final authority. One is reminded of Barry’s (2000) suggestion that in the knowledge economy high levels of information production (‘overproduction’) may displace other forms of action, and ‘evidence-based’ action seems just such an invitation. The mass of data was, as we have seen, certainly pressed into the service of comprehending the diversity of society, underlining its heterogeneity and the differences between subpopulations. For if everyone differs, no one set of differences need be privileged. So difference can be turned into an amenable and governable fact not by reducing the significance of pluralism but by exaggerating it.22 The Commissioners’ moral reasoning appeared in the Report, I suggest, as an internal externality. They were not simply adding their own voice to the mix; they called down a justification for their views that lay within themselves. What is telling is that this frame had its own overflow. That is, when their own weighing up of evidence (‘we gave great thought’/‘we spent much time’) performed as a frame for them, it inevitably produced its own externalities. I return to the troublesome issue of minorities. For no amount of balancing would ultimately dissolve the uniqueness claimed by certain interest groups, and this led to a dissenting opinion, to a presentation of moral reasoning not consonant with the majority. In the example I give here, we see how the non-discriminatory tenor of the Report blocked the consideration of opinion based on religious conviction. The Report does not accord religion a basis for values separate from others but treats it as further grounds for a respectful pluralism, with the proviso that religious, like ethnic, affiliation should not be a discriminating factor in the offering of treatment. But, asserts the dissenting Commissioner whose comments are published separately at the end of the Report,23 if secular jurisdiction overrides religious principle, this would remove the freedom of religious institutions ‘to interpret their ethical policies according to their [own] mandates’ (1993: 1093). So while the main body of the Report acknowledges people’s relationship to certain intermediate groups, including religious groups, she calls the bluff on choice by thereby pointing to an arena (religion, ethnicity) where reproductive values constitute part of a person’s identity. The values at stake are bound up with the very way a person exercises affiliation. They are not the same kind of choice-informed decision-making individual otherwise created by the Commission. Some of these interest groups are what, in the course of developing the idea of a ‘decent society’ (as against for instance a just society), Margalit (1996: 138ff, 277) calls encompassing. A decent society does not tolerate institutions that put people into humiliating positions. It is encumbent on a decent society to acknowledge the role that ‘encompassing groups’ play in people’s self-placement and self-esteem, or oppression for that matter. He singles out such ‘groups’ by virtue of the fact that they are not in any way voluntaristic or elective. Religious and ethnic affiliations are among his prime examples. A decent society is judged not only by how its institutions treat encompassing groups but also by how such groups treat their

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members. Now while a whole spectrum of such groups might give the illusion that they are many-to-choose-from, for each person there can be only one. Hence ‘Canada’ cannot substitute for any one religious or ethnic group, regardless of how and how many views are distilled. It simply cannot frame them. The dissenting opinion raised a question about the invidious nature of choice facing those with religious and similar convictions; they run the danger of humiliation. It offers several other points of criticism. First, it is explicit about the social context of values and about the fact that it is not just persons as individuals who are affected by treatment provision or policy decisions but persons in relationship with others. Second, it epitomises its own critique: it makes fundamental values explicit in a way that cannot be regulated or quantified. Third, it draws attention to the problem of choice in an unenlightened society. When society is revealed as conservative, what then? If we really look to choice, many Canadians would deny certain identifiable others their reproductive choices.24 Finally, it pinpoints the conundrum of majority and minority views. What is a ‘minority’ view? The answer would seemingly depend on whether the minority was a selfcontained religious group, a disadvantaged sector of the population – or a group of Commissioners charged with interpreting the public will.

Acting on information In commenting on an earlier version of this account, the editors came to a conclusion I had not seen: when the process of moral reasoning evoked by the Commissioners acted like an internal externality it had the effect of ‘cooling’ a hot situation. (In fact the publication of the Report eventually turned parts of the debate right off. After some delay, a voluntary Moratorium on Reproductive Technologies was called, announced as a first step for managing the application of the new technologies.25) At any rate, it was the kind of stance that bypasses complexity. Perhaps such short-circuiting may be the only answer. One cannot reach a decision on the basis of information alone. The four framing devices I chose to describe were, we may say, intended to cool but in effect only measured the heat. And here I draw on another of the editors’ comments. The Commission offers a rather peculiar rendering of ethical practice, exaggerated no doubt in my selection of issues, for it is largely non-relational. After all (they point out) persons such as teachers or parents may be ethical in relation to their students or children without having to import ethical principles from the outside; this is indeed one of the points offered by the dissenting opinion. The external character of moral reasoning seen here must be a function not of the nature of ethics as such but of the way that, in this case, the whole problem was being framed. This suggests that we look again at the Report’s emphasis on decisionmaking, choice-informed individuals. At least on the information about the Commissioners’ activities I have given here, they appear for all the world to be treating their sources of information as though it were coming from autonomous subjects of the kind found in the law – or

78 Marilyn Strathern in the market. Indeed the Commission seemed to be moving towards the kinds of calculations that Pottage attributes to a patents regime. Pottage (1998: 755, my emphasis) writes: there is a basic incompatibility between ethical and political arguments and the scientific rational character of the patents system, which can [overtly] accommodate ‘ethical’ themes only if they are translated, or betrayed, by some form of risk calculus. Risk can be treated as criteria by which to calculate, for example, the desirability of information disclosure or to assess how far persons are adequately informed. Pottage observes how both law and science have converged on the notion of ‘informed consent’ as a concept which binds persons – specifically the ‘scientific and economic characterisations’ of persons – to the legal concept of the autonomous individual. The Commission was able to approximate its endeavours to a form of risk calculus, and set up its frames to do so. But it was defeated by the fact that it had to treat its sources of information as heterogeneous as the data on which information was being sought. By invoking externalities, Callon reminds us that part of the economist’s job is that of description. Description has a crucial role in framing and disentanglement. Certainly Euro-Americans are constantly invited to understand the world of description against the ‘real world’ it precipitates. The economists’ position is thus part of – and central to – a more general Euro-American project: to describe the societies in which we live. The interest of economists is that their descriptions are also meant to help us act. That is, even if not predictive, they are drawn into the economy as findings, research outcomes, trends, and so forth, to stimulate future policy/market behaviour. Pottage’s observations underline a contrast between at least two kinds of descriptions on which Euro-Americans act, two approaches to ethics we might say. The first is information about the world that purifies it; description transforms its dimensions into calculable measurements. Discussion is then all about the instruments of description, how accurate or appropriate a measure, whether the words convey the right impression, and so forth, and the greater the approximation, the greater the power of the instrument. People can act on the ‘knowledge’, assess the risk, which the measurements generate and, as in patent blocking, calculate the risk of information overflow. The second is information that has power precisely because it is not a measurement. It may come from a style of reasoning given value because it exists at a remove from the world; such knowledge has the power to move people to act precisely because it is not contaminated with the details that were so important to the first kind of description. Equally meant to be acted on, this knowledge may be circulated as principles or norms, and in the case of ethical principles be presented as precepts or values intended as guidelines for action. The admonition to act is contained within. The normative guideline, the ethical principle, has already jumped from description to action; it pre-empts the connection. The anticipation of action is as

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much a condition of the description, we might say, as a consequence of it. Thus the principle of open information, of the desirability of assessing the degree of ‘informed consent’ (to regulation) that existed across society, which the Canadian Report endorsed, is not there simply to frame understandings: it points to practices which need to be implemented. Action is already implied. In this context, action is not an externality, a contingency or unlooked-for outcome of the promulgation of norms; on the contrary it is inherent to the normative recommendation. Yet action – as an activity – does not belong to the discursive framing of the norm itself. One might describe it as an external internality.

Acknowledgements I am most grateful to Nurit Bird-David for a conversation that started this off (pers. comm., November 2000). The second part of this chapter was stimulated by an International Symposium, ‘Governing Medically Assisted Human Reproduction’, University of Toronto, 1996, organised by Lorna Weir. I have drawn on both Margrit Eichler and Lorna Weir’s contributions in more places than noted here; considerable thanks for Margaret Lock’s further guidance. I also thank Georgina Born. Andrew Barry offered quite out of the ordinary assistance on the text, both in his degree of patience (and encouragement) and through crucial comments and criticisms.

Notes 1 ‘Competitors may thus benefit, free of charge, from the efforts and investments of a company which has had to bear the associated costs and risks on its own’ (Callon 1998: 245–6). In their survey of R&D managers from some 1,500 US firms, Cohen, Nelson and Walsh (2000) found that the ease with which an invention could be ‘invented around’ by others was a principal reason for firms not to take out patents (and disclose information); the simple alternative was to keep their innovations secret. 2 I owe the precision of this point to Corinne Hayden’s work on the way ethics and politics are, so to speak, engineered into biological artefacts (pers. comm.). She cites Sarah Franklin’s observation about cell lines developed to bypass the use of human embryos: a ‘built-in ethics’ to avoid public opposition. 3 Indeed, when the public good is articulated as an aim, famously in the release of information about the human genome, it may be held that the public good is better. 4 Two examples are cited in the Financial Times (17 November 2000) by David Pilling reporting on patents. One concerns a Maryland firm, Human Genome Sciences, which was criticised for relying too heavily on patents to protect its databases of DNA fragments known as expressed sequence tags; so, indeed, rather than rely on the patent to protect its intellectual property it has evolved into a company to produce its own drugs. The second is that of a Seattle company which could not afford the $1.6m needed to register 5,600 genes belonging to a bacteria that plagues cystic fibrosis sufferers, so it published them on the internet. After academics had set to work on the information, and in effect refined its targets for it, the company filed its patents. 5 In their words, blocking patents may be used either to extract license revenue or to force entry into cross-licensing negotiation. They find differences in strategies according to the type of industry in question, but very broadly in the former case the patent holders may have no intention of commercialising a product but seek a share of revenue

80 Marilyn Strathern

6

7

8

9

10

11 12 13 14 15

16

simply through licensing, while in the latter case they force their way into rival technologies. ‘For example, the recent ruling that gene fragments are separately patentable suggests that the commercialization of a single biotechnology drug product may now require rights over numerous patents’ (Cohen et al. 2000: 19). ‘Expressed sequence tags’ of otherwise unknown biological function (Heller and Eisenberg 1998; Crespi 2000) have been a particular source of controversy here. Commenting on the way the patent universe has been expanding, Drahos (1999) notes that the scope of patentable subject matter has increasingly been given an inclusive interpretation while, at the same time, restrictions on patentability have been narrowly interpreted. Thus the US Patent Code defines standards for ‘novelty’ and ‘nonobviousness’ but the courts are said to apply these standards more loosely than is required by statute (Barton 2000: 1933); in the European Patent Office, restrictions on the patentability of human treatment [normally excluded] can be overcome by formulaic means (see Pottage 1998 on the narrow use of legal formulae). In Merz’s words, many patents are being licensed to large clinical laboratories which then enforce their patents and prevent other clinical molecular pathologists and geneticists from performing the patented tests. Patents are thus being used to create monopolies in the testing service market. They may also constrain the delivery of local medical services. ‘Reach-through’ royalties, for instance, are royalties on second generation products derived from a patented technique. ‘ “Royalty stacking” can swamp the development costs of some therapies to the point where development is not economically feasible’ (IPRRTMB 2000). Embraced in a positive way by some. Supercomplexity is the term given by the educationalist Ronald Barnett (2000) to a heated up world as it looks from the university. He is passionate about the need to embrace uncertainties: ‘Supercomeplexity is the world into which the graduates of universities will go; it marks out the experiences they will face of continual challenge and insecurity. … [They will need the] capacity to embrace multiple and conflicting frameworks and to offer their own positive interventions in that milieu.’ The supercomplex graduate has to grasp unpredictable intersections of knowledges which fold in on one another in convoluted, crisis-like, locations, while academics, diversified through their relationships with the wider community, will work with one another in epistemological ‘turmoil’. Not that the condition of overflow is not confined to the kinds of crisis situations with which ethics committees (say) have to deal. Hybridity alone, of which there are several ‘cold’ examples (Latour 1993), does not necessarily produce ‘heat’. Siegler’s subject matter is institutional ethics committees, which in a clinical context (according to his account) can often produce an ‘immoral’ outcome which fudges responsibility by virtue of its very remove from the purview of the exclusive specialist. Barry (pers. comm.) comments that the whole phenomenon of Commissions relates to opposition conventionally made between government and market (and government and politics). I have drawn on this material in diverse places. Originally prepared for a conference on Reproductive values: the individual and society in 1997 (the Centre for Social Ethics and Policy, Manchester, and Comm. of Europ. Communities BIOMED-2 Programme on ‘Reproductive choice and control of fertility’), portions can be found in Strathern 1999, ch. 4; Strathern, 2003. For a commentary, see Basen, Eichler and Lippmann 1993. Similar but more modest exercises were being carried out elsewhere, such as the Warnock Enquiry which in the UK led to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 (e.g. Mulkay 1997). But there has been no other population consulted on such a scale and with such a thorough airing of multiple voices. The constitutional pluralism of Canada, with multilingualism

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and the rights of women and minority peoples recognised in the national Charter, was a significant environment. Note that this is as unproblematic to write in English as the Melanesian inversions and eversions are problematic to express. Surveys to determine views and attitudes targeted a population (by phone) controlled for factors such as age, ethnicity, region. There were, among many kinds of additional consultants, ten focus groups for ascertaining the ‘specific attitudes’ of Aboriginal peoples: key representatives from ethnocultural communities were thus sought for their unique attitudes (although the reported patterns turn out to be similar to those of the ‘general public’). In the sense of social person, that is, an actor with particular attributes of agency. Massey (1993) points out that prior to the working of the Commission there were no new reproductive technologies (NRT) advocacy groups as such; the only constituencies of which the Commission was initially sure were medical and research groups. Of course there is a sense in which we may regard the four frames as producing externalities, but they do so in relation to one another, so they (the frames) appear as a set of internalising and externalising strategies. This is how, for example, we might understand the different positions occupied by the ‘individual,’ now a member of society and now in antithesis to society. (These are projections and introjections not of motivation but of roles, agencies and so forth.) A notable example comes from Eichler’s (1996) observation on the way in which the new reproductive procedures are, as technologies, rendered external to arguments about family formation. Indeed at several junctures ‘society’ itself is framed by separating it from ‘technology’ (Strathern (2003) tracks this and other separations further). Thus in a section entitled ‘Impact on society’, the Report asks how the new reproductive technologies will ‘change our understanding of how we relate to each other as members of society?’ (Canada 1993: 45) Depicting the technologies as having an impact on society renders them notionally beyond it. That is, technology is ‘outside’ society. This formula is reiterated in the separate section called ‘Impact on family structure’. ‘Social’ factors, with their own trajectory of development and change, are in turn seen to have implications for NRT. That is, society is ‘outside’ technology. Many values were given voice. But, at least in the final Report, it was never made clear on a systematic basis how the values were distributed or located across the different kinds of data that the Commissioners were considering, e.g in reference to how the data was collected or the (social, cultural) context in which views were enunciated, and whether individual choices were being stressed or people were appealing to collective sentiments. In other words, analysis of the data as data was not seen part of the Report’s business. Without such information there can be no questioning of the extent to which particular values resonated with what the Commissioners themselves, as a specific body of people, held as obvious and right – the pre-figured assumptions that came from their own real-life worlds. Diversity thus appears as a double feature of the population at large, both social and cultural, and as characteristic of (to use the Report’s terms) individuals and of groups alike. This is only one of the Commissioner’s six grounds for dissent, which are published in full, the ‘Six Dissenting opinions’ (1993: 1054–65) being followed by 80 pages of ‘detailed reasoning’ for them. This was, for example, documented in the Report in relation to single and lesbian mothers. The immediate response by the federal government had been to turn up the heat again – in the wake of the Report and its 293 specific recommendations it conducted its own consultation exercise, ‘with provinces and territories as well as more than 40 organizations representing women, the disabled, medical and research groups, infertile Canadians, and other’ (Health Canada news release, 27 July 1995). The Moratorium

82 Marilyn Strathern asked medical and research communities to refrain from applying a number of controversial technologies or practices (they were listed) to humans beings. The list overlapped with but was not the same as the list of practices which the Commission wished to criminalise.

References Barnett, R. (2000) Realizing the University in an Age of Supercomplexity, Buckingham: Society for Research into Higher Education and Open University Press. Barry, A. (2000) [1999/2000] ‘Invention and inertia’, Cambridge Anthropology, 21: 62–70. Barton, J. (2000) ‘Reforming the patent system’, Science, 287: 1933. Basen, G., M. Eichler and A. Lippmann (eds) (1993) Misconceptions: The Social Construction of Choice and the New Reproductive and Genetic Technologies, 2 volumes, Quebec: Voyageur Publishing. Callon, M. (ed.) (1998) The Laws of the Markets, Oxford: Blackwell and The Sociological Review. Canada, Minister of Government Services (1993) Proceed with Care: Final Report of the Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technologies, Ottawa. Cohen, W. M., R. R. Nelson and J. P. Walsh (2000) ‘Protecting their intellectual assets: appropriability conditions and why U.S. manufacturing firms patent (or not)’, National Bureau of Economic Research, Massachusetts, Working Paper 7552. Crespi, S. (2000) ‘An analysis of moral issues affecting patenting inventions in the life sciences: a European perspective’, Science and Engineering Ethics, 6, 2: 157–80. Drahos, P. (1999) Biotechnology patents, market and morality, European Intellectual Property Review, 21: 441–9. Eichler, M. (1996) ‘The construction of technologically-mediated families. Looking at the Royal Commission Report from a family perspective’, in M. Baker (ed.) Families: Changing Trends in Canada, 3rd edn, Toronto: McGraw-Hill. Foster, R. (1995) Social Reproduction and History in Melanesia: Mortuary Ritual, Gift Exchange and Custom in the Tanga Islands, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heller, M. and R. Eisenberg (1998) ‘Can patents deter innovation? The anticommons in biomedical research’, Science, 280: 698–701. Intellectual Property Rights and Research Tools in Molecular Biology (2000) Intellectual Property Rights and Research Tools in Molecular Biology, ch 5, available online at http:/ stills.nap.edu/html/property/5.html. Latour, B. (1993) We Have Never Been Modern (trans. C. Porter), London: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Margalit, A. (1996) The Decent Society (trans. N. Goldblum), Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Massey, C. (1993) ‘The public hearings of the Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technologies’, in G. Basen, M. Eichler and A. Lippmann (eds) Misconceptions: The Social Construction of Choice and the New Reproductive and Genetic Technologies, Quebec: Voyageur Publishing. Merz, J.F. (1999) ‘Disease gene patts: overcoming ethical constraints on clinical laboratory medicine’, Clinical Chemistry, 45: 324–30. Mosko, M. (1985) Quadripartite Structures: Categories, Relations and Homologies in Bush Mekeo Cultures, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mulkay, M. (1997) The Embryo Research Debate: Science and the Politics of Reproduction, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Nowotny, H., P. Scott and M. Gibbons (2001) Re-thinking Science: Knowledge and the Public in an Age of Uncertainty, Oxford: Polity Press. Pottage, A. (1998) ‘The inscription of life in law: genes, parents, and bio-politics’, Modern Law Review, 61: 740–65. Siegler, M. (1999) ‘Ethics committees: decisions by bureaucracy’, in H. Kuhse and P. Singer (eds) Bioethics: An Anthology, Oxford: Blackwell. Strathern, M. (1999) ‘Refusing information’, in Property, Substance and Effect, London: Athlone Press. Strathern, M. (2003) ‘Redescribing society’, in H. Nowotny, P. Scott and M. Gibbons (eds) Reflections on the New Production of Knowledge, special issue, Minerva, 41: 263–76. Wagner, R. (1976) The Invention of Culture, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. Weir, L. (1996) ‘Recent developments in the government of pregnancy’, Economy and Society, 25: 372–92.

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The anti-political economy Andrew Barry

The political and the anti-political In The Laws of the Markets, Michel Callon refrains from any explicit discussion of politics. Yet, particularly in the final chapter of the book, it seems that a consideration of politics is at the centre of his concerns. In that chapter, in a discussion of framing and overflowing, he speaks of a distinction between cold and hot negotiations. In cold negotiations, agreement regarding overflows is easily arrived at. “The possible world states are already known or easy to identify: calculated decisions can be taken” (Callon 1998: 261). By contrast in hot negotiations everything is up for grabs. Particular agencies may try to make calculations, but the basis for those calculations may be radically called into question (ibid.: 260). Today, hot negotiations proliferate. He cites BSE as an example. Let us begin with a very conventional definition of politics. We can take politics to refer to all those kinds of institutions, agencies and practices broadly associated with international, national and local government. In thinking about politics in this sense, the perspective adopted in The Laws of the Markets offers a good starting point. Callon argues that the discipline of economics tends to forget that the formation of markets is a technical matter, requiring extraordinary investments in the law, technology, architecture, accountancy and, sometimes, economics. Likewise, political scientists tend to forget the remarkable technicality of politics. Devices such as press conferences, parliamentary debates, public demonstrations, public opinion polls, political analyses, electoral registers and so on are not incidental to politics. They play a critical role in making it possible for politicians, trade unionists, activists, lobbyists and citizens to act as political agents. The political actor does not come isolated into the political arena any more than the consumer comes isolated into the market place. They come with a whole array of material devices and forms of knowledge which serve to frame political action. There is a physics to politics.1 Consider the question of the capacity of persons to act as voters. The design, distribution and counting of ballot papers requires constant and substantial investments. The frame of representative democracy breaks down when these investments are not properly made, and the frame made secure; when questions can be raised

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about the marks made on ballot papers, registration of voters, and the distribution of polling booths. In this context, we should push the analogy between voting and market transactions. Doubtless voters are thoroughly entangled in their social world. They receive advice from many directions: friends, television, politicians and so on. But, as in a market, in voting there is disentanglement. Representative democracy is just as different from a culture of permanent political activity, as a market economy is different from one based on the exchange of gifts. It makes no demands on the citizen once the election has ended. After the vote is cast, the mark of the vote itself does not bear (or should not bear) any visible trace of the complexity of the voter’s investments in the process or its outcome. Once the choice is made, the vote becomes detached from its entanglement in a particular place, time and personal experience. It is rare, as the case of American presidential election of 2000 demonstrates, that this framing is challenged and disintegrates as each technical component is scrutinised.2 Such a perspective – on the technology of politics – does indicate limitations to those accounts of politics that primarily view politics in terms of struggles and negotiations between classes, interests and movements (as is normal in political sociology). It is also suggestive of the weaknesses of those accounts of politics that focus on questions of identity and discourse at the expense of an analysis of the technical and institutional forms which politics takes.3 It points to the fact that politics, as conventionally understood, is actually a rather specialist activity, which is associated with particular techniques and practices. Sociology has tended to want to find politics in everything, including in the discourse of economics. But it should not be forgotten that there is a specificity to politics. Max Weber’s sense of the importance of considering the particular characteristics of politics as a vocation has often been forgotten in the effort to expand our sense of politics.4 Nonetheless, focusing on the technology of politics makes politics too much of a technical and instrumental matter. The Foucaultian analysis of technologies of government seems to fall into this trap.5 Politics, after all, is both about contestation, and the containment of contestation. It is about the possibility of governing, and about questioning and disrupting the conditions for government.6 It is about conflict, negotiation and the resolution of conflict. For government to be possible it is necessary to reach common decisions, however arbitrary, negotiated and provisional such decisions are. The fact that such common decisions have to be arrived at in the face of persisting disagreement and in the absence of ‘rational’ justification is one of the persisting circumstances of politics. Jeremy Waldron makes the point succinctly: The prospect of persisting disagreement must be regarded, I think, as one of the elementary conditions of modern politics. Nothing we can say about politics makes much sense if we proceed without taking this condition into account. We may say … that disagreement among citizens as to what they should do, as a political body, is one of the circumstances of politics. It is not all there is to the circumstances of politics, of course: there is also the need to act together, even though we disagree about what we do … the circumstances of politics

86 Andrew Barry are a coupled pair: disagreement wouldn’t matter if people didn’t prefer a common decision; and the need for a common decision would not give rise to politics as we know it if there wasn’t at least the potential for disagreement about what the common decision would be. (Waldron 1999: 153–4)7 In this context, it is useful to make a distinction between politics – as a set of technical practices, forms of knowledge and institutions – and the political as an index of the space of disagreement. An action is political, in this latter sense, to the extent that it opens up the possibility for disagreement. Political disagreements will, in general, take established forms and occur between clearly identifiable political actors and positions. Yet the conduct of specific actions may have political effects precisely in so far as they cannot be understood in the conventional terms of political discourse. Georgio Agamben, for example has discussed the way in which the events of Tiananmen Square had political consequences not because they were a reflection or articulation of a particular political interest or ideology but precisely in so far as they subverted the frame within which politics was conventionally understood in China (Agamben 1993: 84–6). In a different context, Vololona Rabeharisoa and Michel Callon have studied the new forms of association between patients’ groups and scientists which disrupt the boundaries which have conventionally existed between experts and publics (Rabeharisoa and Callon 1999; Callon 1999). Seen in these terms, what is commonly termed politics is not necessarily – or generally – political in its consequences. Politics can often be profoundly antipolitical in its effects; suppressing potential spaces of contestation; placing limits on the possibilities for debate and confrontation. Indeed, one might say that one of the core functions of politics has been, and should be, to place limits on the political. Politicians, officials and activists have developed a remarkable set of skills in containing and channelling the form and direction of political disagreement. Such skills, in using available institutional procedures, in holding public inquiries, in maintaining organisational or party discipline, in understanding how to draw up legislation, in using the possibilities for patronage and developing voting procedures, in creating arrangements where consensus can be reached, and in managing the press and public relations and so on, are often extraordinarily technical. Just as we might investigate the place played by economics, marketing and accountancy in the formation of markets, so too we might consider the importance of political science, political theory and public opinion research in justifying and informing the conduct of anti-politics, and reproducing particular forms of anti-political action. 8 To recognise that a lot of politics (and much political theory and philosophy) has anti-political effects is not necessarily to denounce it. There are huge differences in the forms of anti-political action that exist; ranging from those which recognise the value of disagreement to those which, through the use of censorship, force or violence, suppress any form of opposition. A democratic society is one which places particular value on the right to dissent and to contest, but the defence of this

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political norm should exist in conjunction with the protection and enhancement of other cultural, economic and political rights.9 In such a society, legislation is not grounded in reason, and rarely in a consensus, but may be justified in relation to the needs of the collective to reach agreement on matters of common interest, while recognising the necessary existence of continuing disagreement about what the collective is, what its needs are, and what is of common interest. Isabelle Stengers uses this as a starting point for a positive definition of political science: The specialist in political science deals with a dimension of human societies that is not the material for an ‘objective’ definition, practiced in ‘the name of science’, because in itself this dimension corresponds to an invention of definitions. Who is a citizen? What are his or her rights and duties? Where does the private end? Where does the public begin? (Stengers 2000: 59) In politics the collective is not a given, but an entity in process.10 The fact that there is never likely to be a consensus about what the collective is and what individual rights and duties are does not prevent the emergence of a common view. Conversely the need for a common view does not make the fact of disagreement evaporate. “Instead it means that the basis for common action in matters of justice have to be forged in the heat of our disagreements” (Waldron 1999: 155). In general, legislation and technical regulation have the effects of placing actions and objects (provisionally) outside the realm of public contestation, thereby regularising the conduct of economic and social life, with both beneficial and negative consequences. The divisions between the realm of political contestation, on the one hand, and the realms of law, administration, science and the economy on the other are always temporary and, in principle, contestable. Those engaged in politics are necessarily concerned with the tension and the relation between political and anti-political activity; between the politicisation and the depoliticisation of other realms.

The politics of calculation But what of the specific relation between politics, technology and the economy? In what way can the organisation and operation of markets either become a political matter, or be prevented from becoming so? And what role does scientific and technical calculation have in these processes? A starting point for thinking about these issues is the opposition, which is often drawn by sociologists, between calculation and politics. In sociology, from Weber onwards, calculation is often regarded as an essentially anti-political instrument, in the sense used here. Calculation is thought to reduce the space of the political and to limit the possibility for disagreement. When situations become calculable it is taken to indicate the fact that political contestation has ended. There is something of this argument in The Laws of the Markets, although it is reformulated in terms of the concept of framing. A situation becomes calculable, according to Callon, when it has become framed. “No calculation is possible without this framing which allows

88 Andrew Barry one to provide a clear list of the entities, states of the world, possible actions and expected outcomes of these actions” (Callon 1998: 19). The performance of calculation and the formation of calculable agents depend on the existence of a frame. But how does this occur? How are situations framed, such that calculation becomes possible at all? Consider one example – the measurement of urban pollution caused by cars. Pollution typically takes the form of what Callon calls an overflow (Callon 1998: 250–5). It frequently exists outside of the frame of normal economic calculation. All the effects of a car purchase on noise, the safety of children, on local levels of carbon monoxide and ozone, and on global warming, are simply not taken into account when a car is purchased – or at least they are unlikely to be consciously taken into account in the transaction between the buyer and seller. However, this situation may change once a local authority places pollution monitoring devices next to the road, and car drivers are fined for driving polluting cars.11 The frame can shift. The possibility of being fined might begin to affect the driver’s calculations about what car she drives and to what extent she keeps it in a good state of repair. In being made visible through measurement and through the operation of the law, it is hoped that pollution will enter into the frame of the car driver’s decisions. She might choose to buy a car which uses a cleaner fuel, or has lower emissions, or abandon the car altogether. Likewise, the environmental costs of motoring might enter into the manufacturers’ calculations as well – as governments – receiving more and more negative environmental information from the streets – raise fuel taxes and create tax differentials between more and less polluting forms of fuel and more or less fuel efficient vehicles. Through measurement, overflows become calculable. The costs of such overflows become factored into specific economic transactions, in ways that the immediate participants may not always be aware. This is a version of the old sociological story about rationalisation. Through measurement, a whole range of objects and problems become brought into the frame of economic calculation. In this way, scientific measurement and economic calculation have largely anti-political, but arguably beneficial, effects. Calculation increases reflexivity about the organisation of the market, but it also effects a reduction in the potential space of political conflict. When they meet in the showroom, the car buyer and the car seller do not enter into a heated controversy about the politics of global warming or the effects of cars on the health of schoolchildren or on asthma sufferers. In various ways these have already been made calculable by others – working in Whitehall, Brussels and in laboratories in Paris and Munich. The political differences and moral dilemmas of car buyers have been partially resolved elsewhere. Those involved in the market do not worry about morality or politics, not because they are immoral or apolitical, but because enormous efforts have been made to make morality and politics calculable, and make them happen in other places. The use of measurement, in combination with regulation, policing and the law serve to reduce the possibility of political conflict over the purchase and use of cars. The impressive efforts to measure urban air pollution are indicative of a broader

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trend. Recent years have witnessed increasing activity on the part of government, consumer and environmental groups and standardisation bodies to monitor the properties and effects of technical practices. A vast number of engineers and natural and social scientists are engaged not in research but in the business of measuring and monitoring properties.12 Such measurement activities are conducted for the purposes of environmental monitoring, quality control and assurance, market regulation or consumer advice. At the same time, in more or less rigorous ways, consumers themselves are involved in this enterprise. Increasingly, in the interest of environmental protection and fuel economy, individuals and families have themselves been encouraged to monitor their use of technology and have been given the information to do so.13 Callon and his colleagues have spoken of an economy of qualities in which the measurement of properties becomes increasingly important (Callon et al., this volume). This idea can be extended. It is possible to talk today of a government of qualities, and of the critical role of various levels of government in both fostering and extending this economy and in funding and regulating what I would call metrological regimes.14 In the UK, the garage mechanic who performs the MoT test on the car, to see if its exhaust emissions meet national and European standards, is a typical member of a metrological regime.15 The mechanic’s practices have the effect of translating a particular framing of a political debate (about pollution) into the economic field. In a mediated form, his metrological work also plays a critical role in the calculations of buyers and sellers concerning the value of the car. In this way, politics and the market are connected to each other, but political confrontation does not come to interfere with market transactions.16

The instability of framing But the situation is more complex than this. Measurement and calculation do not only have anti-political effects. They do not just have the effect of restricting political controversy in the economic field. They also, at the same time, provide the basis for an opening up of new objects and sites of disagreement. In what follows, I discuss two specific issues. One concerns what I term the fragility of metrological regimes. The second issue concerns the inventiveness of measurement practices. The fragility of metrological regimes While the enormous efforts of the authorities to measure pollution look impressive from a distance, the whole apparatus of measurement and calculation is much more fragile than it first appears. In part this fragility is a function of the weakness of standardised metrological regimes when judged against the more complex analyses that often derive from on-going research. In the case of routine air pollution measurement, for example, from the point of view of research scientists such information is massively overproduced.17 Measurements of air pollution in the city only occur at particular points and it is very difficult to say what air pollution is at other places in the city, even a hundred yards away from the point at which a

90 Andrew Barry permanent air quality monitoring device is placed.18 Certainly, it is almost impossible to establish an exact correlation between air pollution measurements and health statistics, except in extreme conditions. Greater levels of pollution certainly do contribute to bad health but it is very difficult to say how much (Barry 2001: 170). Moreover, despite the efforts of garage mechanics to measure the levels of pollution from car exhausts, such measurements may actually have surprisingly little relation to the performance of cars on the road. In the mechanic’s garage, the composition of the exhaust fumes from the car is measured when the engine is idling.19 On the road, however, the exhaust is likely to contain the highest concentrations of pollutants when the car is starting, or in a traffic jam, or accelerating rapidly, and there is no straightforward relation between such concentrations and the concentrations of common pollutants as measured in the garage. A car that fails the mechanic’s test in the garage may, in practice, produce lower levels of pollution on the road than one that passes the test. In the garage the car is abstracted from the complexity of the relations within which it exists at other times. On the road, it always functions in conjunction with a driver and in relation to a whole series of other entities including other cars, traffic lights, fog, rain, speed cameras and policemen.20 Increasing efforts are made to measure pollution levels but for scientists it is very difficult to know what the results of these activities mean. One could tell a comparable story about other metrological regimes. In general, the formation and legitimacy of metrological regimes increasingly rely on the use of standardised procedures.21 Yet standardised procedures will not be able to capture the complexity of objects and practices in actuality. Moreover, once established and diffused, metrological regimes based on the use of common standards may be difficult to transform, despite a recognition of their weaknesses. Their limitations may be difficult or costly to rectify.22 Certainly, routine monitoring and measurement activities often have antipolitical effects. Governments, environmental organisations, laboratories and firms may all apply themselves to the task of increasing the quantity and enhancing the accuracy of environmental data. Attention is devoted to improving the practice of monitoring and testing. Garage mechanics are required to do further training to make sure that their measurements are comparable with each other. But this vast metrological regime is much more fragile than one might imagine. The situation has been framed – in the sense that a whole series of other questions about urban pollution and urban politics have been displaced (Rydin 1998) but the organisation of any regime is always open to the possibility of contestation. There is an agreement, whether consensual or forced, to accept the truth of measurements and the legitimacy of the regulatory practices with which they are associated, but this agreement is not grounded in science, but in the much more uncertain procedures of metrological practice (Latour 1999a: 258–9). In these circumstances the work of scientists can have political rather than antipolitical effects. For scientific work can identify the weaknesses in this vast exercise in routine monitoring and measurement. Potentially at least, far from restricting the space of contestation, further scientific calculations may serve to open it up. They may reveal the limitations of all the investments of governments and

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environmental organisations in monitoring pollution levels. Indeed, in the case of air quality measurement it is relatively easy for research scientists to demonstrate the weaknesses of existing metrological regimes.23 To be sure, there is no general political crisis about how car exhaust fumes are measured or how air quality is monitored on the street. Consumers simply accept the validity of the test, and environmentalists press for further increases in the level of monitoring. But in other cases the weaknesses of metrological regimes are revealed. Consider, in particular, the case of BSE. Despite the huge investments in the inspection of farms and abattoirs, for example, the limitations of such inspection regimes have become apparent. After many years, there is still no commonly accepted method for ensuring that beef is safe to eat across Europe. Given that routine metrology is so weak to further interrogation, how do metrological regimes survive? There are two possible options. One option is to protect the fragility of metrological regimes. Measurements and assessments are routinely conducted, by abattoir inspectors, garage mechanics, structural engineers, financial analysts, auditors and so on, but the form and content of their assessments are rarely subject to wider scrutiny and debate. To be sure, the ways in which the fragility of metrological regimes are protected are various. They depend on the use of a range of anti-political devices. An explanation of why it took so long for BSE to be recognised might include, for example, discussion of the particular culture of scientific advice in Britain, the existence of a culture of secrecy in government, the role of the farming lobby and a failure to adopt a precautionary policy in the context of scientific uncertainty.24 In the other instances, the fragility of metrological regimes relies on the fact that metrology itself is given a market value. For example, in the British context, much regulatory and measurement work is contracted. Government laboratories have come to have a semi-privatised existence, acting as agencies of central government and, potentially, competing with other agencies for government business. They “sell” their advice to central government. According to the private company, Serco, which manages the government laboratory responsible for fundamental measurement standards, there is no conflict between an orientation towards the market and a public sector ethos. Serco has a particularly strong culture that embodies people, ethics and an ethos that enables us to work easily with public sector bodies. We adopt a stance towards customer relationships that can be reconciled with the provision of public services through the private sector. This is not an artificial stance that we have taken with a view to a particular market – it is a culture that has become embedded because it describes the organisation we wish to be.25 This contractual arrangement – amongst other factors – has made it difficult for scientists to raise questions about the reliability of metrological regimes even if they so wanted. Once their knowledge is sold to government, they may simply be unaware of how their knowledge is represented in public by government officials and ministers.26 At the same time, because they depend on government for business,

92 Andrew Barry laboratories that sell their services may be less likely to produce conclusions that criticise government policy. The second option is to open up metrological regimes to greater scrutiny and to acknowledge the weaknesses of measurement and the uncertainties of economic and scientific calculations. In the wake of the BSE crisis, amongst other problems, there are some indications of movements towards this option.27 In Britain and France there have been calls for demands for more constructive debates between experts and publics. Some writers have framed the need for a greater level of dialogue between experts and publics in terms of the notion of risk.28 “When society has problems with science, it is often over questions of uncertainty and risk” (House of Lords 2000: 7). But the issues are much wider. As Michel Callon argues elsewhere, many of the debates associated with BSE, GMOs and, most recently, foot-and-mouth disease have not been narrowly concerned with the issue of risk. They have involved a much wider set of issues including the role of American multinationals, agricultural employment and sustainability, the ethics of intensive farming and the dominant market position of supermarket chains. In short, recent years have seen increasing demands for a politicisation of the technological economy.29 The inventiveness of measurement Metrology puts new objects into circulation. It multiplies realities by creating objects that can be regarded neither as reflections of reality, nor the expressions of the social subjects who created them. Reality is not a blank screen onto which social categories can be projected. Metrology creates new objects that make a difference in the world. When it is presented as information, measurements do not merely inform – they make demands on those who should be informed (Strathern 1999, 2000). In so far as it is treated as the source of information, metrology has performative and regulative consequences. Consider the importance of measurements of, and experiments on, metal fatigue in rail tracks following the rail crash at Hatfield, on the main line north of London, in October 2000.30 At Hatfield, a train travelling from London King’s Cross to Leeds derailed while travelling at 115 miles per hour. It soon became clear that the accident had been caused by a broken rail. According to the owners of the track, Railtrack plc, within hours Railtrack engineers had “identified some significant deterioration in the condition of the rail”.31 Later it was stated in public that this was likely to have been caused by “gauge corner cracking”, itself the result of metal fatigue. Despite reports in January 2000 by engineers working for the Railtrack sub-contractor, Balfour Beatty, that the Hatfield track should have been re-railed, the track had not been re-railed, nor had speed restrictions been imposed in order to reduce the stress on the weakened track. Later reports highlighted the systematic underinvestment of Railtrack in track repair, the lack of engineering expertise in the Railtrack board, and the failure to maintain an adequate programme of monitoring of the state of railway infrastructure. The company did not have a detailed register of its assets or their condition. Assessments of the

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conditions of track that had been made were not systematic, coordinated, nor acted upon. The Hatfield crash was not an accident.32 To be sure, metal fatigue in railway track is difficult to detect, to investigate and to analyse. First, laboratory simulations are extraordinarily inexact. Tracks in laboratories can never be subjected to the same range of temperature variations, surface contamination, and stress resulting from complex variations in train speed and load, which they will be subjected to in commercial use. The level of track lubrication, which varies considerably with weather conditions and the form of track maintenance, significantly affects crack growth, for poorly understood reasons.33 Second, it may be difficult to locate or detect cracks caused by metal fatigue on rails in use. Indeed, according to the UK government Health and Safety Executive, the ultrasound equipment commonly used to detect cracks on railways may not have been able to detect the kind of cracks found in the rails at Hatfield. The Hatfield cracks may have been too slanted from the vertical: The [ultrasound] techniques [used on British railways] allow for rail to be classified as ‘untestable’ under certain circumstances, in particular, when metal has been lost from the rail surface by a process known as ‘spalling’ which appears to have been the case at Hatfield. Laboratory examination has revealed that the transverse fatigue cracks present in the Hatfield rail were located in the angular range 20°–35° from the vertical. Hence, had the rail been testable it is possible that all the fatigue cracks would not have been detected. (HSE 2001: 13) But, following a crash, however difficult they are to interpret, and however inexact and contested earlier observations and measurements of rail track fatigue had been, they have to be taken into account. They demand a response on the part of those who are in receipt of such information. They have an immediate regulative effect. “Railtrack acted swiftly to accept responsibility for the terrible accident at Hatfield. Railtrack’s actions since the accident have been taken in the light of the lessons learned from the initial investigation and the engineering understanding of gauge corner cracking.”34 Given the uncertainties in the science of metal fatigue and the evident weaknesses of its existing metrological regime, Railtrack responded with extreme caution. Speed restrictions were immediately imposed throughout the UK railway network, causing chaos as it was no longer possible to keep to existing timetables. Sociologists have sometimes wanted to find political or sectional interests embedded in the calculations of experts (Callon and Latour 1992). But the case of the rail track suggests a different conclusion. In this case, the observations of the Health and Safety Executive and the calculations of experts about fatigue in rail tracks had political effects precisely because such calculations are not reducible to politics. Metallurgy and mechanical engineering – the most material of disciplines, which contain no obvious traces of political impurity – proved to be the most profoundly political in their effects.35 Because they were not associated with any particular political doctrine, the mechanics of metal fatigue raised questions about

94 Andrew Barry the viability of a model of economic organisation based on the regulation of private monopolies. Far from having anti-political effects, the calculations of engineers had political resonances.36 They flooded across the political field. Demonstrations of the state of rail tracks were political demonstrations of a kind, but they were not ones that could be associated with any identifiable political actors. As a result, they were much more difficult to police than demonstrations conducted in the street. Fatigue cannot be explained away as the expression of particular political interests. It exists, as Whitehead would say, as a stubborn fact.37 In Isabelle Stengers’ account, an event can be understood as a creator of difference. It is in the middle of a field of effects, which does not mean that it is the cause of such effects. An event has a factual existence, yet this existence does not pre-determine the response to it, but creates the necessity of a response (Stengers 1997: 215–16). The force of an event is itself in question. It is resisted only when its existence is ignored: The scope of the event is part of its effects, of the problem posed in the future it creates. Its measure is the object of multiple interpretations, but it can also be measured by the very multiplicity of these interpretations: all those who, in one way or another, refer to it or invent a way of using it to construct their own position, become part of the event’s effect. In other words, every reading – even a reading that denounces the event as a fake – still situates the one who proposes the reading as an heir, as belonging to the future whose creation the event contributed to. (Stengers 2000: 67–8) In this sense, the failure of the track at Hatfield turned out to be a political event. It became the centre of actions, questions and responses on the part of a vast range of agencies that were compelled to respond to the fact of the crash. The stubborn fact of metal fatigue demanded a response, yet the course of this response could not be predicted. This response was not merely technical. However briefly, it raised questions concerning the relations between the organisation of markets, the management of companies, the role of engineers and the performance of technology. It served to reveal the inadequacies of the particular form of market organisation, which had been established through the privatisation of the railways. For a few months, ‘Hatfield’ came to occupy the centre of field of political activity that went far beyond the local problems of repairing a particular stretch of track.

Politics and the technological economy This chapter began with a discussion of politics of a conventional kind: the politics of elections, political parties and governments. This form of politics relies on a careful framing of political actions and events. It demands the development of anti-political as well as political technique. Parliamentary architecture and procedure, press management and public relations, organisational discipline, policy analysis and focus groups, party membership and polling stations provide just some

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of the array of devices and forms of knowledge that serve to contain and channel the space of politics. Political actions and events are framed, and they are kept separated, as far as is possible, from any contamination by the economic field. Although political actors are always entangled in more or less complex networks of economic relations and financial obligations and transactions, somehow miraculously, the vast technical apparatus of politics manages to keep these fields more or less distinct,38 although the exceptions seem to be increasingly common.39 A vote in an election or in parliament should bear no visible traces of economic interests any more than the money exchanged for a car bears any visible traces of political ideology. The increasing importance of measurement and information in the economy might be thought to have anti-political effects. Governments have become less concerned with questions of distribution and public ownership, and more concerned with fostering a culture of regulation, monitoring, measurement, auditing, testing and compliance.40 And all these activities – the whole government of qualities, to echo Callon – can be delegated to experts. Metrology – in all its forms – becomes a secure relay between the political and the economic fields. It connects them, yet keeps them distinct and pure. But this is not exactly what happens. On the one hand, the development and preservation of these new metrological regimes actually requires a lot of antipolitical work. Measurement activities are much more vulnerable to interrogation than one might imagine. Metrology, in itself, does not have the resources to defend itself against interrogation. Institutions need either to be protected from external scrutiny, or external scrutiny must be managed in a way that does not provoke an excessive politicisation. Contracts need to be awarded to bodies that can be trusted. Reports and information must be released at the appropriate time to the appropriate audiences.41 The appropriate persons needed to be appointed to committees.42 In so far as external scrutiny does occur, it must be channelled and organised through the organisation of public enquiries and democratic forums. Measurement activities do not increase reflexivity in general. They intensify it in certain directions (Power 1997). On the other hand, measurement can have political effects. It can reveal objects and phenomena which cannot be merely explained away as expressions of political or economic interests. Far from creating a clean and secure connection between the world of politics and the world of the economy, measurement becomes a conduit for contamination. The organisation of economic activity becomes a political matter.

Acknowledgements Thanks to Mike Michael for his comments on the chapter and to Catherine Pitt for helping me to understand the mechanics of rail track fatigue. Thanks above all to David Owen for his extensive comments and contribution to the argument.

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Notes 1 cf. Waldron (1999, chapter 6). 2 See the collection of papers on the US presidential election brought together in the June 2001 issue of Social Studies of Science. As Mike Lynch notes, the media coverage of the election drew attention to the “local contingencies associated with the politicotechniques of voting and vote counting” (Lynch 2001: 417). 3 See, for example, Butler, Laclau and *i)ek (2000). 4 A sense of the specificity of politics as a practice and an experience is suggested in the work of Michael Oakeshott in his criticism of rationalist accounts of politics (Oakeshott, 1962) in his criticism of rationalist accounts of politics. 5 cf. Barry et al. (1995). 6 Political theorists have tended to want to place emphasis on one side of this equation or the other. See, for example, the different perspectives on the political collected together by Seyla Benhabib (1996). Political theorists are divided over the question of whether the goal of politics should be the end of politics or its continuation. Should politics lead to consensus and agreement or should it, as Bonnie Honig argues, “affirm the inescapability of conflict and the ineradicability of resistance” (Honig 1996: 258). 7 My thanks to David Owen for both the argument and the reference to Waldron’s work. 8 Although see Bonnie Honig (1993) on the association of the dominant tradition of political theory with the justification of anti-politics. 9 Hannah Arendt (1964) argued that a social and economic justification for the antipolitics of administration and management historically subverted and displaced the value of democratic freedom. 10 For an expansion of the notion of the collective that includes non-humans as well as humans see Latour (1999b: 351). Latour draws here on the philosophy of AN Whitehead (1929, 1985). 11 cf. Latour (1999a: 186). 12 The development of metrology in natural science and engineering on a large scale is a nineteenth-century phenomenon. On the history of metrology see, in particular, the essays collected in Wise (1995). In the advanced industrial countries, metrological work is a major recipient of public money. Institutions involved include the National Bureau of Standards in the USA, the National Physical Laboratory and the Laboratory of the Government Chemist in the UK, and numerous international organisations. 13 In the UK this has taken the form of public information campaigns on such matters as air pollution, the possible effects of the use of mobile phones on children, domestic insulation, vaccination and AIDS. The relation of experts to the public has shifted from one in which the public are primarily addressed as uninformed to one in which they are addressed as individuals who require and demand information in order to make choices (Rose 1999; Barry 2001, chapters 6 and 7). 14 On the history of metrological regimes see the essays collected in Wise (1995). A metrological regime is a zone in which measurement has come to take relatively standardised forms. 15 As the example of the garage mechanic suggests, many of the elements of such metrological regimes are to be found in the private sector. Indeed, it is a feature of contemporary forms of government that the state increasingly delegates responsibility for measurement activities to other agencies (Barry 2001). 16 See Slater (this volume) for further analysis of this point. 17 Interviews, London, 1996–7. 18 Penn et al. (1996). 19 Testing procedures are quite different in different countries. In Germany, for example, testing is not delegated to private garages that may be unreliable and poorly equipped.

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20 Mike Michael develops the notion of the co-agent to describe the existence of entities (such as the driver-car) which contain both human and non-human elements (Michael 2000: 93). In this case the significant relation is between two different co-agents – the driver-car (the agent of pollution) and the street-person (who breathes polluted air). The heterogeneity of such co-agents is difficult to capture through the development of standardised metrological regimes. 21 Rather than the relatively unstandardised observations of individual professionals and laypersons, for example (Osborne 1992). 22 On the lack of reversibility of techno-economic arrangements and the association between irreversibilisation and standardisation see Callon (1991: 151). 23 See, for example, Hickman and McCrae (1995) and Sadler (1996). 24 An excellent review of the literature on the BSE crisis is given by Seguin (2000). On the precautionary principle see Dratwa (2000). 25 http://www.serco.com/uk/au_009.htm, my emphasis. The policy of establishing government research and development institutions as either privatised or autonomous agencies developed under the conservative governments of the 1980s and 1990s. However, the idea that government laboratories should “sell” their advice to government has a much longer history. As early as 1972 Lord Rothschild established the so-called customer-contractor principle for government science (Department of Industry 1972). However, a much more significant shift occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s when most government laboratories (with the exception of defence research laboratories) became agencies and were run by private companies. The National Physical Laboratory was semi-privatised in 1995 and is now operated on behalf of the Department of Trade and Industry by NPL Management Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Serco (www.npl.co.uk). 26 Interviews, Transport Research Laboratory 1996. 27 In Britain see, in particular, House of Lords (2000). “A meaningful response to the need for more or better dialogue between the public and science in the United Kingdom requires us to go beyond event-based initiatives like consensus conferences or citizens’ juries. The United Kingdom must change existing institutional terms of reference and procedures to open them up to more substantial influence and effective inputs from diverse groups” (ibid.: 7). 28 Particularly following the work of Ulrich Beck (1992, 1995). 29 Callon (this volume). Such demands have not just come from social movements and activists. In response to the outbreak of Foot-and-Mouth disease in pigs, sheep and cattle in the UK in February 2001, Prime Minister Tony Blair spoke of the “armlock” which the major supermarkets had over “you people” (the farmers). “Blair woos farmers in price ‘arm lock’ ”, Guardian, 2 March 2001, “Law to break supermarkets’ grip on farmers”, Observer, 4 March 2001. 30 Paul Virilio (2000) notes that the history of the technological invention is also a history of technological accidents. 31 First HSE interim report, cited in House of Commons (2000). 32 “Why an accident like Hatfield was waiting to happen”, Financial Times, 22 February 2001. Ulrich Beck has argued that technological hazards are a manifestation of social imperfection. “It is not something external but itself that society encounters in the hazards that convulse it, and the reigning paralysis can only be overcome in so far as society apprehends the hazards as signposts to its own history and its own corrigibility” (Beck 1995: 159). 33 Interview with Catherine Pitt, Cambridge, February 2001. According to her: “These studies did not include a range of track conditions, and so the effects of varying axle load and train speed cannot be examined. Only heavy haul lines were investigated: the wear situation may be quite different on high speed lines. There is also the fact that real rails experience a much larger range of environmental conditions than steels in wear tests. There is the possibility of quite large temperature variations,

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34 35

36

37

38 39 40 41

42

contamination of the rail surface by dirt and dead leaves, and lubrication by rain or snow” (Pitt 2000: 25). Railtrack response to Select Committee report, 14 December 2000, http:// www.railtrack.co.uk/corporate/noticeboard/article.cfm In this context, I take mechanical engineering and metallurgy to refer not just to academic disciplines but to an array of specific technical practices with which they are associated. In this case, such practices include grinding, monitoring, repairing and lubricating sections of track. Following the Hatfield crash the Labour government were unable to follow through with their plan to privatise UK air-traffic control operations. The government were also forced to compromise over their plan to privatise the London Underground in the face of opposition from the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, and the Chief Executive of London Underground, Bob Kiley. In Whitehead’s analysis the notion of the “stubborn fact” refers to the capacity of arrangements of social and natural entities (“organisms”) to set limits on possible events: “The macroscopic meaning [of the organism] is concerned with the givenness of the actual world, considered as a stubborn fact which at once limits and provides opportunity for the actual occasion” (Whitehead 1978: 129). Even if they are revealed. Although the funding of political parties or radical organisations is often apparent, this does not mean that it is easy to establish a connection between economic interests and political positions and activities. Consider, for example, the scandals and events associated with the names of Helmut Kohl, Peter Mandelson, Edith Cresson, Neil Hamilton, Bill Clinton amongst others. On the history of political scandal see Thompson (2000). See, in particular, Power (1997), Rose (1999) and Strathern (2000). In the European Commission all research and development programmes were formally evaluated. However, those involved in commissioning evaluation were acutely aware of the need to control the production and circulation of evaluation reports (Barry and Rose 1995). The development of effective institutional forms of anti-politics long predates the development of the audit culture. While the recent critical interest in the emergence of the “audit culture” is important, there is a real danger of romanticising the regime which preceded it.

References Agamben, G. (1993) The Coming Community, Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press. Arendt, H. (1964) On Revolution, London: Faber and Faber. Barry, A. (2001) Political Machines: Governing a Technological Society, London: Athlone. Barry, A. and N. Rose (1995) Governing European Science: Forecasting and Evalution in the European Community, Swindon: ESRC. Barry, A., V. Bell and N. Rose (1995) ‘Alternative political imaginations’, Economy and Society, 24, 4, 485–7. Beck, U. (1992) The Risk Society: Towards a New Codernity, London: Sage. Beck, U. (1995) Ecological Politics in an Age of Risk, Cambridge: Polity Press. Benhabib, S. (ed.) (1996) Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Butler, J., E. Laclau and S. *i)ek (2000) Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left, London: Verso. Callon, M. (1991) ‘Technoeconomic networks and irreversibility’, in J. Law (ed.) A Sociology of Monsters: Essays on Power, Technology and Domination, Oxford: Blackwell. Callon, M. (ed.) (1998) The Laws of the Markets, Oxford: Blackwell.

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Callon, M. (1999) ‘The role of lay people in the production and dissemination of scientific knowledge’, Science, Technology and Society, 4, 1, 81–94. Callon, M. and B. Latour (1992) ‘Don’t throw the baby out with the Bath school! A reply to Collins and Yearley’, in A. Pickering (ed.) Science as Practice and Culture, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 343–68. Department of Industry (1972) ‘Framework for government research and development’, Cmnd 5046, London: HMSO. Dratwa, J. (2000) ‘The precautionary principle: stakes and options for policy making’, mimeo, Paris: Centre de Sociologie de l’Innovation, Écoles des Mines. Health and Safety Executive (2001) Train Derailment at Hatfield, 17 October 2000, Second HSE interim report. Hickman, A. and I. McCrae (1995) Evaluation of a Remote Vehicle Emission Measurement System, Project Report 105/TRL. Honig, B. (1993) Political Theory and the Displacement of Politics, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Honig, B. (1996) ‘Difference, dilemmas and the politics of home’, in S. Benhabib (ed.), Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 257–77. House of Commons Select Committee on Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs (2000), Recent Events on the Railway, London: HMSO. House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology (2000), Science and Society, HL 38, London: HMSO. Latour, B. (1999a) Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Latour, B. (1999b) Politiques de la nature: comment faire entrer les sciences en démocratie, Paris: La Découverte. Lynch, M. (2001) ‘Pandora’s ballot box: comments on the 2000 US Presidential Election’, Social Studies of Science, 31, 3, 417–19. Michael, M. (2000) Reconnecting Culture, Technology and Nature: From Society to Heterogeneity, London: Routledge. Oakeshott, M. (1962) Rationalism in Politics, and Other Essays, London: Methuen. Osborne, T. (1992) ‘Medicine and epistemology: Michel Foucault and the liberality of clinical reason’, History of the Human Sciences, 5, 2, 63–93. Penn, A., B. Croxford, D. Banister and P. O’Sullivan (1996) ‘Effects of street grid configuration on pedestrian exposure to vehicular pollution: civilising urban traffic’ final report to the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) GR/ J50613. Pitt, C. (2000), ‘Wear and microstructure relationships in carbide-free bainitic rail steels’, unpublished PhD dissertation, Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy, University of Cambridge. Power, M. (1997) The Audit Society: rituals of veritification, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Rabeharisoa, V. and M. Callon (1999), Le Pouvoirs des Malades: l’association française contre les myopathies et la recherche, Paris: Les Presses de l’École des Mines. Rose, N. (1999) The Powers of Freedom: Reframing Politial Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rydin, Y. (1998) ‘ “Managing urban air quality”: language and rational choice in metropolitan governance’, Environment and Planning A, 30, 1429–43. Sadler, L. (1996) ‘The remote sensing of vehicles on British urban roads’, unpublished MSc dissertation, University of Greenwich.

100 Andrew Barry Seguin, E. (2000) ‘The UK BSE crisis: strengths and weaknesses of existing conceptual approaches’, Science and Public Policy, 27, 4, 293–301. Stengers, I. (1997) Power and Invention: Situating Science (trans. P. Bains), Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press. Stengers, I. (2000) The Invention of Modern Science (trans. D.W. Smith), Minnneapolis: Minnesota University Press. Strathern, M. (1999) Property, Substance and Effect: Anthropological Essays on Persons and Things, London: Athlone. Strathern, M. (ed.) (2000) Audit Cultures: Anthropological Studies in Accountability, Ethics and the Academy, London: Routledge. Thompson, J.B. (2000) Political Scandal: Power and Visibility in the Media Age, Cambridge: Polity Press. Virilio, P. (2000) Landscapes of Events, Boston, MA: MIT Press. Waldron, J. (1999) The Dignity of Legislation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Whitehead, A.N. (1978/1929) Process and Reality: Corrected Edition, New York: Free Press. Whitehead, A.N. (1985) Science and the Modern World, London: Free Association Books. Wise, M.N. (ed.) (1995) The Values of Precision, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

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Technology, politics and the market An interview with Michel Callon Interview conducted by Andrew Barry and Don Slater1

Andrew Barry: One way to start would be to think about the relation between your work on markets and your earlier work on the anthropology of science and technology. There is a movement: a generalisation from some of the earlier work you’ve done on science and technology. How do you see the relation to the earlier work? Michel Callon: I think that there are three main relations between this work on markets and the work on science and technology. The first is that the way we are now studying social sciences is only an extension of the work done on the natural sciences. It’s simply the continuation of anthropology of science, but an anthropology of science which is concerned with economics in the broadest sense of the term, including, for example, marketing and accountancy. The second reason is the role of technologies in the structuring of economic markets. It is impossible to think of markets and their dynamics without taking into account the materiality of markets and the role of technological devices. The anthropology of technology might be very helpful if we want to understand better how markets are stabilised and organised. And the third reason is the work we have done on the links between scientific research, academic research and the function of economic markets. I have been very interested in explaining the exchanges between academic research and economic markets. And I’ve been struck by the fact that economists have been playing, although not alone, a very important role in designing institutions for the organisation of the exchanges between scientific research and economic markets. For example, if you take this very usual linear model, with the flow of knowledge going from the scientific laboratory to the end consumer via the industry or enterprise, you can recognise the role of economic theory in justifying this model. The work done by Arrow and Nelson at the end of the 1950s and the theory of science as a public good, has contributed strongly to perform this idea of an autonomous scientific sphere that was disconnected from economic markets. Moreover if you were to trace the genealogy from the Manhattan Project and Vannevar Bush to Arrow and Nelson this would provide a good explanation of the institutional configuration of science and economic activities in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. So in trying to understand how science and economy were co-ordinated,

102 Michel Callon, Andrew Barry and Don Slater I was struck by the role of what I call framing by economic theories. So for these three reasons – because economics as such is a science and demands to be studied by anthropology of science, because of the role of material and technical devices in the functioning of markets, and because of the obvious performing role of economic theories in explaining how science and economic markets interrelate – it was impossible to avoid considering markets as constructed, and necessary to emphasise the importance of technologies, including economics, in this very process of construction. Don Slater: That relation between science and markets is part of what is very exciting about your work and produces connections and ways of thinking about the market which would not otherwise have been possible. But the strong focus on seeing markets in relation to science can also give a very technocratic reading of some of the social processes around the market. For example, a lot of the argument about externalities and overflowing could point to a highly politicised sphere of conflict over market boundaries, whereas in a lot of your discussion it actually moves into a much more technocratic area in which these look like disputes that can be solved by developing a new metrics or by something like a scientific procedure. It sometimes pushes the discussion into a sense of the possibility of a rather calmly negotiated settlement between competing forces. It can point away from politics. Michel Callon: Yes, I think there are these two possible options. If you consider, for example, what economists call externalities and what I call overflow, you could say that a way of integrating and internalising these externalities is simply to take groups of interest into consideration and to extend the market. But in my mind that’s not exactly the right way to understand what overflowing means because the simple fact of framing economic activities creates, outside the market, emerging identities that are political per se. So you cannot reduce the consequences of overflowing to a simple calculation of interest. I would say that what is created outside the boundaries of the market is not something which is reducible to economic calculations, because markets create new collective identities, that are not very well defined. It’s impossible to take them into account without creating or setting up a space, that is a political space in which these identities are discussed and confronted with each other. So the consequence of overflowing is a constant (re)creation of new political spaces. You could imagine a debate between technocratic forces that insist upon the necessity or the possibility of reducing these externalities to a simple account of interest. But there are other ways of organising the political process in order to discuss these new identities, and the place of the market activities in these new configurations. It is a question of a trial of strength between technocratic approaches and more political forces. Andrew Barry: Do you have in mind a normative model of the political space within which overflows become identifiable? Michel Callon: Yes, I think one of the duties of social sciences is precisely to contribute to the explication or articulation of this political space. And what we have tried to do in our recent book Agir dans un monde incertain: Essai sur la démocratie technique is precisely

Technology, politics and the market 103 to describe this space where the emerging identities created by technosciences’ overflows could be discussed and could be mobilised in order to compose, to constitute, the collective. There’s a strange meshing of technosciences and economic markets which produce what Marilyn Strathern calls the proliferation of new identities and which constantly create new uncertainties about the constitution of the collective. So this constant creation and proliferation of the social (or what we propose to call emerging concerned groups) requires new procedures, new institutions, political institutions, new forms of debates and so on. Don Slater: To what extent does your normative version of democracy include the market, and to what extent is it defined in opposition to the market? For many years we’ve been caught between a political economy that cannot put market processes within the democratic sphere, and neo-liberalism that simply subsumed democracy to the market. Michel Callon: I think it’s the same question. The same question arises in relation to the technosciences and in relation to markets. What is new is precisely that you cannot disconnect the two questions. The two questions are linked together: if you want to solve the question of the democratic treatment of science and technology, you have also to solve the question of the relations between economic markets and democracy because of this interaction between scientific and technological developments on the one hand and economic developments on the other. You can’t separate technology and science from economic markets. So the two institutions, I use this term, the two institutions are entangled. I think there’s now really an opportunity because people are more aware of the possible or potential consequences of technosciences, and more social groups are ready to mobilise themselves in order to monitor science and technology. In the same way they have become aware of the fact that markets have to be organised in order to make possible certain technological or scientific developments. Because technological and scientific overflows are fuelled by economic logics, the idea of markets as political issues is becoming more and more thinkable. Yes, I think that the connections between technosciences and economic markets make both the orientation of technological developments and the organisation of the markets more central and disputable. Andrew Barry: Does this imply a normative model of citizenship? At the moment the ideal of active citizenship is often promoted. Your suggestion seems to imply a normative model of citizenship as well, but it may be different from that model. Michel Callon: I think it is different because the usual model of citizenship is based on individual achievements and individual wills. But if you consider overflows, you don’t know who is concerned. Is it an individual? Is it a group of individuals? Is it a hybrid collective, mixing humans and non-humans? Nobody is able to answer this question. So it’s a principle of uncertainty about what the collective is made of, or will be made of. This notion of citizenship is usually linked to the notion of an individual or society made of individual citizens who have to be integrated, and who have to be more active in order constantly to recreate and rebuild the

104 Michel Callon, Andrew Barry and Don Slater social link. So our model is a very different one. Is it normative? Yes, obviously. But not in a technocratic way. Because in the old configuration you have a separation between science and political power, and you have a divide between lay people and specialists on the one hand and ordinary individual citizens and professional representatives on the other. This configuration produces a series of problems: one of them being the passivity of the ordinary individual citizens who are created by the configuration and who are, at the same time, forced to delegate for long periods of time their will to their elected representatives and the production of knowledge to professional experts or researchers. So in this old configuration, in order to fill the gap constantly created by the double delegation, the only solution is to make more active and more interactive, individual citizens. What I am saying is that thanks to growing overflows this old configuration is in the process of being dismantled. Innovative actors are experimenting with new configurations. Moreover, in this process of recomposition, you have new types of political regulation appearing. The role of the social sciences is to try to make this evolution and the forms of experimentation that are involved in it more visible. So I think it is impossible to escape the question of normativity. Should we maintain the same institutional frame as before when science, markets and political powers were very strongly disconnected from each other or not? Don Slater: I was wondering if you’d like to relate some of what you were saying to Beck’s work, in particular the new configuration you’re talking about and the normative concerns that arise from some sense of reflexivity. One could replace the word ‘externality’ with the word ‘risk’, and say that they are overflowing with risk. So the potential reflexivity of these institutions arises from a sense of danger. Michel Callon: Not exactly a sense of danger and risk. I resist this idea of labelling the society as a society of risk, for example, because it’s a very one-dimensional way of defining the stakes and the issues. Seeing risks everywhere and arguing that risk is a central concern for society tends to make very different situations homogeneous. When you impose this notion of risk as an analytical category and as a pragmatic category, you narrow the space of political debate. You can’t leave the actors with the possibility of defining themselves what is at stake. I’m very struck by the fact that in numerous socio-technical controversies the notion of risk is simply absent. If you take, for example, the case of GMO, you have a lot of different discourses about the existence or the non-existence of risks linked to GMO. But if you look at the content of the debates of the social movements you are obliged to recognise that the majority of actors don’t care at all about risks. They are debating the organisation of global markets, the organisation of agriculture development and jobs. So to say that we are in a society of risk is simply misleading. We preferred to start with the broader and less socially coded notion of social and technical uncertainties and with the idea of a collective investigation aiming at reducing them. Andrew Barry: The Risk Society is also an interesting case of the influence of sociology in framing of markets. Look at the growth in the industry of Risk Management.

Technology, politics and the market 105 Michel Callon: Exactly, exactly. In our book on Agir dans un monde incertain we never use the notion of risk. The notion of risk is a counterproductive one. It is a concept that can be useful for political decision-makers and insurance companies, but not for sociologists because we have to give room to actors and let them choose the repertoire of the debates. It’s a way of imposing a certain form to political debate. The idea, for example, of distributing risks between social groups or different actors is a technocratic dream. Andrew Barry: But it does raise a question: which is the question of historical change. Beck likes to see the emergence of the Risk Society as a historical transformation. And what you were implying is that there has been movement towards greater overflows. Don Slater: Could I just put it even more broadly. At a number of points you do put forward a thesis of various institutions becoming more flexible, and that is a historical development. Michel Callon: Yes, the two points are linked and difficult to respond to. You could have several entry points. The first is, I think it’s an empirical observation. Don’t you agree with the fact that you can observe a multiplication of socio-technical controversies? I think it’s difficult to contest this point. And if you admit this point, you have to try to explain why such controversies are more and more frequent and more difficult to manage from the point of view of existing institutions. For example, the innovation of the precautionary principle could be viewed as a response to the growing number of socio-technical debates. So you have several indicators showing that something is emerging that, although not completely new, is more central than it was before. And if you want to explain that, you have to listen to actors and not to impose your own interpretation or your own analytical grid. If you listen to the actors involved in such controversies, I think that you can hear two messages. The first one is: ‘don’t leave experts and specialists the monopoly in the production of knowledge and exclude social actors, lay, concerned groups and so on. We are able to participate in this production of knowledge’. And the second point is about the contestation of the divide between professional representatives, political representatives and ordinary citizens. What is at stake in those fora is not the distribution of risk, it is precisely the contestation of these two great divides between the lay people and specialists and between ordinary citizens and professional or political actors. I think that one of the possible explanations of these messages is the existence of a new form of intricate relation between the technosciences and economic markets. What is becoming central in these debates is a concern both to transform the institutional conditions and direction of scientific research and to transform the organisation of economic markets. I’m not saying that this is always present but it’s very often discussed and debated in these public controversies. Andrew Barry: It does seem that the question of the organisation of the market has become much more central to technological controversies in a way in which it perhaps wasn’t in the recent past.

106 Michel Callon, Andrew Barry and Don Slater Michel Callon: I think it has become more important in European countries. I’m not sure that in the States it’s exactly the same. But the situation might change. If you take the case of European countries, you can say that what is debated is precisely the organisation of markets. And for me, it’s a very new situation because before the fall of the Berlin Wall, you had market economies on the one hand, and bureaucratically planned economies on the other hand. But now I think that we are freed of these dichotomies and of this opposition. Social actors are now aware of the fact that the notion of market is a very large, ambiguous, polyvalent notion and that it’s possible to shape the market, and to change its roots and its institutions. The idea of the economy becoming political is again a growing idea and conviction. So if you take the debates about intellectual property, about GMOs, about health questions, food safety and so on, in all these debates the main question now is how to organise markets. I don’t believe that all the groups have the capacity to participate in these debates, but it is now the case that economic markets are considered as political issues. Don Slater: I do have problems with this. In one sense it’s very obvious that markets have always been political questions. We could talk about a whole nineteenthcentury history of working class opposition to markets. We could talk about huge debates in the early twentieth century on the welfare state, often in relation to working class movements. Such debates were very much about contesting the natural shape of the market. You could actually say the opposite: in one sense the most de-politicised period in the history of the market has been the neo-liberalism of the last 20 years. Even social democratic parties, such as ours in Britain, now certainly accept the market. Michel Callon: Okay, I agree with your analysis. But the market is not this unified category as it was in the nineteenth century, or even in the first half of the twentieth century. I think that the paradox is as follows: everybody agrees that the market is a very effective institution, but now it seems to me that more and more people consider that there are various ways of organising concrete and specific markets. So it’s a very different situation because you now have an abundance of ways of seeing economic markets. The idea of the market as a unified category and institution is progressively disappearing. Don Slater: What bothers me about that is that it depends to some extent on who you are listening to. If we’re saying that more social scientists are recognising that markets are multiform and that they’re not peculiar to capitalism, or they’re not particular to modernity, that’s true. There is evidently an increasing reflexivity in the sense that there’s a language to talk about the diversity of market forms and the political options we’ve had. That’s still different from saying that they weren’t previously multiform. If one’s following some of the economic actors, they might have been able to say a lot of these things to us generations ago. It’s simply our discourses that have changed. Andrew Barry: In comparison to a relatively recent past though, there is a new kind of politicisation of the market today. The point which we haven’t really discussed

Technology, politics and the market 107 enough is the emergence of neo-liberalism and its different inflections in Britain and France. We need to consider how neo-liberalism involved both deregulation and depoliticisation, but has also brought re-regulation as well. A lot of the recognition that the market has different political forms is about the sense that actually one is engaged in a process of re-regulation. Michel Callon: It’s a very important point. It’s not the same thing to say that markets are multiform, and to argue that we need to have a debate on how to organise markets. In Britain and France, for different reasons, we have arrived at this political question. The organisation of markets depends on the nature of technologies, the nature of professional activities that are involved in the markets and so on. I think that the other way of making the point is to link this debate to the question of the commodification of life. It’s not a new question but it’s a very central issue and the way of answering this question is I think profoundly different now from the way we used to phrase this question and to imagine answers to this question. The metaphors of infrastructure and superstructure and the metaphor of embeddedness are not helpful if we want to find answers to these questions. What I tried to do in The Laws of the Markets was to replace these old metaphors by a new way of describing transactions or relations that involves a double process of entanglement and disentanglement. This notion of entanglement and disentanglement leads to very different accounts of markets than the notions of infrastructures or embeddedness. Don Slater: This has caused great anguish amongst some economic sociologists. Embeddedness has been so linked to a certain kind of humanism. Michel Callon: Society is imagined as a context or as a frame. Society is out there and you imagine how to put this strange beast, the market, in this frame. It’s another version of the infrastructure and superstructure metaphor. You have realities that are called markets or economic activities or society and what you try to imagine is the respective positions of these realities. Developing an argument made in the anthropology of science and technology, you must not imagine society as a context for different types of activities including economic activities; you have to imagine the process through which collective relations are constructed, including relations that can be called economic relations. So it’s a reversal of the approach. The notion of embeddedness has been very useful, but now we have to get rid of it. The metaphors of entanglement and disentanglement are more productive because they allow you to describe the omnipresence of commercial transactions and other types of relations and, in the same movement, the process of boundary shifting. Don Slater: That’s one of the things I’m very excited about. They are incredibly powerful metaphors. One of the things I was trying to point to before though is that the embeddedness metaphor also had a very strong moral agenda behind it, which was about resisting a kind of reductionism. It was saying that whatever an economist says, the way we go about our economic lives is actually deeply meaningful, it’s informed by some sense, a fuller humanity than, for example, rational choice. I think some of the resistance to your work has been that, certainly by

108 Michel Callon, Andrew Barry and Don Slater some of the political economists, it has been interpreted as giving away that ground again, of allowing something close to the kind of economic vision to come back into the social and cultural field. And I think a lot of the reaction to The Laws of the Markets has been this kind of worry. Michel Callon: We have to get rid of this notion that economic goods are abstract, disembodied and need culture to be added to them. As economic goods are the outcome of a double process of disentanglement and entanglement, they are richer products. It’s exactly the opposite to the process described by conventional economic sociology. I think it’s amazing. I think one needs description of financial markets, for example, and it’s easy to do in my opinion. What you would see is that in order to produce alienation between two agents in one place, you have to produce more and more attachments, relations and proximities between usually very distant agents. For example, if you want to create a frame for the transaction between a trader and a consumer in a financial market, the trader, the seller and the designer of the financial product have to be very close to all the traders, banks, on all continents and so on. So this is a double movement of producing more and more attachments in order to frame this isolated place in which these alienated relations between strangers are temporarily stabilised. I think one needs to describe this double movement: the dual logics of markets. The more you produce attachment, the more you are able to produce and to stabilise entanglement. The example given by Miller could be interpreted exactly as following this line of analysis. He shows very clearly the upstream work that makes the final commercial exchange unavoidable and successful. On the one hand entanglements are investigated, explored and made more explicit and visible, leading progressively to the attachments of goods and humans; and on the other hand, through the same process, supply and demand are adjusted, co-produced and this ground is carefully prepared for the commercial transaction. That is the reason why it could be said, in a paradoxical way, that in order to make disentanglement possible, economic agents heavily invest in the production of entanglements! To disentangle you have first to entangle better. Andrew Barry: This leads to a question about vocabulary. In your earlier work you spoke about similar kinds of processes using the vocabulary of what was called actor-network theory at the time. You didn’t use the concepts of entanglement and disentanglement. Is there anything at stake in the shift in vocabulary away from the way in which you understood the relational character of scientific objects in your earlier work? Michel Callon: Yes, it’s a very good question and also a very difficult one! I have the feeling that it’s using the notion of attachment, and of entanglement, that allows us to describe more precisely the complicated relations in, for example, a marketplace. Put in a nutshell: what science and technologies do is to maintain or to make possible connections between frames and between different places. So you are freed from this image of a multilevel society. You don’t need several layers, different layers. You don’t need infrastructure and superstructure and

Technology, politics and the market 109 embeddedness. You only need places that are connected and the possibility for actors and information to circulate from one place to another one. I think it’s a point made by Bruno Latour, framing and connecting are the two faces of the same coin. Technologies and sciences can be used to frame interactions, but also to mobilise other places and to connect them to the place where interactions are done. So the possibilities of connecting and framing are both linked to science and technologies. If one can speak of markets as networks, or even of market structures, it is because science and technology are constantly mobilised to connect, displace and transport. I think that the processes of entanglement and attachment are enhanced, multiplied or made easier by technologies or by sciences: because it becomes possible to create strong relationships between places, between agents that are very far from each other. I see science and technologies as the media through which, or some of the media through which, this process of disentanglement and entanglement is not only made possible, but enhanced and made easier. In actor-network theory, the emphasis was put on these links, but not so much on the process of entanglement and disentanglement. So the concepts of entanglement and disentanglement describe the dynamics involved in reconfiguring entities and networks of entities. I think it gives a more precise and more dynamic version. But the very process of attachment between goods and humans still remains to be explained. Our article on the economy of qualities is precisely intended to supply these analytical tools. Andrew Barry: It gives a sense of the process as a practical process. A lot of the criticism of the actor-network model was that it was a textual model. It was unclear how the model of the text applied to material objects, to processes and to practice. Michel Callon: It was one of the criticisms. The other one was the actor-centred analysis. In order to describe the dynamics of networks you need actors which have objectives, goals and so on. If you use the idea that entanglement and disentanglement are processes, the model of agency is very different. Your question is very difficult, but my answer will be that in order to describe diversity of interactions and relations, we have to diversify the notions used to describe these relations. The network metaphor is too strongly related to technology and science. And maybe the notions of attachment and detachment, entanglement and disentanglement are more relevant to the description of markets. It is a difficult question. Because if you consider that in a market there are several modalities of co-ordination, or what Bruno Latour called enunciation, you probably are led to consider that economic markets are a specific combination of these different types of co-ordination. In a market you need technologies, sciences, and you probably need forms of political representation and so on. So the problem is to describe the diversity of relations, modalities of co-ordination or enunciation, the diversity of all these relations that are mobilised in order to create a basis where commercial transactions are possible. The problem is to explain how isolated frames are shaped, allowing for the very specific relations in which goods or services are alienated and commercial transactions are set up. And if you want to explain that, you have to enrich the description of the connections or relations or processes in which agents

110 Michel Callon, Andrew Barry and Don Slater are plunged. In order to create islands of commercial transactions, you have to imagine a very rich web of various relations and I think the notions of entanglement and disentanglement can describe, in a satisfying way, the double movement. Don Slater: One of the questions about that metaphor is that it might capture the kind of diversity and multiplication of relationships and possible connections and in a sense put them on the same level and get a sense of the local. But is there any level at which you would recognise not a multiplication but a homogenisation of relationships. What happens to old categories like capital and class? I’ll be a crude: political economists point out that certain structures and forms like property which obviously do transcend any particular market (even if they depend on local circumstances and have diverse forms in particular places) are certainly established at a much different level. It might be an old-fashioned question, but how do we move, or should we move, from markets to capitalism? Is there any version of a macroeconomy that is compatible with this kind of metaphor? We’re leaving behind the kind of depth models of infrastructure and superstructure. We’re leaving behind the assumptions that are involved in a common embeddedness model. Does that actually leave us without any structural model? Michel Callon: Yes. I would say that we no longer have macro-structures. The idea of the existence of macro-structures is very far from the description we are trying to give. As I said, it doesn’t mean that there are only local localities because what is provided by this description, is precisely a double logic of local framing and connection between localities. In these terms, some localities are able to control other localities. So what has to be explained is precisely the progressive construction of connections, and of localities that are able to control other localities. What could replace the vision of society marked by class conflict is an account of the competition between different ways of connecting, controlling and framing localities. I agree that it’s very difficult to imagine these new types of conflicts. But if you want to interpret the new conflicts about the organisation of the market for GMOs, for example, you have to imagine a conflict between different ways of structuring markets and considering markets precisely as the capacity to attach and shape some entities and disconnect others. In the case of the GMO market these entities include transgenic forms of organisation of agriculture, developments and relations between north and south and so on and the nature of property rights. All these questions are debated and the opposition is not between classes defined by the position of people in the political process. The opposition is between emerging groups who are defining in different ways how to organise these markets, knowing that the organisation of this market depends on questions dealing with the types of products which are designed and sold as well as the types of property rights and so on. So I would not say that you have structures and that you have position within these structures, and from this position you can deduce or explain some oppositions and some conflicts. Rather you have oppositions and conflicts about how to structure economic markets given the fact that this structuration depends on configurations which mix property rights, certain forms of technological developments as well as other things. It doesn’t mean that there is no structuring

Technology, politics and the market 111 process, but that the structuring process as such is at stake. It’s the heterogeneity of markets that makes them shapeable and it is around this process that conflicts can happen. Andrew Barry: Just to press Don’s point. It is a question of structuring processes rather than structure. But then could one think and see forms of conflict that are about quite general aspects of these different structuring processes? For example, concerning the whole institution of property rights or, indeed, of capitalism. Michel Callon: The question of property rights is a very good one. Because, on the one hand, you cannot imagine that the market could be organised without defining some types of property rights. But on the other hand, you can say that the diversity of types, distribution, and definition of property rights is very high. And you can imagine very different markets because there is a great deal of diversity in the form of property rights. Discussions and debates about rights depend on the type of markets, the type of technologies, the type of political debates and so on. If you take the case of cultural goods, for example, you could imagine very different configurations or regulations based on different definitions of property rights. So the question of property rights might be considered as open. Even if you maintain the notion of capitalism, you could have several forms of capitalism depending on the form of the compromise, for example, around property rights. But I think that your argument is about the equivalence between a certain conception of property rights and the existence of capitalism. I don’t know if in your mind as soon as we consider the question of property rights, we are in the sphere of capitalism. Would you be ready to consider that property rights might be compatible with such different ways of organising markets that even the simple notion of capitalism is not helpful in describing these possibilities? Don Slater: The idea that I was playing around with in my paper was that although you can have different kinds of property rights, there is one fundamental aspect which is a certain kind of alienation within which you can have different kinds of contracts. There’s a certain kind of structure of alienation, of delimiting a certain kind of transaction that I would associate with capitalism, even if within that it can take quite a number of different forms. And that form of transaction does seem capable of being regularised across an incredible number of locations. I get worried about the word structure because we’re actually talking about a number of different levels here. I absolutely agree that one of the fundamental problems with conventional economics has been that it couldn’t recognise that structures were themselves part of the competitive framework; that they’re a part of the strategic action itself. But there are still higher levels within which those kinds of contests take place. And it’s in that way that you can have an over-arching structure, a certain kind of fundamental macro-structure and people can contest various forms within that or find forms which suit particular operations better than others. Sometimes, it almost feels it’s more like a matter of instinct. Practically speaking, in negotiating this kind of economic environment you assume certain kinds of

112 Michel Callon, Andrew Barry and Don Slater regularities that you know also can be contested at a different kind of political level than the market. Michel Callon: Yes, I understand your argument, and I think it’s a strong argument. As soon as you have some form of property rights allowing this framing of interaction, you could say that capitalism exists and that this takes the form of an over-arching structure. But I’m not completely convinced. If you take the case of informal economies, for example, I’m struck by the fact that those economies are often very formal. The rules are very well defined and explicit and in certain cases, they involve collaborations between actors and academic economists. I know some local informal economies in the south of France, which have inspired colleagues of mine who are working in anthropological economics and are involved in defining alternative ways of constructing markets. So you have very interesting laboratories and experiments that show the possibility of creating new institutions. I resist the idea of naming these economies as capitalist. So my feeling is that you can imagine, if you consider economic markets are performed by technologies, economics and so on, that in some cases, economic activities could lead to institutions and experiments in which you have property rights, but arranged in such a way that this notion of capitalism is not very useful for understanding what is happening. Andrew Barry: An answer one could give to the question of capitalism which I thought you are implying would be: isn’t capitalism itself and the framing of the economy as capitalism, itself a product, to put it very crudely, of the whole history of critical political economy and anti-capitalist political movements and the various technical devices they have deployed to make this thing called capitalism apparent? In other words, the analysis needs to be extended to the analysis of critical political economy. Michel Callon: I think you’re completely right. I think it’s a good answer to the question. And it opens precisely the possibility of considering multiple ways of organising economic activities in which property rights are present but property rights as such have no meaning. They have to be linked to other ways of framing activities and so on. The configurations are multiple and I’m not sure that the notion of capitalism is very useful to describe this diversity. I agree with Andrew that probably capitalism is linked to this way of describing economic activities as an infrastructure or are encoded in this debate as an opposition between anticapitalism and capitalism. It’s probably also a notion we have to get rid of. But this doesn’t mean that we are buying into liberalism and neo-liberal ideology because what we are discovering is precisely the diversity of markets. Some markets are very powerful devices for creating asymmetries, and other forms of markets are more open to debates, to reorganisation and so on. Don Slater: Do you know J.K. Gibson-Graham’s, The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It)? It makes the same kind of point in arguing that the main political task is a deconstruction of a kind of notion of capitalism that’s been built up: something that is more solid in one’s ideology than it is in reality.

Technology, politics and the market 113 Michel Callon: Yes, I think it’s a very important point. Capitalism is an invention of anti-capitalists. Don Slater: We produce this thing which we cannot overcome and which structures our own opposition. Michel Callon: Yes, I think that the point that capitalism is maintained alive thanks to the anti-capitalist movement and analysis is very important. It is the reason why I disagreed with the description given by Luc Boltanski, because his argument is that capitalism – its logics of accumulation and so on – is amoral. There is no morality in capitalism. But I think it’s a mistake to describe capitalism as homogeneous and, being homogeneous, it is not concerned with questions which are termed usually as political, ethical and so on. If you accept the diversity of what is usually called capitalism, you are led to recognise that in some markets you have constant discussions or negotiations about ethical or political questions. The manner in which answers are found differs from one market to another, from one country to another and so on. So describing capitalism, even for the purposes of criticism, as something which is homogeneous is a way of maintaining this idea of the impossibility of social actors to act on the organisation of economic activities because it implies that there is simply a choice between completely destroying the organisation of economic activities or accepting them as a whole. Don Slater: Well, it’s the classic structure of an older politics: creating or constituting your opponent as such a totality. Michel Callon: A totality unable to think of its own transformation and that just reacts to external criticisms. It’s like an automaton and the only way for it to survive is to incorporate those people outside the thing in order to transform itself. I think it’s a way of being completely unable to act on the organisation of economic activity. Andrew Barry: The hostility of political economists to the kind of work you’re proposing might relate also to the particularly virulent form of capitalism in Britain and to the way in which neo-liberal economics has been so dominant over the past 20 years. Given that it doesn’t make sense, in your view, to be anti-capitalist, do you see there may be some key points of division that should be contested? Michel Callon: What is strange in the case of Britain is that, in the case of railways or sectors like that, there is political debate on how to organise this market, learning the lessons that can be drawn from deregulation. I think this experience is a laboratory in itself because you can see the effects of political choices and you can imagine that markets might be organised in certain ways which are less or more satisfying for different social groups. My question is, is it becoming a political issue in Britain or not, given the lessons which can be drawn? Don Slater: One pessimistic answer, from your point of view, is that it has certainly become more of a political issue in the sense of asking, what is a basic service? I’m

114 Michel Callon, Andrew Barry and Don Slater not so convinced that it has become an issue of political economy, about how to organise markets. It is still so much an issue of state versus market. Michel Callon: One of the interesting issues now is whether we should abandon this idea of a division or separation between the public sector and the private sector, and between a market per se and government intervention. The idea that public powers are exterior to markets is becoming more and more difficult to defend. And the idea of the constitutive role of public powers in the organisation of economic activities is making progress. There is a growing recognition that all markets are a strange combination of rules defined by public powers and by private agents. Don Slater: I think this is where Andrew’s point about the context of extreme neoliberalism is important because the kind of development that he described in the UK has been experienced more as the penetration of markets into the public sector rather than as a sense that markets could be organised differently, or have different regulatory structures. So if you talk to people in Britain about where are the points at which markets and regulation mix into new forms, they’re likely to talk about internal markets in the National Health Service, for example, which have caused major problems. Andrew Barry: I think there’s a distinction between the analytical point which is trying to move away from thinking about the opposition between state and market and the way in which that statement might be read in the British context which would be very closely associated with the idea of the ‘Third Way’. Maybe it is different in the French context. Michel Callon: Yes, I think that the idea of market organisation as an open field of reflection and experimentation is making progress. But the role of social scientists and the position of economists are very important to this, in setting the terms of the debate. And I would like to say that the sociology and anthropology of economic markets should be more active in presenting this new range of political choices because economists, by profession, tend to think in terms of a tug of war between the private sector and public sector. What sociology and anthropology could bring to the debate is precisely a recognition of the experimental character of markets and market organisation and the need to debate the consequences of experimentation. It is a collective learning process. Andrew Barry: The key to what you seem to be saying is that you want to introduce democracy into the equation, which is not generally there because the debate actually tends to be about the hybridisation of state and market, without any sense of the democratisation of that hybridity. Michel Callon: And the debate is monopolised by experts like economists. They create, as in other scientific fields, an ignorant incompetent public, who are not endowed with the possibility of entering in to the debate. The economists play a very important role because they perform the idea of pure markets, governed by natural laws in the political sphere. It’s bizarre because I think that now more and

Technology, politics and the market 115 more people are ready to contest the monopoly of experts in the physical and life sciences. But in the social sciences, the role of experts remains very, very strong. Economists do not act as scientists or researchers, but as experts who give advice to political decision-makers. Probably, these experts are much more influential than experts in physics or biology. For example, Prime Minister Jospin in France created a council of experts three years ago to advise him on economic questions. And in this committee you have not one sociologist. You have only economists, pure economists! It’s incredible because if you take committees dealing with health issues or agricultural issues a lot of specialisms are represented. Only in the case of economic policy do you have a monopoly of this certain type of expert. Don Slater: A good example is what I’ve been seeing in issues around new media and the Internet and the kind of emerging policy debates around the digital divide. It’s almost entirely dominated by economists as far as I can see, in the most technocratic way. There’s been the most extraordinarily rapid shift from the visionary version of the Internet as a new field of human communication, to this thing that is simply a technocratic means that is to be economically delivered for economic ends. Michel Callon: Yes, but economists have great difficulties in describing what is happening. For example, I read some papers written by economists or by economic sociologists about the interpretation of Linux’s emergence and success. Mainstream economists find it very difficult to understand what is happening. It’s fascinating. The new tools for managing these strange markets can’t be devised by economists alone. Don Slater: But what still amazes me, although it shouldn’t because economists have always done this, despite the fact that they can’t explain what’s going on, is that they still put forward the same policies and have the total prestige to impose them. Michel Callon: I agree with you completely but I think it means that we have to develop two strategies. The first is to describe precisely the influence of economists in different institutions like the OECD, the International Monetary Fund and so on. We need some empirical studies about how these institutions function and the role of economics and of mainstream economists in these institutions. And the second strategy is to try to make more visible the analysis done by economic sociologists and to take part in the devising of tools useful both for us and for economic agents. If we believe the analysis we are producing, we are obliged to recognise that the way to influence or structure institutions is to devise tools. If we accept that there is nothing that could happen without being framed, the role of the sociology and anthropology of economies is precisely to design tools and to provide actors with such tools. I think it implies an involvement in the performative activities of social sciences. The weakness of sociology and anthropology when they come to analyse economic activities is precisely their reluctance to do the same jobs as economics. Economists are able to tell how it is possible to calculate profits and so on, but sociologists do not provide these kinds of tools.

116 Michel Callon, Andrew Barry and Don Slater Don Slater: I totally agree. One of the most frustrating things about economic sociology – and I think it’s one of the reasons why we haven’t performed this kind of constructive role – is that it’s constantly engaged in rehearsing endless critiques of conventional economics and often in a vain attempt, a delusion, that they might convince economists. It’s not an argument that you win. It’s an argument that you need to go around and do something else. Michel Callon: Yes, you’re completely right. There are two positions we have to abandon. The first is the idea of critique of hard economists, which is intended to show them that they are wrong. And the second position is to describe markets just to say that they are more complicated than economists or political decision-makers believe. So we have to abandon those two positions and to contribute to the understanding of the disentanglement and entanglement process. If we succeed in that we will be able to devise our own tools, like the economists, but tools that will endow economics agents with the capacity to experiment with different forms of markets organisation. Let us stop criticising the economists. We recognise the right of economists to contribute to performing markets, but at the same time we claim our own right to do the same but from a different perspective. I don’t understand why sociologists have to comfort and to support the ideas that economists and mainstream economists are in a dominant position. I think it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy so we just have to stop saying that. Economists have succeeded in creating alliances with technocrats, but if we accept the idea of the emergence of hybrid fora in which various actors are participating, we can imagine economic sociologists co-operating with actors who are interested in thinking about ways of organising markets in order to counter the role of the mainstream economists. What is very important is to abandon the critical position, and to stop denouncing economists and capitalists and so on. Instead, we need to engage with debates on specific markets. I think that it’s a first step, and progressively it will be possible to accumulate experiences on how to organise markets, how to organise debates on the organisation of markets and so on. This movement is very important. Andrew Barry: This relates to the difference between your position and Bourdieu’s. Michel Callon: Yes, because I think that Bourdieu’s position leads him to reinforce this stylised opposition between existing macro-structures, established powers, and the forces that are trying to destabilise these macro-structures without taking into consideration concrete questions about, for example, the organisation of such markets. So it’s related to what we said previously about capitalism and anticapitalism as two forces which perform capitalism as a reality, and which paralyse actors. The position adopted by Bourdieu is precisely of this form. The only way to give some margin of manoeuvre to actors is to consider that at certain times and places some actors are able to transform, first locally, the rules of the game, to analyse the situation in which they are, and to develop some new strategies to deal with that situation. And the role of the social scientist is to identify these actors, to try to appreciate, to evaluate their capacities to transform the rules of the game, to reconfigure institutions and to produce results that can be transported to other

Technology, politics and the market 117 places. The way to transform so-called macro-structures is to start with micro or local restructuring activities, and to make connections possible between these localities and other localities. If we accept the idea of the non-existence of macrostructures in which micro-structures are embedded, and if we accept the idea of localities framed and connected to each other, I think that sociologists should try to identify the actors who are able to transform the frames in which they are located, and to transform other places because they are located in a very strategic place. It’s another way of describing how social scientists can link themselves to social actors. There is no longer a contradiction between choosing actors or situations as objects of research, and co-operating with actors who are considered as subjects by themselves. And it’s a non-zero sum game. On the one hand, actors are interested in this form of cooperation because they can enhance their capacity to describe and analyse their own experience and, on the other hand, social scientists are also interested in co-operating because they can mobilise actors as colleagues who are as competent as academics or scientists. Actors can ask the same questions as social scientists: how to frame and re-frame situations, how to transform other places and to imagine new ways of organising institutions and so on. Indeed, the only way to produce robust knowledge is precisely to set up this form of cooperation with very competent and relevant actors. Andrew Barry: And the key question is, which actors do you co-operate with and with which do you not co-operate? Michel Callon: It’s a very important question and there is no straightforward answer. It’s a question of trial and error. I think that it’s inherent in this position that you are obliged to ask normative questions. If you consider that the organisation of markets is a growing concern for numerous groups, the next step is to ask, where will I go in order to participate in an experiment about the organisation of markets? You could choose, depending on your habitus! You could choose very different places where different actors are in a leading position and so on. As social sciences are performative activities, you will influence the course of those experiments. For example, you will probably help some actors who are trying to elaborate rules, or you will allow some groups to participate in the discussion of the market. So you will, as a social scientist, help to perform some sorts of markets, and it depends completely on the choices you make. These choices depend on what you consider as important, valuable and so on. The choice can’t be deduced from methodological or scientific considerations. I think everybody could agree about the importance of debates about the organisation of markets. Having said that, you can choose very different situations where the role of actors is different. So I think it’s a very traditional question but even if you accept the arbitrary character of the choice of the actor with which you will co-operate, you are in a very different position from that of Bourdieu. Bourdieu has not only to reinforce the macro-structures that are supposed to exist, but he has also to explain why the truth is on one side and not the other. He is also confronted with the moral and political choice to help one side and not the other one. But I think it’s easier to explain why in the case of a

118 Michel Callon, Andrew Barry and Don Slater very limited conflict or debate, you will choose to co-operate with certain actors and with others, because the problems are more circumscribed and actors from different sides could agree about the reality of the difficulties they are encountering. For example, in some cases like GMO markets, even industrialists are aware of the fact that they are in a deadlock and that something must be discussed. So it’s not a black and white situation, of the kind that prevails in the macro-structure debate. Don Slater: This comes back to the beginning of our discussion: your underlying normative commitment is perhaps more to some sense of democracy than to particular participants. You might be closer to Habermas than to Bourdieu. A lot of what you are pointing towards is establishing norms of democratic procedures and how structures can emerge which will allow new collective political agents to emerge. The issue is not so much the taking of sides as the conditions for those kinds of democratic procedures. Michel Callon: I’m convinced of the importance of procedures but I would say that the political or the public space that is implied by Habermas is different from the political space that I imagine. And the main reason is that in the case of Habermas, as in the case of Rawls, or even Arendt, the actors or the agents who are involved in the public space are reduced to speakers, to free-speaking actors. If you consider emerging groups and social identities that are created or performed by overflows, you will have a very different account of social identities and groups than those who are put on the stage by John Rawls or Habermas. In their case, you have disincarnated agents whereas in the case of emergent social concerned groups you have very different identities. Consider, for example, patients suffering from muscular dystrophy. They are created by the way markets function. As you know they consider themselves as orphan groups because, as they are so few in number, they are not considered to be profitable. And, in addition, they are generally not interesting for academics or scientists. It is easy to understand that economic markets create a lot of such orphan groups. They are simply unrecognised and they do not exist at all. And you have other concerned groups who are hurt by overflows, as in the case of pollution and so on. So you have these two figures, or types, of concerned groups: orphan groups and hurt groups. And if I take the case of orphan groups like patients suffering from muscular dystrophy, the only way for them to participate in a public debate and to have the possibility of reorganising markets, is to come with their disabled bodies, and transform themselves from being monsters who were hidden in private life into human beings who have to be considered as human beings. This transformation is central. You cannot put their bodies and the specific characteristics of the actors and so on into brackets. There is nothing to be hidden. You have to display what must be veiled in John Rawls’ philosophy. And you have to put your body on the stage, and not leave your body and your genes at home. So the notion of the public sphere is very different in this case from what it is in the case of the more traditional philosophy. Don Slater: It’s also a different level of commitment. The involvement of social movements commits more of themselves to political action – it’s more than the

Technology, politics and the market 119 force of a reasoned argument. It’s about a kind of bodily ‘being there’, taking, accepting other consequences, much greater consequences, than simply losing an argument. Michel Callon: Exactly. The case of AIDS patients studied by Stephen Epstein is very illuminating because it’s not a Habermasian arena. They are engaged, involved in organising experimentation, clinical trials, they discuss what it means to construct a representative sample of patients and so on. And it’s a question of life or death and not a question of argument. Don Slater: Your position as a researcher in relation to them bears some relation to what could be a Habermasian position: even though their forms of engagement are different, what you are looking for are precisely those means by which they can be brought into the democratic process, by which processes can correspond to something closer to a situation where everyone has the power of speech but in a wider metaphorical sense: the force of democratic presence. Andrew Barry: The relation to Habermas is something like the relation to economics: Habermas frames politics as being about the public sphere that is distinct from the realm of the state that is distinct from the market. Even if one retains the notion of the public sphere, it’s a public sphere whose overflows themselves need to be dealt with. Michel Callon: Exactly. It’s a very important point. And remember Hannah Arendt’s point about the necessity for citizens to leave economic worries at home in order to be free to speak in the public sphere. What I recommend is exactly the opposite. Your body, your economic activities, your worries about subsistence and so on – because all these matters are disputable they must be debated in the public sphere. Andrew Barry: Your recent work with patients’ organisations raises the question of social movements and, in particular, the relation of your work to the earlier work of Alain Touraine. How do you see that relation? Michel Callon: I have to say I have been very strongly influenced by Touraine. I regularly attended his seminars and I was also interested in his view of the new role of sociologists. And I remember a seminar where he said that now we know what society is we need to find out what the sociologist should be doing. We have to endorse Lenin’s old question: ‘What is to be done?’ Obviously there is a relation with the answer given by Touraine, but I am more struck by the differences. After all, Touraine conceived of sociology as a science, a positive science. And the interventions of the sociologists are empowered by mastering knowledge. They have to teach social actors and to lead them progressively to be more aware of the social issues at stake. So sociologists help to effect something like a progressive transformation in which social actors become more reflexive. Sociologists give to social movements their implicit choices. It is a very classical modern position. What is striking is the assumption that actors are able to be competent, but when they are challenged to account for the course of social action they are unable to make it explicit. What is different in the position I try to develop is the relation to

120 Michel Callon, Andrew Barry and Don Slater actors and the position and definition, qualification and epistemological status of sociology. The point is that sociological knowledge is a co-production between actors and social scientists. We can’t avoid the co-production of knowledge and the consequence of this joint production is the generation of new identities. So it’s similar to Touraine’s position in that you have a process of transformation but the position of the social scientist is not epistemologically higher. The social scientist and the actors are at the same level. They are still different, of course. They do not have the same interests, the same references and so on. Andrew Barry: But it requires teaching the actors that that is the relation you are hoping for. In many situations actors impute power or expertise (or lack of it) to the social scientist. Michel Callon: You are perfectly right. We are pre-formed by the expectations of actors. It is sometimes difficult to convince them of the interest of this new deal. But I think that it is something that is possible to identify who is ready to accept the position and sometimes who is even reluctant to consider social scientists as experts who are able to say the truth. My vision of this question is that we have to try, as a first step, to co-operate with social actors who are willing to co-operate with us, and who are able to understand what is at stake. In the second phase, using these first studies as examples we could extend this new conception of the relation between social scientists and social actors. It’s a question of the progressive implementation of a programme. Andrew Barry: So this is the answer to the question what is to be done. Michel Callon: It’s obviously very different from the position of Bourdieu with his notion of the collective intellectual, or even from Michel Foucault with his notion of the specific intellectual which is very close to the notion of expert. If you take the case of Bourdieu, it’s a way of keeping social science outside of the social sphere and of reinforcing the positive visions of the social sciences. Andrew Barry: The question that arises for me is how do you deal with actors who are not willing to accept this model, and in particular with governments who may have other visions? Michel Callon: We have to learn from experience, it’s a question of trial and error. We will get a clearer vision of what is possible. I would be reluctant to use this programme to co-operate with governments for the purposes of public administration. I think it’s not an objective for this vision of the social sciences. What I would like to do in the next few years is to try to develop this form of joint research with those who are not well prepared for this kind of reflexive questioning and who are not sufficiently self-organised. The real challenge would be to choose people who are loosely networked and in a loosely oppositional position, and who are in a situation that is unpredictable, out of which new social identities and subjectivities might emerge.

Technology, politics and the market 121

Note 1

This interview took place in Paris and Lancaster in February and March 2001.

References Arrow, K. (1962) ‘Economic welfare and the allocation of resources for inventions’, in R.R. Nelson (ed.) The Rate and Direction of Inventive Activity, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Beck, U. (1992) The Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, London: Sage. Boltanski, L. and E. Chiapello (1999) Le Nouvel Esprit du Capitalisme, Paris: Gallimard. Bourdieu, P. (1998) Contre-feux: propos pour servir à la résistance contre l’invasion néo-libérale, Paris: Éditions Raisons d’Agir. Bush, V. (1945) Science: The Endless Frontier, Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office. Callon, M. (ed.) (1998) The Laws of the Markets, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Callon, M., P. Lascoumes and Y. Barthe (2001) Agir dans un monde incertain: essai sur la démocratie technique, Paris: Le Seuil. Epstein, S. (1996) Impure Science: AIDS, Activism and the Politics of Knowledge, Berkeley, CA: California University Press. Foucault, M. (1977) ‘The political function of the intellectual’, Radical Philosophy, 17, 12– 14. Gibson-Graham, J.K. (1996) The End of Capitalism (As We Knew it): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy, Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell. Rabeharisoa, V. and M. Callon (1999) Le pouvoir des malades: l’association française contre les myopathies et la recherche, Paris: École des Mines. Touraine, A. (1981) The Voice and the Eye: An Analysis of Social Movements, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

122 Karin Knorr-Cetina

6

From pipes to scopes The flow architecture of financial markets Karin Knorr-Cetina

Recently, economic sociologists have tended to view markets as embedded in social relations and social networks, the structures they see as defining markets and framing economic action (e.g. White 1981, 1993, 2002; Baker 1981, 1984; Baker et al. 1998; Granovetter 1985; Swedberg and Granovetter 1992; Swedberg 1994, 1997; Burt 1983, 1992; DiMaggio and Louch 1998; Uzzi 1997, 1999; Podolny 2001). This chapter draws a distinction between two types of markets: those based on a network architecture where social relationships carry much of the burden of specifying market behaviour and of explaining some market outcomes, and markets that have become disembedded and decoupled from networks and exhibit what I shall call a flow architecture.1 As illustrated elsewhere (Knorr-Cetina and Bruegger 2002a, 2002b), flow architectures are “microstructured” rather than simply network/relationally-structured. They are more richly structured than the relational vocabulary allows for, and display patterns of coordination and behaviour that are global in scope and microlevel in character. As Fligstein notes (1996: 657), networks are sparse social structures, and it is difficult to see how they can incorporate the patterns of intense conversational interaction, the knowledge flows, and the temporal features observed in some areas of practice. Though flow architectures may include networks, these networks are not the salient structuring principle of a global microstructure. Flow architectures, I shall argue in this chapter, also involve global “scopic” systems that project market reality while at the same time carrying it forward and allowing it “to flow”. The suffix “scope”, derived from the Greek “scopein”, to see, when combined with a qualifying notion means an instrument, etc. for seeing or observing, as in “periscope”. Social scientists tend to think in terms of mechanisms of coordination, which is what the network notion stands for; a network is an arrangement of nodes tied together by relationships which serve as conduits of communication, resources, and other coordinating instances that hold the arrangement together by passing between the nodes. Cooperations, strategic alliances, exchange, emotional bonds, kinship ties, “personal relations”, and forms of grouping and entrenchment can all be seen to work through ties and to instantiate sociality in networks of relationships. But we should also think in terms of reflexive mechanisms of observation and projection, which the relational vocabulary does not capture. Like an array of crystals acting as lenses

From pipes to scopes 123 that collect light, focusing it on one point, such mechanisms collect and focus activities, interests, and events on one surface, from whence the result may then be projected again in different directions. When such a mechanism is in place, coordination and activities respond to the projected reality to which participants become oriented. The system acts as a centring and mediating device through which things pass and from which they flow forward. An ordinary observer who monitors events is an instrument for seeing. When such an ordinary observer constructs a textual or visual rendering of the observed and televises it to an audience, the audience may start to react to the features of the reflected, represented reality rather than to the embodied, pre-reflexive occurrences. In the financial markets studied the reflexive mechanism and “projection plane” is the computer screen; with the screen come software and hardware systems that provide a vast range of observation, presentation, and interaction capabilities sustained by information and service provider firms. Given these affordances, the pre-reflexive reality is cut off and replaced; some of the mechanisms that we take for granted in a lifeworld, for example its performative possibilities, have been integrated into the systems, while others have been replaced by specialized processes that feed the screen. The technical systems gather up a lifeworld while simultaneously projecting it. They also “apresent” (bring near, see Schutz and Luckmann 1973) and project layers of context and horizons that are out of reach in ordinary lifeworlds – they deliver not only transnational situations but a global world spanning all major time zones. As I shall argue below, they do this from trading floors located in global cities (Sassen 2001) which serve as the bridgehead centres of the flow architecture of financial markets. Raised to a level of analytic abstraction, the configuration of screens, capabilities, and contents that traders in financial markets confront corresponds to a global reflex system, or GRS, where R stands for the reflexively transmitted and reflex-like (instantaneously) projected action and other capabilities of the system and G stands for the global, scopic view and reach of the reflex system. For the present purpose, which is that of distinguishing between forms of coordination relevant to understanding markets, the term is intended to denote a reflexive form of coordination that is flat (non-hierarchical) in character while at the same time being based on a comprehensive summary view of things – the reflected and projected global context and transaction system. This form of coordination contrasts with network forms of coordination which, according to the present terminology, are pre-reflexive in character – networks are embedded in territorial space, and they do not suggest the existence of reflexive mechanisms of projection that aggregate, recontextualize, and augment the relational activities within new frameworks that are analytically relevant to understanding the continuation of activities. With the notion of a GRS system, I am offering a simplifying term for the constellation of technical, visual, and behavioral components packaged together on financial screens that deliver to participants a global world in which they can participate on a common platform, that of their shared computer screens. On a technological level, the GRS mechanism postulated requires that we must understand as analytically relevant for a conception of financial markets not only electronic connections, but computer terminals and

124 Karin Knorr-Cetina screens – the sorts of teletechnologies (Clough 2000: 3) that are conspicuously present on trading floors and the focus of participants’ attention – as well as the trading floors themselves, where these screens cluster and through which markets pass. In the following, I begin with an analysis of financial markets as focused upon computer screens as the centrepieces of such a GRS form of coordination. I will also briefly sketch the historical innovation and emergence of the relevant systems in the 1970s and 1980s and point out how they led to a replacement of network markets. I address some temporal features of the foreign exchange market which I take as my exemplifying case. A flow architecture, I shall argue, results from a combination of these temporal features with the GRS form of coordination, clustered in time-zone-specific bridgehead centres.

The mirrored market: “GRS” illustrated To begin with a concrete case, consider the foreign exchange market, which, with an average daily turnover of US$1.2 trillion in 2001, is the largest financial market and also the most global market (BIS 2001; for comprehensive descriptions of bond, stock and other financial markets see Abolafia 1996a, 1996b, 1998; Smith 1981, 1990, 1999; Hertz 1998). Unlike other financial markets, the foreign exchange market is not organized mainly in centralized exchanges but derives from interdealer transactions in a global banking network of institutions; it is what is called an “over-the-counter” market. Over-the-counter transactions are made on the trading floors of major investment and other banks. On the major trading floors of the global banks where we conducted our research2 in Zurich and New York, between 200 (Zurich) and 800 (New York) traders were engaged in stock, bond, and currency trading involving various trading techniques and instruments. Smaller floors in Sydney, Zurich, and New York featured between 40 to 80 traders. Up to 20 per cent of these traders will deal in foreign exchange at desks grouped together on the floors. The traders on these desks in interbank currency markets are not brokers who mediate deals but rather market makers. They take their own “positions” in the market in trying to gain from price differences while also offering trades to other market participants, thereby bringing liquidity to the market and sustaining it – if necessary, by trading against their own position. Foreign exchange deals through these channels start in the order of several hundred thousand dollars per transaction, going up to a hundred million dollars and more. The deals are made by investors, speculators, financial managers, central bankers, and others who want to profit from expected currency moves, or who need currencies to help them enter or exit transnational investments (e.g. in mergers and acquisitions). In doing deals, all traders on the floors have a range of technology at their disposal; most conspicuously, up to five computer screens, which display the market and serve to conduct trading. When traders arrive in the morning they strap themselves to their seats, figuratively speaking, they bring up their screens, and from then on their eyes will be glued to these screens, their visual regard captured by it even when they talk or shout to each other, their bodies and the screen world melting together in what appears to be a total immersion in the action in which they are

From pipes to scopes 125 taking part. The market composes itself in these produced-and-analysed displays to which traders are attached. What do the screens show? The central feature of the screens and the centrepiece of the market for traders are the dealing prices displayed on the “electronic broker” (EBS), a special screen and automated dealing service that sorts orders according to best bids and offers. It displays prices for currency pairs (mainly dollars against other currencies such as the Swiss franc or the euro), deals being possible at these prices. Traders frequently deal through the electronic broker, which has largely replaced the “voice broker” (real-life broker); the price action there is also central to the prices they make, as “market makers”, for callers approaching them on the “Reuters conversational dealing”, another special screen (and computer network) through which they trade. On the Reuters dealing, deals are concluded in and through bilateral “conversations” conducted on screen. These resemble e-mail message exchanges for which the Reuters dealing is also used in and between dealing conversations. On a further screen, traders watch prices contributed by different banks worldwide; these prices are merely indicative, they express interest rather than being dealing prices as such. Traders may also watch their own current position in the market (e.g. their being long or short on particular currencies), the history of deals made over recent periods, and their overall account balances (profits and losses over relevant periods) on this or another workstation at their disposal. Finally, the screens provide headline news, economic commentary, and interpretations which traders watch. An important source of information which also appears on these screens, but is closer to traders’ actual dealing in terms of the specificity, speed, and currentness of the information, are internal bulletin boards on which participants input information. Consider now the installation side of these trading floors. All financial markets today are heavily dependent on electronic information and communication technologies. Some markets, for example the foreign exchange market that is the focus of this work, are entirely electronic markets. As over-the-counter markets of interbank trading, currency markets rely on electronic technologies that enable the dealer-to-dealer contacts and trading services across borders and continents. Reuters, Bloomberg, and Telerate connections wire together these markets, as do intranets that internally connect the trading room terminals and other facilities of particular banks and groups of banks in global cities. Reuters, Bloomberg, and Telerate are news and service provider firms. In 2001, Reuters had more than 300,000 terminals installed worldwide in all markets and facilities and Bloomberg had more than 150,000. Revenue from leases of their systems amounted to approximately $2.5 billion each at the end of 2001.3 With the terminals comes sophisticated software: dealing and information systems, worksheet, e-mail and customization capabilities, electronic brokerage and accounting services, some of which – like EBS, the electronic broker system – have been developed by the banks themselves. The connections and the intricate and expensive hardware and software delivered by providers and the banking institutions themselves constitute the material infrastructure of financial markets. How does this bear on the difference between a network form of coordination

126 Karin Knorr-Cetina and the reflexive, global form of coordination discussed in this chapter? First, it will be obvious from the description thus far that the material infrastructure of financial markets includes much more than electronic networks, the cable and satellite connections between banks and continents. It includes the installation of trading floors in the global cities that are the financial centres in the three major time zones: London, New York, Tokyo, Zurich, Singapore and a few others (see Sassen 2001: Ch.7; Leyshon and Thrift 1997). The trading floors are the bridgehead centres for a global market that moves from time zone to time zone with the sun. The centrepieces of the interconnected floors are their federations of terminals that feature the sophisticated hardware and software capabilities discussed. When talking about the electronic infrastructure of financial markets, we should not lose sight of the hardware and software of the trading floors themselves and the terminal structures that “ready” these floors for trading. Second, the electronic interconnections which are part of this federation and link all participating institutions, including the service provider firms, are not simply coextensive with social networks through which transactions flow. As electronic networks they correspond to different construction criteria, involve electronic nodes and linkages irrelevant to social relationships, and what flows through them frequently does not derive from social and financial relationships; an example are EBS deals, which are traders’ responses to anonymous buying or selling offers provided by an automated electronic broker system. Third and most important, the terminals deliver much more than just windows to physically distant counterparties. In fact, they deliver the reality of financial markets – the referential whole to which “being in the market” refers, the ground on which traders step as they make their moves, the world which they literally share through their shared technologies and systems. The thickly-layered screens laid out in front of traders provide the core of the market and most of the context. They come as close as one can get to delivering a stand-alone world that includes “everything” (see below) for its existence and continuation: at the centre the actual dealing prices and incoming trading conversations, in a second circle the indicative prices, account information and some news (depending on the current market story), and further headlines and commentaries providing a third layer of information. It is this delivery of a world assembled and drawn together in ways that make sense and allow navigation and accounting which suggests the globally reflexive character of this form of coordination – and the scopic nature of traders’ screens. The dealing and information systems on screen visually “collect” and present the market to all participants. Two aspects of the system need to be emphasized. One is that the GRS in currency markets assembles not only relevant information about, for example, political events, economic developments, and prices, but “gathers up” the activities themselves – it affords the possibility of performing the market transactions and other interactions through its technological and software capabilities. In other words, the system is reflexive and performative. In fact, it not only affords these possibilities as an option but has drawn market activities in completely. With the exception perhaps of situations where there has been an electronic breakdown, when traders may resort to dealing via the telephone, nearly all dealing transactions – trades of

From pipes to scopes 127 financial instruments – and other interactions are performed on computer screens. This system effectively eliminates the pre-reflexive reality by integrating within its framework all relevant venues of the specialized lifeworld of financial markets. The reality on screen becomes the traders’ lifeworld, a lifeworld that is at the same time reflexively transmitted and instantaneously projected. It also offers, beside anonymous venues of trading through the electronic broker, relational dealing systems – e.g. the previously mentioned Reuters conversational dealing, where one trader contacts another and deals with him or her in what natives call a “dealing conversation”. This window can also be used for conversing with a financial market friend connected to the system about anything of mutual interest; for example, it is used extensively for soliciting and offering and co-analysing information. In sum, the global reflex system of financial screens integrates within its framework the conduits for building and maintaining relationships. Should we therefore conclude that this global reflex system is nothing more than an electronic facilitating device for markets that run through networks? Surely not. Roughly 80 per cent of trades, if not more, according to traders’ estimates, are conducted through the electronic broker, which is an anonymous dealing system, as indicated. Even if some of these deals involve parties with whom one entertains a business (or personal) relationship, these relationships remain interactionally irrelevant since the dealoffering parties are not disclosed in advance on the EBS. Among the at most 20 per cent of the trades conducted through conversational dealing systems, relationship deals are more likely, but they need not be dominant. Any bank accredited for certain dealing limits and electronically connected to the system can approach any other bank through the conversational dealing without a pre-existing or ongoing relationship. Traders also differentiate between “their networks” of contacts, those dealers and clients with whom they interact frequently and consider a subset of the market; their circle of closer “friends” comprising perhaps up to 5 or 10 people with whom they talk almost daily and sometimes extensively via the conversational dealing system and the telephone; and the market, which has a large anonymous component. As one trader put it, “(the market on screen) is probably like 99.99999 per cent anonymous”. The second aspect to be emphasized follows from the description thus far. The mirrored market that is comprehensively projected on computer screens acquires a presence and profile of its own, with its own temporal and other properties. Traders are not simply confronted with a medium of communication through which bilateral transactions are conducted, the sort of thing the telephone stands for. They are confronted with a market that has become a “life form” in its own right, a “greater being”, as one of our respondents, a proprietary trader in Zurich, put it – a being that is sometimes coherent but at other times dispersed and fragmented. LG:

You know it’s an invisible hand, the market is always right, it’s a life form that has being in its own right. You know, in a sort of Gestalt sort of way … it has form and meaning.

128 Karin Knorr-Cetina KK: It has form and meaning which is independent of you? You can’t control it, is that the point? LG: Right. Exactly, exactly! KK: Most of the time it’s quite dispersed, or does it gel for you? LG: A-h, that’s why I say it has life, it has life in and of itself, you know, sometimes it all comes together, and sometimes it’s all just sort of, dispersed, and arbitrary, and random, and directionless and lacking cohesiveness. KK: But you see it as a third thing? Or do you mean the other person? LG: As a greater being. KK: … LG: No, I don’t mean the other person; I mean the being as a whole. And the being is the foreign exchange market – and we are a sum of our parts, or it is a sum of its parts. The following quote also gives an inclusive definition of the market which brings out its life-like depth. The territorial disputes between economics, sociology, and psychology over market definitions all melt into a sort of “markets are everything” in which the focus can shift from aspect to aspect. KK: What is the market for you, is it the price action, or is it individual participants, or? RG: Everything. Everything. KK: Everything? The information? RG: Everything. Everything. How loudly he’s screaming, how excited he gets, who’s selling, who’s buying, where, which centre, what central banks are doing, what the large funds are doing, what the press is saying, what’s happening to the CDU [a political party in Germany], what the Malaysian prime minister is saying, it’s everything – everything all the time. Who the buyers and sellers are, what significant actors and observers both in the market and outside it do and say, all the agents, activities, and contextual events indicated in this quote and the reactions of market observers and participants to these events represent the market. The quote comes from an experienced trader who had worked in several countries, including ones in the Far East, before coming to Zurich. Note that his “the market is everything” refers to the manifold things that one finds on financial screens, the news and news commentary, the confidential information about what some major players are doing, and the prices. The screens, or perhaps we should say the availability of a projection plane for financial markets, appear to have enlarged rather than reduced the world of this market. It has undeniably enlarged the world beyond that which ordinarily flows through trading networks, which, as we shall see in the next section, historically was to a large extent price information. The notion of a network draws on a powerful convergence of organizational changes, technological developments, and broader cultural transformations of values which sustain the network not only as an analytic concept for the investigation

From pipes to scopes 129 of social structure, but also as a model and advertisement for how things in many areas should be structured. The most important convergent development that has contributed to the recent renaissance of network concepts is surely that of information and communication technologies which are based on electronic linkages between geographic areas and are referred to in terms of a vocabulary of nets, webs, circuits, and nodes. Information and communication technologies have made the network notion salient, strengthened pre-existing trends toward network forms of organization, and facilitated some of these developments. Castells accordingly writes of the network society where “flows of messages and images between networks constitute the basic thread of our social structure” (Castells 1996: 476–7; compare Lash 2002). He sees dominant societal functions organized in global information technology networks linked by these communications, while subordinate functions fragment in local settings where people occupied with these functions become increasingly segregated and disconnected from each other. But the central question for social scientists is how these technologies are instantiated in concrete areas of practice, and here a different picture emerges. From the traders’ perspective, and from the perspective of the observer of traders’ lifeworld, the dominant element in the installation of trading floors in globally interconnected financial institutions is not the electronic infrastructural connections – the “pipes” (Podolny 2001: 33) or arteries through which transactions flow – but the computer screens and the dealing and information capabilities which instantly reflect, project, and extend the reality of these markets in toto. They give rise to a form of coordination that includes networks but also vastly transcends them, projecting an aggregate and contextualized market. The screens on which the market is present are identically replicated in all institutions and on all trading floors, forming, as it were, one huge compound mirroring and transaction device to which many contribute and on which all draw. As an omnipresent complex “Other”, the market on screen takes on a presence and profile in its own right with its own self-assembling and self-integrating features (for example, the best prices world-wide are selected and displayed), its own calculating routines (for example, accounts are maintained and prices may be calculated), and self-historicizing properties (for example, price histories are displayed and a multiplicity of other histories can be called up). The electronic programs and circuits which underlie this screen world assemble and implement on one platform the previously dispersed activities of different agents; of brokers and bookkeepers, of market-makers (traders) and analysts, of researchers and news agents. In this sense, the screen is a building site on which a whole economic and epistemological world is erected. It is not simply a “medium” for the transmission of pre-reflexive interactions.

How did the market get on screen? The move away from network markets The market has of course not always been on screen. The history of foreign exchange markets since the 1970s instantiates and exemplifies for other areas the transition from a network market to a flow market utilizing a central, compound

130 Karin Knorr-Cetina space. Let us start with the breakdown of the Bretton Woods Agreement, which had hitherto effectively fixed exchange rates. In the 1970s, first the USA (1971), then major European countries, including Britain by 1979, and finally Japan in the early 1980s, abolished exchange controls, effectively eliminating the Bretton Woods Agreement of fixed exchange rates in place since 1944 and allowing foreign exchange trading for purposes of speculation. Before the breakdown, foreign exchange markets also existed: foreign exchange deals are cross-border exchanges of currencies. Such exchanges were born with the dawn of international trade and persisted through all ages. But in the 30 years of the Bretton Woods Agreement, foreign exchange deals reflected by and large the real requirements of companies and others that needed foreign exchange to settle bills and pay for goods. When exchange controls were removed, currency trading itself became possible as a market where exchange reflected price movement anticipation. In 1986, the dealing rooms of the world had taken off, with an average of US$150 billion and as much as $250 billion being traded around the globe, double the volume of five years before (Hamilton and Biggart 1993). In April 1998, according to the Bank of International Settlement’s Triennial Survey, the average daily turnover in traditional global foreign exchange instruments had risen from $36.4 billion in 1974 to $1.5 trillion (BIS 1998). Two-thirds of this volume derives from “over-the-counter transactions”, i.e. from inter-dealer transactions in a global banking network of institutions. Banks had responded quickly to the business opportunities which arose with the freedom of capital that the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system initiated. They also responded to an increasing demand stimulated by volatile exchange and interest rates reflecting various crises (e.g. the energy crisis of 1974) and to the tremendous growth in pension fund and other institutional holdings that needed to be invested. Though the volume of trading has since receded to approximately $1.2 trillion with the economic downturn and the elimination of some currencies according to the latest BIS survey (2001), the foreign exchange market is still by far the largest market in daily turnover worldwide. When exchange controls were removed in 1971, the current foreign exchange market was born. Traders, however, had no computers and trading was a question of finding and negotiating this market, which lay hidden within geographical space. A trading room, in the early beginnings, was a room with desks and phone lines and a calculating machine. It may also have had a central phone booth installed in the middle of the room, originally serving as a quiet place to take international phone calls which, early on, still had to be ordered through the phone company; only national calls could be dialled directly. A most important device was the “ticker”, a device which churned out “50 metres a day” of news headlines and price pointers, as a former participant put it (see Preda 2003 for its specific history). Activities on the floor centred around “finding the market”, that is finding out what the price of a currency was and who wanted to deal. In the following quote, a former chief of trading recalls how he continually chased after the market. P: … So you had to constantly find out what the rates were in countries. KK: And you did this by calling up banks?

From pipes to scopes 131 P:

By, yes. And there were also calls on the telex by other banks who either wanted to trade or wanted to know, simply wanted to know where dollarSwiss was. KK: … P: Yes, you were a broker for traders, every morning you had to fetch all the prices in Europe, Danish crowns, Swedish crowns, Norwegian crowns, and such, national currencies every morning, the opening rates. You gave them to traders, they calculated them in Swiss francs, and wrote them down on big sheets. B: And you offered two-way prices already? P: … In Swiss banks exchange rates were determined by negotiation, like in a bazaar (etc.). The notion apresentation, a term adapted from Schutz and Luckmann (1973: 11), refers to the transport of details from different geographical locations and time zones to a particular domain of activities. A partial attempt at apresenting markets occurred before the introduction of screens: the prices written down by hand on the “big sheets” to which P refers in the above quote were displayed on wall boards and can be seen as early attempts at market apresentation. When screens appeared, they were at first no more than substitutes for the “big sheets”: displays on which the handwritten price sheets put together by female clerks were projected on the basis of pictures taken of the sheets on the floor. This form of apresentation rested upon a chain of activities that was in important respects indistinguishable from the one that fetched prices in pre-screen times: it involved narrowing down where the market was by calling up or telexing banks, writing down the responses by hand (and perhaps recalculating prices in national currencies), and making this information available for internal purposes through a form of central presentation. Screens began to apresent a dispersed and dissociated matrix of interests more directly only in 1973, when the British news provider Reuters first launched the computerized foreign exchange system “Monitor”, which became the basis for this electronic market (Read 1992). Monitor still apresented the market only partially, however, since it, too, only provided indicative prices. Nonetheless it did, from the beginning, include news. Actual dealing remained extraneous to screen activities and was conducted over the phone and telex until 1981, when a new system, also developed by Reuters that included dealing services, went live to 145 institutional customers in nine countries. The system was extended within a year to Hong Kong, Singapore, and the Middle East, resulting in a market with a world-wide presence (Read 1992: 283ff., 310–11). From that point onward, deals could be concluded on screen within two to four seconds, and dealers could communicate via the screen. Yet even before this system went live, the first system, Monitor, from its launch onward, radically changed one aspect of dealing: it answered the question of where the market was, i.e. what the prices of currencies were and who might be ready to deal. Before the market-on-screen, prices differed from place to place and had to be ascertained afresh for every deal through long and painful processes of phoning

132 Karin Knorr-Cetina up banks and waiting for lines from operators for overseas calls. After the introduction of Monitor, prices suddenly became available globally to everyone connected by the system, in a market that functioned between countries and between continents. Before the market-on-screen, there were dispersed networks of trading parties entertaining business relationships. After the introduction of the computerized screen quotes in 1981, “the market” no longer resided in a network of many places, but only in one, the screen, which could be represented identically in all places. The economic counterpart to this coming together of all market fragments in one location was the declining importance of arbitrage. Price differences between locations made visible on screen, even if they involve only indicative prices, will quickly be eliminated, as the information about them is available to all traders connected and traders try to take advantage of these differences. The sociological counterpart to Monitor and its expansion into dealing services and the many capabilities and information windows the successor systems provide is the emergence of GRS as a mechanism of coordination. Not only were markets recast with the coming together and expansion of all their functions and contexts on financial screens, but forms of social coordination were also reconfigured.

The market as a moving timeworld and the flow architecture of this timeworld I now want to address the flow architecture of foreign exchange markets which has been made possible by the GRS. The notion of a flow, as I shall use the term, responds to the aggregate properties the market acquired after being put on screens and to the global processual qualities of this market. To start things off, consider the continuation of the conversation reported before with the proprietary trader who defined the market on screen as a life form. He also pointed to the continuously changing shape of the market: KK: I want to come back to the market, what the market is for you. Does it have a particular shape? LG: No, it changes “shape” all the time. Traders perform their activities in a moving field constituted by changing dealing prices, shifting trading interests (the indicative prices), scrolling records of the immediate past that are continually updated, incoming conversational requests, newly projected market trends, and emerging and disappearing headline news, commentaries and economic analyses. In other words, they perform their activities in a temporal world; the market itself is intrinsically dynamic and processual and the global reflex system of financial screens displays, enhances and accelerates the market process and its dynamic properties. As the information scrolls down the screens and is replaced by new information, a new market reality continually projects itself. The constantly emerging lines of text at times repeat the disappearing ones, but they also add to them and replace them, updating the reality in which traders move. The market as a “greater being”, as an empirical object of ongoing

From pipes to scopes 133 activities and effects, continually transforms itself like a bird changing direction in mid-flight, creating the anticipation problem traders confront. From one point of view, a defining characteristic of a financial market is its non-identity with itself. Markets are always in the process of being materially defined, they continually acquire new properties and change the ones they have. It is this ontological liquidity of financial markets that contributes to their perception as a reality in flux. The flow of the market reflects the corresponding stream of activities and things: a dispersed mass of market participants continues to act, events continue to occur, policies take hold and have effects. Markets are objects of observation and analysis because they change continually; and while they are clearly defined in terms of prices, news, relevant economic indicators, and so on at any given moment, they are ill-defined with respect to the direction they will take at the next moment and in the less immediate future. Historically, markets were marketplaces, physical locations where buyers and sellers were able to meet and coordinate their interests (e.g. Agnew 1986: 18). Likewise, our concepts of an everyday reality tend to be spatial concepts. We see reality as an environment that exists independently of us and in which we dwell and perform our activities. The very notions of a lifeworld and of a world on screen as used so far in this chapter also suggest spatiality; they suggest that the idea of a spatial environment can be extended to electronic domains as these become – for some of us – a place to work and live. The problem with these notions in regard to time is that they imply that time is something that passes in these spatial environments but is extraneous to the environment itself. We relate the existence of a lifeworld, of an environment, or of everyday reality more to the physical materiality of a spatial world than to any temporal dimension. We also express, one assumes, the durability of the physical world compared with the human lifespan through spatializing concepts. The point is that the screen reality discussed has none of this durability. It is more like a carpet of which small sections are rolled out in front of us. The carpet grounds experience; we can step on it, and change our positioning on it. But this carpet only composes itself as it is rolled out; the spatial illusions it affords hide the intrinsic temporality of the fact that its threads (the lines of text appearing on screen) are woven into the carpet only as we step on it and unravel again behind our back (the lines are updated and disappear). Thus the screen reality – the carpet – is a process, but it is not simply like a river that flows in the sense of an identical mass of water transferring itself from one location to another. Rather, it is processual in the sense of an infinite succession of nonidentical matter projecting itself forward as changing screen. This is what one may call the flow-character of this reality. This formulation suggests that what I have called the global reflex system – and particularly its screen component – is necessary for this flow reality to emerge: it is through the performative and presentational capabilities of the GRS mechanism and its information feeds that the market acquires the properties of an aggregate entity and, while being performed and reflexively analysed and projected, takes on the character of a stream of things moving forward as a whole. We also need to distinguish here between participating financial flows and the composite reality of

134 Karin Knorr-Cetina a flowing market. Traders sometime contrast “taking a view” of a market development, which is subjective, with having concrete information about what they call “orders” and “flows”, which is objective, since orders and flows are constitutive components of financial markets. Financial orders refer to requests for trades once the price of a financial instrument reaches a certain level; when an order is executed, it becomes a flow. Financial flows refer to volumes of a financial instrument changing positions and accounts; in accounting terms, flows are distinguished from “non-changing” objects in that they must be expressed in terms of a time interval (Houthakker and Williamson 1996: 9). In foreign exchange, large flows are large amounts of currencies being bought or sold. The sales may arise from mergers and acquisitions of firms that require large cross-border payments, from central bank transactions in support of a particular currency, etc. Advance and concurrent knowledge of large orders and flows is important to traders because these orders and flows may “move the market” – they may change price levels. They may also potentially set in motion new market trends and reverse upward or downward tendencies in currency prices. To participants, orders and flows are part of the market as an independent reality and they are at the same time forces that drive the market. Participants’ understandings of flows can be related to common notions of flow which we should briefly consider. Social scientists tend to associate the term flow either directly with (1) things travelling or (2) fluidity. The first idea responds to the increased mobilities of contemporary life (Urry 2000: 15–16, 36–7). It gives expression to the phenomenon that it is not only people that commute, travel, and migrate in seemingly ever-increasing numbers, but that messages and information also move. It is particularly the travelling of communications that underpins the idea of a network society as one based on flows of information (e.g. Castells 1996). This idea is important, but it does not quite capture what happens in the case of financial flows. In currency trading, financial flows refer to payments that imply adjustments of accounts. No physical transfers of money need take place for this purpose; what flows in the sense of something being transferred is financial (market, payment, etc.) power as an abstract capacity rather than actual money. The payments are important to market participants because they influence price levels, as indicated. The changes that occur and concern participants in response to financial flows pertain to the market as centrally composed of price levels. Also changing in conjunction with large financial flows may be market stories, commentaries, and analyses, headline news, trend extrapolations, and the like – all belonging to the level of the market as presented on screen. This level of the market is what the notion of a flow market as used in this chapter targets. The second meaning of flow found in the literature is that of fluidity; it draws on the distinction between liquids and solids. For example, analysts who emphasize fluidity conceptualize the current stage of modernity as marked by a transition from more solid forms of order and tradition to structures that are more liquid and fluid, or that are melting, as in Marx’s famous phrase that “all that is solid melts into air” (e.g. Berman 1982; Bauman 2000). The liberalization of traditional education exemplifies this trend, as does the deregulation of markets, the

From pipes to scopes 135 flexibilization of labour and the breakdown and replacement of traditional family relations (e.g. Lasch 1978). This idea of the “melting of the solid” comes closer to the one used here, but the point about the screen reality as a flow is not that it is nomadic (without itinerary) and unmarked by the traces of social and economic structure. The point is the projection and reconstitution of this reality as one that is continually emerging in a piecemeal fashion. One can compare it to a text that is in the process of being written simultaneously by many authors, that is composed in the process of writing out numerous different components, and that reaches no further than the contributor’s pen. It is the emergence of this market text in episodic pieces, contemporaneously with the agent’s activity and the short duration of the text, that the notion of a flow as used here is intended to capture. I also suggest that it is possible to retain notions such as that of a world while remaining aware of the scrolling change of this particular world. The screen that rolls out the lifeworld in which traders move nonetheless presents such a lifeworld; it presents a complex environment composed of “walkable” regions and horizons that ground activities. The ground may be shifting continually and the lifeworld is “in flight”. But traders are able to deal with this flux; their ways of “inhabiting” it are adapted to the timeworld they confront. An example of this adaptation is the traders’ tendency to keep pace with their world-in-flight by following market movements in their trading and by developing a “feeling” for these movements. Traders also analyse the shortterm and long-term tendencies of their lifeworld’s movements in terms of stories and “big pictures” that give duration to particular states. If markets are continually changing processes with variable time attributes, they can also be viewed as time contexts that move across space, or to be precise, across time zones. Here the global character of financial markets, particularly of currency markets, becomes important. One can see these markets as moving in and out of time zones continually with the sun, and as they do, of taking on different features and updating their positions. As global entities, markets have their own instrument- and clock-related characteristics that characterize them in the aggregate. For example, markets have characteristic “speeds” indicated by the price movements which are at the centre of a changing market process. In currency spot trading, which is the direct exchange of currencies, prices tend to change within split seconds during periods of average activity. As a consequence, the currency trading timeworld moves forward at a breathtaking pace. Another attribute is the liquidity of a market, which in this context indicates the speed with which a financial instrument can be bought or sold, without significant price changes. Markets will be “thin” (have few participants willing to trade) at certain times and “deep” at others, with market liquidity varying over time. Markets also undergo seasonal variations, for example, periods of low trading volume during the holiday season in December, when the accounting end of the year draws close. When markets are conceived as moving across time zones, additional features become relevant, underscoring their character as moving entities and timeworlds. To make this character plausible, I want to consider the following aspects of global markets, focusing again on the foreign exchange market as the most developed global market. A first set of characteristics refers to the temporal unity of these markets: they

136 Karin Knorr-Cetina keep their own clock and times and they have their own global schedules and calendars. A second characteristic of these markets is that they are globally “exclusive” systems that have left behind their natural embeddedness in local and physical settings. This point will allow me to address the architecture of these markets as based on bridgehead centres in the three major time zones. My final point illustrates the working of a flow architecture as one where such centres play “bridging” and mediating roles in giving support to a moving market and in updating and forwarding the market on a time zone trajectory. A first feature that ties into the view of global foreign exchange markets as moving time contexts is that they follow their own time, which is Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). Greenwich Mean Time, the time and date of the zero meridian which runs through Greenwich, England, was adopted as a universal standard in November 1884 during the meeting of the International Meridian Conference in Washington, DC, USA. This conference drew up an international date line and created 24 time zones. Prior to that, the United States alone had over 300 local times (see Zerubiavel 1982: 12–13 for its interesting historical origin). Since these markets have no central location, time is fixed to a particular coordinate of the globe to assure global identification of the correct transaction date. If this were not the case, a transaction in New York requiring delivery in Sydney two days later and the receiving side in Sydney might not register the same delivery date. But this also means that the respective markets carry their own time reckoning with them. As an aggregate of positions, orders, flows, and travelling “books” (accounts), they remain independent of local time zones. A further aspect of the temporality of global markets is “calendars” and schedules: dates and hours set for important economic announcements and for the release of periodically calculated economic indicators and data. These calendars and schedules structure and pace participants’ awareness and anticipation. They originate in a particular world region and the respective time zones; for example, the data might be released in the US at Eastern standard time and they will consist of national statistics referring, for example, to the US, or of aggregate statistics referring to a group of nations, as with European Union data. But calendars and schedules from all three major time zones are relevant and will be listed in daily and weekly market “schedules”. These schedules “anchor” market developments in national or regional economies’ fundamental characteristics. Yet as transnationally relevant collections of time points that punctuate and dramatize the ordinary temporal flow of market events and observations, they also belong to the disembedded timeworld of global markets. This disembedding is the second feature I want to discuss. It too sustains the notion of global markets as moving timeworlds. Giddens uses the notion of disembedding to refer to the “lifting out of social relations from local contexts” (Giddens 1990: 21–9). I use the term to refer to the phenomenon that the markets observed appear removed from their local context in terms of participants’ orientation, their inherent connectivity and integration as the key to overcoming the geographical separation between participants, their rules of trading practices, their forms of compensation, and the like (see Knorr-Cetina and Bruegger 2002a for an overview of these characteristics). To give some examples, market participants

From pipes to scopes 137 (e.g. traders) are disembedded in the sense that they are oriented toward one another across time zones rather than toward the local environment. They remain oriented to the translocal environment even after their working hours, continuing to watch the market that has moved on to another time zone through handheld Reuters’ instruments and TV channels. An important feature that points beyond this global orientation is what has been called elsewhere the reciprocal interlocking of time dimensions among traders as a means for achieving a level of intersubjectivity in global fields. What holds participants together across space is a “community of time” rather than a community of space, as in traditional societies. This community of time comes about, for example, by market participants on dispersed trading floors watching the market virtually continuously in synchronicity and immediacy for the duration of their working (and waking) hours.4 All three aspects are important here: synchronicity refers to the phenomenon that traders and salespeople observe the same market events simultaneously over the same time period; continuity means they observe the market virtually without interruption, having lunch at their desks and asking others to watch when they step out; and temporal immediacy refers to the immediate real-time availability of market transactions and information to participants within the appropriate institutional trading networks. Traders may also see themselves as belonging to global professional communities and they exhibit similar lifestyles across continents. Another disembedding feature are the rules of trading practice which are not covered by national law but correspond to a lex mercatoria (a rule of trading practices) holding among participants on a global level, and reinforced in trading interactions without recourse to formal law. Going beyond disembeddedness and asking what “supports” a market that moves freely across time zones, one can point to the trading floors in global cities where the moving market resides during time zone hours, becomes further articulated and defined, and then moves on to the next time zone. To begin, let me draw a distinction between a globally inclusive and a globally exclusive cultural form. A globally inclusive financial marketplace would be one where individual investors in any country are able to trade assets freely across national boundaries. Such a system requires, among other things, the computer penetration of investor locations (e.g. households), language capabilities or unification, Web architectures, payment and clearing arrangements between exchanges, regulatory approvals, and national pension and insurance systems that support individual financial planning. Such systems are in the process of being created in some regions, but they are far from being in place on a worldwide basis. On the other hand, in the area of institutional trading considered in this chapter, a global market of a different kind has been in evidence for some time. This form of globality is not based upon the penetration of countries or of individual behaviour. Instead, it rests on the establishment of bridgehead centres of institutional trading in the financial hubs of the three major time zones: in New York, London, Tokyo, and Zurich, Frankfurt or Singapore. The moving market “rests” in these bridgehead centres where it becomes articulated and revised. The bridgehead centres contribute to the markets’ continuation by the trading activities of their “market makers” (the traders who take their own

138 Karin Knorr-Cetina positions in the market), the activities of their salespersons, and others. These activities support the market, which becomes anchored in the time-zone-specific global reflex systems of trading floors. The activities also change the market, and this contributes to the notion of the market as a flow in the sense introduced before, and as a moving timeworld. Participants coming to work in New York in the morning will not be confronted with the same market they left at the end of their previous working day. They will see an updated version of this market, one that bears the mark of the events happening in the intermediate time zones of Asia and Europe. In addition, these markets will arrive “whole”, at every new time zone and take off “whole” to the next one. This is somewhat simplified, but let us see what one might mean by such a statement. When traders arrive at their desks in the morning in Tokyo and open their screens they will find summary accounts of what happened before in the New York time zone – these accounts are encapsulated in closing rates, index values, volume statistics, intraday trading trends, etc. They will also find more qualitative summaries relayed to them by their contacts in the earlier time zone in their conversational dealing screens. In addition, traders themselves will make efforts to find out more about market developments in the earlier time zone by listening to relevant news services at home, calling friends, or contacting them via the conversational dealing system before and while they begin dealing. Most major institutional trading floors also have morning meetings where such information is reported, analysts’ summaries prepared in another time zone are transmitted over intercoms, and on-floor analysts and economists relate their assessment of the situation. Similarly, at Tokyo closing time, traders and analysts in this time zone will transmit summary information to contacts, bulletin boards, and other outlets in the next (European) time zone and they may be contacted by those working there via phone or electronic mail for specific and concrete information. The European (London, Zurich, Frankfurt) and American (New York) time zones overlap by several hours (New York institutional trading starts at 8 am, which is 2 pm Central European Time). In response to the overlap between the European and North American opening hours, the markets will not “move on” immediately but will trade simultaneously until Europe closes – the markets tend to get “hectic” at these times just as they will be “silent” when Tokyo is not yet very active and New York has closed. When the European closing time approaches, the same sort of summarizing and forwarding described earlier will take place. The overlap between Europe and the US corresponds to a “time gap” between the US (New York) and Japan (Tokyo) provoked by the larger time difference between these cities where no or little trading takes place in both time zones. Traders in the same institution, dealing in the same instrument (say currency options), may cooperate across time zones when longer-term contracts are involved (e.g. options) and positions cannot be closed at the end of a trading day. In this case, the market’s move to the next time zone may involve the transfer of a “global book” – an electronic record of all contracts entered, including those added and structured in the forwarding time zone. Global books incorporate particular philosophies of trading whose content and adaptation to time-zone-specific circumstances will be

From pipes to scopes 139 discussed in similar beginning- and end-of-day global conversations between traders in different zones.

Conclusion The market “flow” refers to these forwarded features as well as the aggregate positions and accounts that circle the globe while changing continuously with activities and events. A flow “architecture” refers to the support systems of these flows, which I take to be the time-zone-specific trading floor settings with their global reflex systems. The global reflex systems provide for the market’s unity and movement across space. They also suggest a form of coordination of global fields that is to be distinguished from spatially embedded network structures. As the above examples show, the market’s movement across the globe has an accomplished sense; it cannot be detached from the activities of market participants who sustain the market in a particular time zone and then “compute” and discursively summarize a market’s features over time zone intervals as they forward these features to the next time zone. By the same token, participants provide for the continuation of global markets, but their activities are not the focus of this chapter. Also left unconsidered, given the limits of this chapter, are the activities of the information and service provider firms that develop and service the global reflex systems and assume much of the apresentation function.

Acknowledgements I am heavily indebted to the managers, traders, salespersons, and analysts whose activities I studied together with Urs Bruegger, my co-author on other papers, and who so generously shared with us the information we collected. Research for this chapter is supported by a grant from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.

Notes 1 For a more general use of the term “architecture” in relation to market institutions approached from the angle of a theory of fields see Fligstein (2001). 2 The study is based on ethnographic research conducted from 1997 on the trading floor of a major global investment bank in Zurich and in several other banks. For a description of this research, see Knorr-Cetina and Bruegger (2002a). See also Bruegger (1999) for an extensive description of currency trading in all its aspects. 3 These figures were reported in the New York Times, Sunday, 8 September 2002 (see Barringer 2002). 4 As Harvey has argued (1989: 239–59), increasing time-compression is a characteristic of the whole process of modernity and of post-industrialization. A similar argument had been advanced by McLuhan (1964: 358), who proposed that electricity establishes a global network of communication that enables us to apprehend and experience media-transmitted events nearly simultaneously, as in a common central nervous system. To date, however, few media events are “simultaneously” transmitted across time zones, and media content is adapted to local cultures and locally reinterpreted. We argue that many other mechanisms and infrastructures and in fact a secondary economy of information collection and transmission need to be in place to create a global social form.

140 Karin Knorr-Cetina

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From pipes to scopes 141 Hertz, E. (1998) The Trading Crowd. An Ethnography of the Shanghai Stock Market, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Houthakker, H. and P. Williamson (1996) The Economics of Financial Markets, New York: Oxford University Press. Knorr-Cetina, K. and U. Bruegger (2002a) “Global microstructures: the virtual societies of financial markets”, American Journal of Sociology, 107, 4, 905–50. Knorr-Cetina, K. and U. Bruegger (2002b) “Traders’ engagement with markets: a postsocial relationship”, Theory, Culture & Society, 19, 5/6, 161–85. Lasch, C. (1978) The Culture of Narcissism, New York: W.W. Norton. Lash, S. (2002) Critique of Information, London: Sage. Leyshon, A. and N. Thrift (1997) Money – Space: Geographies of Monetary Transformation, London: Routledge. McLuhan, M. (1964) Understanding Media, London: Routledge. Podolny, J. (2001) “Networks as the pipes and prisms of the market”, American Journal of Sociology, 107, 1, 33–60. Preda, A. (2003) “Of ticks and tapes: financial knowledge and price-recording technologies in 19th century financial markets”, paper presented at the workshop on Social Studies of Finance, Columbia University, New York, 3–5 May 2002. Read, D.(1992) The Power of News. The History of Reuters, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sassen, S. (2001) The Global City, 2nd edn, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Schutz, A. and T. Luckmann (1973) The Structures of the Life-World, Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Smith, C.W. (1981) The Mind of the Market. A Study of the Stock Market, New Jersey: Rowman & Littlefield. Smith, C.W. (1990) Auctions. The Social Construction of Value, Berkeley: University of California Press. Smith, C.W. (1999) Success and Survival on Wall Street: Understanding the Mind of the Market, New York: Rowman & Littlefield. Swedberg, R. (1994) “Markets as social structures”, in N. Smelser and R. Swedberg (eds), The Handbook of Economic Sociology, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 255–82. Swedberg. R. (1997) “New economic sociology. What has been accomplished? What is ahead?”, Acta Sociologica, 40, 161–82. Swedberg, R. and M. Granovetter (1992) “Introduction”, in M. Granovetter and R. Swedberg (eds) The Sociology of Economic Life, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1–26. Urry, J. (2000) Sociology Beyond Societies. Mobilities for the Twenty-First Century, London: Routledge. Uzzi, B. (1997) “Social structure and competition in interfirm networks: the paradox of embeddedness”, American Science Quarterly, 42, 1, 35–67. Uzzi, B. (1999) “Embeddedness in the making of financial capital: how social relations and networks benefit firms seeking financing”, American Sociological Review, 64, 481–505. White, H. (1981) “Where do markets come from?”, American Journal of Sociology, 81, 3, 517–47. White, H. (1993) Markets as Production Networks, New York: Russel Sage Foundation. White, H. (2002) Markets from Networks. Socioeconomic Models of Production, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Zerubiavel, E. (1982) “The standardization of time: a sociohistorical perspective”, American Journal of Sociology, 88, 1, 1–23.

142 Bob Jessop

7

Cultural political economy, the knowledge-based economy and the state Bob Jessop

This chapter explores the constitution of the knowledge-based economy as an increasingly hegemonic meta-object of governance (and, indeed, meta-governance) in response to the crisis of Atlantic Fordism.1 It interprets the knowledge-based economy (KBE) as a complex, heterogeneous, and variable assemblage of social relations which are articulated to a distinctive set of subjectivities and mediated through material objects and social institutions. It also traces the rise of the KBE as a provisional, partial, and unstable product of distinctive discourses and material practices. It should be emphasized at once that this approach does not imply that capitalism is always characterized by such hegemonic meta-objects of (meta-)governance nor that the latter have some predetermined lifespan (let alone a predetermined life-course) that coincides with a preordained logic of capitalist development. Instead the following analysis is concerned with what I have elsewhere termed the ‘contingent necessity’ of durable institutional orders and with what actor-network theorists have elsewhere described as the problem of how Leviathan (and, by extension, other institutional ensembles) get ‘screwed down’ and actors are enrolled behind them (Jessop 1982; Callon and Latour 1981; Callon and Law 1982). My interpretation of the knowledge-based economy is developed in three main steps. First, theoretically, I introduce the distinctive features of cultural political economy as a powerful general approach that helps to overcome some of the limitations of conventional approaches to economic analysis (Jessop and Sum 2001; for applications, Jessop 2003; Sum 2003). Second, substantively, I describe the search to identify and develop a ‘new economy’ following major crises in/of the Atlantic Fordist economies and argue that this search has been provisionally concluded with the (still incomplete) discursive construction and material constitution of the new economy as a KBE. In particular, I highlight the extent to which this new meta-object of (meta-)governance rests on an expanded notion of the technological and economic factors making for competitiveness, on increased valorization of creative and flexible attitudes in an enterprise culture, and on the potential contribution of lifelong learning to the dynamism of the knowledgebased economy as a mode of growth. I also argue that these discourses are performative rather than purely descriptive. And, third, in this context, I describe

Cultural political economy, the knowledge-based economy and the state 143 the distinctive roles played by states in shaping these new objects and subjects of economic governance and note how these roles are linked with a profound structural transformation and strategic reorientation of the political regimes associated with Atlantic Fordism. The chapter ends with some brief remarks on a more general research agenda for cultural political economy.

Theoretical preliminaries My approach to this topic draws on the Marxian critique of political economy and reinterprets it through what can usefully be termed ‘cultural political economy’. The latter is an emerging post-disciplinary approach that adopts the ‘cultural turn’ in economic and political inquiry but nonetheless affirms the importance of the interconnected institutional materialities of economics and politics. In brief, the cultural turn highlights the complex relationship between meanings and practices and examines the role of discourse and discursive practices in the making and remaking of social relations as well as their contributions to the contingent emergence, provisional consolidation, and tendential logics of the various extra-discursive properties of social relations. The cultural turn includes approaches in terms of argumentation, rhetoric, narrativity, discourse, semiotics, hermeneutics, identity, reflexivity, historicity, and so forth. As such it involves an interconnected series of general ontological, epistemological, and methodological claims as well as more specific substantive claims about the fields to which it has been applied. One aim of this chapter is to show that the cultural turn is just as relevant to scientific, technical, economic, and juridico-political orders as it is to more obviously cultural, ideological, or spiritual phenomena.2 It also aims to steer a path between a ‘soft economic sociology’ that subsumes economic activities under broad generalizations about social and cultural life without regard to their formal and substantive specificity and a ‘hard orthodox economics’ that reifies formal, market-rational, calculative activities and analyses them in splendid (or sordid) isolation from their broader extra-economic context and supports. There are some similarities here with Callon’s recent attempts to move actor-network theory away from its roots in science and technology studies towards concern with the specificity of markets and market transactions (cf. Callon 1999). However, while he clearly rejects or reinterprets the assumptions of orthodox economics, it is less clear that Callon escapes entanglement in the snares of ‘soft economic sociology’. This claim is best developed after my presentation of the cultural political economy approach. Ontologically, cultural political economy stresses the contribution of discourse to the overall constitution of social objects and social subjects and, a fortiori, to their co-constitution and co-evolution. For example, orthodox political economy tends to naturalize or reify technical and economic objects (such as land, tools, machines, the division of labour, money, commodities, the information economy) and to employ impoverished accounts of how subjects and subjectivities are formed as well as of how different modes of calculation emerge, come to be institutionalized, and get modified. In contrast, cultural political economy holds that technical and economic objects are always socially constructed, historically specific, more or less

144 Bob Jessop socially embedded or disembedded (or, perhaps better, entangled or disentangled in broader networks of social relations), more or less embodied (or ‘in-corporated’ and embrained), and in need of continuing social ‘repair’ work for their reproduction. It also emphasizes the contribution of discourse and discursive practices to the forming of the subjects, subjectivities, modes of calculation, routines, and social arrangements that are involved in the production, reproduction, and consumption of these objects. Cultural political economy can adopt both bottom-up and top-down perspectives and, ideally, should combine them. In the first case, it considers how particular economic objects are produced, distributed, and consumed in specific contexts by specific economic and extra-economic agents; traces their effects in the wider economy and beyond; and explores how different subjects, subjectivities, and modes of calculation come to be naturalized and materially implicated in everyday life.3 Conversely, when adopting a macro-level or top-down viewpoint, cultural political economy would focus on the tendential emergence of macro-structural properties and their role in selectively reinforcing certain micro-level behaviours from among the inevitable flux of economic activities – thereby contributing to the reproduction of a more or less coherent economic (and extra-economic) order. Moreover, in this context, it seeks to identify the tendential laws, dynamics, or regularities of economic conduct and performance that are reproduced only insofar as this structured coherence is itself reproduced.4 Any such coherence is always spatially and temporally delimited, however, being realized through particular discursive-material spatio-temporal fixes. These enable agents to operate within specific frames of action and serve to displace and/or defer certain costs, dilemmas, contradictions, and crisis-tendencies beyond their respective discursive-material boundaries and spatio-temporal horizons.5 Finally, from the viewpoint of agency, a macro-level cultural political economy would also explore how the inherently improbable reproduction of these relatively stable and coherent economic (as well as extraeconomic) orders is secured through the complex strategic coordination and governance of their various heterogeneous elements. To avoid misunderstanding, four clarifications are needed. First, emergent properties are constituted in and through action, always tendential, and always in need of stabilization. Thus any tendencies linked with particular accumulation regimes or modes of regulation, let alone with capitalism itself, are themselves always tendential. This doubly tendential nature of tendencies means that the very presence of the tendencies linked with a given accumulation regime or mode of regulation (whether or not such tendencies are actualized in specific circumstances) depends on the extent to which the properties that generate them are themselves reproduced. This implies that the incomplete realization and/or subsequent decomposition of a given social form will attenuate what would otherwise be regarded as its naturally necessary tendencies. Second, strategies are always elaborated in and through discourses; they are not the automatic product of rational calculation from pre-given positions. These discourses are complex, heterogeneous, and differentially associated with particular institutional orders and/or specific identities, values, and interests in the lifeworld. Among the relevant discourses

Cultural political economy, the knowledge-based economy and the state 145 here are techno-economic paradigms, norms of production and consumption, specific models of development, accumulation strategies, societal paradigms, and the broader organizational and institutional narratives and/or meta-narratives that provide the general context (or ‘web of interlocution’) in which these discourses make sense (Jessop 1999; Jenson 1990; Somers 1994). Third, the implementation of strategies and tactics depends on organizational and learning capacities and is always prone to failure. Thus one aspect of the successful consolidation of new economic forms and relations is the capacity to learn from failure and to adapt activities, organizations, and institutional architectures accordingly (on governance failure, see Malpas and Wickham 1995; Jessop 2002). And, fourth, strategies are always pursued on a strategically selective terrain which makes some strategies more viable than others. This terrain is not purely economic, however, almost regardless of how broadly the economy is defined. It is always the product of the interaction of economic and extra-economic systems and social relations. Epistemologically, consistent with this general approach, cultural political economy involves a critical approach to the categories and methods of political economy and to the inevitable contextuality and historicity of the latter’s claims to knowledge. It rejects any universalistic, positivist account of reality, denies the subject–object duality, allows for the co-constitution of subjects and objects, and eschews reductionist approaches to the discipline. But it also continues to stress both the materiality of social relations and the constraints involved in processes that operate ‘behind the backs’ of the relevant agents and the emergent structural properties and dynamics engendered by these processes. It can thereby escape the sociological imperialism of pure social constructionism and the voluntarist vacuity of certain lines of discourse analysis, which seem to imply that one can will anything into existence in and through an appropriately articulated discourse. In short, it recognizes the emergent extra-discursive features of social relations and their impact on capacities for action and transformation. Substantively, cultural political economy distinguishes between the economy as the chaotic sum of all substantive6 economic activities and the ‘economy’ (or, better, ‘economies’ in the plural) as an imaginatively narrated, more or less coherent subset of these activities. There is a complex relation between these two: for there is no economic imaginary without materiality (Bayart 1994: 20–1; cf. Callon 1988a). Thus, on the one hand, the operation of the economic imaginary presupposes a substratum of substantive economic relations as its elements; on the other, where that imaginary is successfully operationalized and institutionalized, it transforms and naturalizes these elements into the moments of a specific economy. For economic imaginaries identify, privilege, and seek to stabilize some economic activities from the totality of economic relations and transform them into objects of observation, calculation, and governance. In so doing, they accord the economy specific boundaries, conditions of existence, typical economic agents, tendencies and counter-tendencies, and a distinctive overall dynamic (Daly 1994; Miller and Rose 1993).7 These imagined economies can be discursively constituted and materially reproduced at different sites, on different scales, and with different spatial and temporal horizons (for the example of a local strawberry market, see Garcia

146 Bob Jessop 1986; and, for the neo-liberal global economy, Langley 2002). This always occurs in and through struggles conducted by specific agents, typically involves the asymmetrical manipulation of power and knowledge, and is liable to contestation and resistance. In this sense the ‘economy’ considered as an object of observation and/or governance is only ever partially constituted and there are always interstitial, residual, marginal, irrelevant, recalcitrant and plain contradictory elements that escape any attempt to identify, govern, and stabilize a given ‘economic arrangement’ or broader ‘economic order’ (Jessop 2002). This explains the recurrence of economic governance failures, whether this is attempted through the market, hierarchy, networks, or some combination thereof. A further consequence of this approach is that the economy in its broadest sense includes both economic and extra-economic factors. On the one hand, capitalism involves a series of specific economic forms (the commodity form, money form, wage form, price form, property form, etc.) associated with generalized commodity production; but, on the other hand, as theorists including Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Max Weber, Emile Durkheim, Karl Polanyi, and Michel Callon have noted in one context or another, the reproduction of these forms cannot be secured purely through the logic of the capitalist market. It follows that the economy cannot be adequately conceived (let alone managed) as a ‘pure’ economic sphere that reproduces itself in total isolation from the non-economic and that can therefore determine non-economic spheres in a unilateral manner. But it also follows that the economy should not be dissolved back into society (or culture) as a whole. For it does have its own specificities that derive from the distinctive extra-discursive properties of its various forms (cf. Slater 2002a on the importance of the commodity and property forms in differentiating the economy from other social relations). Thus successful economic governance depends on the co-presence of extraeconomic as well as economic forms and on extra-economic as well as economic regularization. It follows that the operations of the economy are co-constituted by other systems and co-evolve with them: these include technologies, science, education, politics, law, art, religion, etc. They are also articulated more generally to the lifeworld. The latter comprises all those identities, interests, values and conventions that are not directly anchored in the logic of any particular system and that provide the substratum and background to social interaction in everyday life. And, if this is true for the nature and dynamic of the circuits of capital considered as a whole (abstracting from specific differences among its many constituent elements), it will be even more significant for specific forms of economic activity, economic object, economic institution, and economic subjectivity. Given the variety of forms that can be taken by the cultural turn as well as the wide range of institutional and evolutionary approaches to economic analysis, it follows that there are also many variants of cultural political economy. My own approach is rooted in Marx’s critique of political economy in the twin belief that capitalism is the dominant force in contemporary economic life and that Marx’s pioneering analysis still defines the unsurpassable horizon for critical reflection on capitalism. This does not mean that it is incontrovertibly true and cannot be improved – far from it. Instead it means that critical engagement with Marx’s

Cultural political economy, the knowledge-based economy and the state 147 critique of political economy is an essential reference point (if no longer – or not yet again – an obligatory point of theoretical passage) for any serious attempt to improve our understanding of the historical specificity and dynamic of capitalism. This claim refers to the Marx of Capital and its preparatory works rather than the many Marxisms claiming his legacy. In this context, and for present purposes, the most important reference point is Marx’s insistence that capital is not a thing but a social relation. For, as Marx notes in Volume I of Capital: … property in money, means of subsistence, machines and other means of production, does not as yet stamp a man as a capitalist if there be wanting the correlative – the wage-worker, the other man who is compelled to sell himself of his own free-will. … capital is not a thing, but a social relation between persons, established by the instrumentality of things. (Marx 1967: 717) Marx took this claim, which anticipates key arguments in mediology and actornetwork theory, very seriously (on mediology, see Debray 1991, 2000; on actornetwork theory, see Latour 1987; Callon 1998a; Law and Hassard 1999). Thus, as Law’s general survey of actor-network theory suggests, ‘almost all of our interactions with other people are mediated through objects of one kind or another. … [or more precisely, through] a network of objects [and] networks of objects-andpeople’. More generally, Marx emphasized not only the co-constitution of the forces and relations of production (thereby rejecting any simple-minded reduction of one to the other) but also the continuing dependence of capital qua social relation on the heterogeneous instrumentalities of things. This can be seen not only in the complex genealogy of the various elements that are eventually combined to produce and then reproduce the capitalist mode of production but also in his analyses of the technical and social division of labour, the complexities of the circuits of capital, and the tendential formation of the world market. In this context, for example, Marx shows how the transition from manufacture to machinofacture played a key role in the dominance of capital over wage-labour; how it transformed the individual worker and collective labourer into appendages of the machine; and how the increased cooperation and productivity enabled by the technical division of labour and machines within the factory contributed significantly to the accumulation process. Equally importantly, Marx stressed both the inherent improbability of continuing capital accumulation and the tendency for competition and class struggle to break through (or, to use Callon’s language, to ‘overflow’) any emergent and contingent institutional frames and/or spatio-temporal fixes that might contribute to its regularization or governance through their capacities to displace and/or defer capital’s contradictions and tensions. Marx also interpreted actors as complex ensembles of roles, masks, and social performances (Urbánek 1967), considered the specific material and social conditions in which capitalist calculation and calculating subjects emerged and could be reproduced (cf. Bryer 2000a, 2000b), and examined closely machine–person relations and their impact on mind and body (Marx: 1967: 351–485; Marx 1973:

148 Bob Jessop 690–706, 769–77; Harvey 1998; Marsden 1999). Indeed, in the last regard, Callard notes: Marx depicts an economy characterised by parasitic and vampiric relations; an economy in which it is no longer clear whose organs are whose, whose agency (animate or mechanical) drives what, and whether organs should be understood as natural or mechanic entities; an economy replete with profoundly unnatural players – Cyclopean machines, dwarfish workers, the pulsating organ of the collective worker. (Callard 1998: 396) There are strong affinities between the relational materialism of Marxism and that of actor-network theory. While I cannot elaborate all of these here, it is worth noting four key ones: (a) a relational ontology based on the mutual constitution and interpenetration of the material and social linked to a determined refusal of rigid object–subject and material–cultural distinctions; (b) rejection of the fetishistic distinction between the profit-oriented, market-mediated, and self-reproducing economy and other ‘objectively necessary’ functional systems within the wider social formation; (c) denial of any fixed ontological distinction between the ‘macro’ and the ‘micro’ or the ‘global’ and the ‘local’ in favour of their mutual conditioning and continued interaction; and (d) interest in the interaction between mechanisms and strategies that gives some semblance of unity to economic and political agencies, the conditions and points at which these unities can break down, and the mechanisms and strategies that may restore these unities. Nonetheless there are also some significant differences between a Marxist critique of political economy inflected by cultural political economy and actor-network theory as Callon applies the latter to the economic sphere. Above all actor-network theory continues to reflect its origins in science and technology studies with the result that it tends to remain a generic theory analogous to the strategic-relational approach that informs cultural political economy (on the strategic-relational approach, see Jessop 1982, 1990, 2001b). This means that it lacks many of the concepts that Marx developed to comprehend the historical specificity of the capitalist mode of production, its directional dynamic (not to be confused with an ultimate telos), its distinctive laws of motion (i.e. its doubly tendential tendencies), and its unique organization as a political economy of time (Postone 1993; Jessop 2003). Accordingly, while Callon offers us many insights into the general conditions for the emergence of markets, the particular constitution of markets in specific groups of goods and services (defined in terms of their particular ‘qualities’), and the social preconditions of economic externalities, much of this critique is directed against the ‘hard political economy’ of orthodox economics. His more recent work is also directed in part against the assumption that there is a capitalist system that operates behind the ‘backs of the producers’. This leads him to emphasize the competitive strategies of particular actor-networks in a reflexive economic game of supply and demand without regard to the changing modalities and overall logic of competition (e.g. Callon et al., this volume). However, without taking account of the generalization

Cultural political economy, the knowledge-based economy and the state 149 of the commodity form to labour-power as a fictitious commodity, the peculiarities of capital as opposed to money, the competitive pressures on individual capitals to minimize socially necessary labour time and socially necessary turnover time, the interdependence of the different circuits of capital, and the disjunctions and crisistendencies inherent in the circuit of capital, actor-network theory as currently developed cannot fully escape the limitations of a ‘soft economic sociology’ that emphasizes the material institutedness, social embeddedness, and improbable reproduction of specific economic institutions, organizations, and activities but is unable to account for the generic crisis-tendencies and overall directional dynamic of capital in general. This said, rather than insisting on a strict opposition between a Marxist approach and actor-network theory à la Callon, I want to suggest that they complement each other in some respects and hence that there is some scope for a productive dialogue between their respective advocates.8 For, whereas the sadly incomplete Marxist critique of political economy tends to provide excellent macro-analyses of capitalism and the capitalist social formation, it lacks many concepts crucial to a satisfactory exploration and explanation of the mechanisms of valorization, realization, and appropriation in specific branches of production and particular markets. In this regard, it is stronger on the overall logic of exchange-value than it is on the specificity of use-values. Conversely, while actor-network theory offers significant insights into specific mechanisms of qualification, calculation, and institutionalization in specific material–social–spatial–temporal frames, it lacks the theoretical tools to account for the overall logic of accumulation. We will certainly not find the answer in terms of the same modes of ‘translation’ that enable the state to act as if it were a unitary authority in the name of its subjects (Callon and Latour 1981: 278). For the operations of the invisible hand are different from those of the iron fist (perhaps in a velvet glove). In this regard, actor-network theory is stronger on the social construction of the material and immaterial features of marketized and/or marketizable use-values than it is on the logic of surplusvalue and exchange value (Slater 2002b). Whether it is really possible to combine the two approaches into a coherent analysis remains to be seen. Here I wish to offer an alternative approach to solving some of the same deficits in the orthodox Marxist approach and, in so doing, hope to contribute to the dialogue between Marxism and actor-network theory.

The search for the ‘new economy’ There has been an extensive and often heated discussion – now somewhat diminished – about the adequacy of the concept of post-Fordism as an entrypoint for studying recent changes in the growth dynamics of advanced capitalist economies, the changing forms of competitive advantage of cities, regions, and nations as well as of firms, clusters, and economic networks, and changing forms of economic and social policy. Such questions are apparently either too ‘macro’ or too general to have exercised actor-network theorists interested in market economies. A cultural political economy approach may nonetheless offer a bridge between

150 Bob Jessop their concerns and Marxist analyses. We can initiate the dialogue by considering the role of economic imaginaries in the restructuring of economic and political institutions, organizations, and activities and in the reorienting of the economic and social policies pursued by the state as a mechanism of translation and authorization. Let me begin by making two brief points about post-Fordism. First, it may be better for some purposes to characterize the emerging accumulation regime through a substantive concept that is analogous to Fordism, such as Toyotism, Sonyism, Gatesism, or Wintelism. These refer to new techno-economic paradigms in established or emerging manufacturing sectors and/or to new forms of enterprise and competition deemed superior to the archetypal Fordist forms. These paradigms lack the pervasive resonance in many different discourses, domains, and countries that the Fordist paradigm enjoyed during the consolidation of the Fordist labour process and its associated mode of growth based on mass production and mass consumption. But they are certainly more susceptible to analysis in actor-network terms as well as more fruitful than the more formal concept of post-Fordism. This relies primarily on a chronological prefix to distinguish it from Fordism and serves at best to remind us that its successor regime, if any, is far from pre-ordained. The same problem holds for the ‘new economy’, with its simplistic and overdrawn contrast between old and new. Indeed, Boyer has even suggested that frequent use of ‘new’ and/or ‘end’ in debates about contemporary economies is not only a sign of theoretical disorientation but also serves as a ‘leading indicator’9 of the next economic crisis (Boyer 2002: 194–5). Other concepts, such as the network economy, the information economy, the knowledge economy, or informational capitalism, provide a more substantive entry-point not only to interpret but also to guide economic developments. This does not mean that any substantive concept is as good as another, either interpretatively or practically. We must distinguish between the trial-and-error search to develop such concepts and their adequacy to a critical understanding of emerging economic forms. The concepts with the greatest resonance over time will be those that correspond most adequately to the emerging economy and/or become so influential that they themselves play a constitutive role in its evolution (on the dialectics of economy and economics, see Callon 1988a). It is in this context that Gramsci distinguished between ideologies (and discourses more generally) that were ‘arbitrary, rationalistic, and willed’ and those that were ‘organic’ in that they could be translated into feasible and reproducible practices and structures (Gramsci 1971: 376–7). Second, whether the notion of post-Fordism is currently theoretically justified as an analytical concept or not, discourses more or less explicitly referring to postFordism or flexible specialization were important in the initial mediation of economic, political and social change during the crisis in/of Atlantic Fordism. Even so the initial meaning of ‘post-Fordism’ appeared to be more negative than positive, i.e. it was seen in terms of a series of moves away from certain crisisgenerating or crisis-prone features of Fordism rather than as a move towards a new, positively defined mode of economic growth with its own putative structured coherence. For example, the once popular notion of flexible specialization was mainly concerned with the reorganization of the labour process, firm structures,

Cultural political economy, the knowledge-based economy and the state 151 and forms of competition in response to the rigidities of mass production. There was also interest in historical alternatives (such as a reinvigorated craft production) or contemporary foreign models (such as the Third Italy, Silicon Valley, Toyotism, or ‘lean production’) – although these would often prove hard to revive or transplant. In addition this search process was often focused one-sidedly on technicalorganizational questions (cf. Gough 1992; Schoenberger 1997; Smith 2000). Efforts were made, for example, to discover how, given the basic technology, firms could organize design, production and marketing most ‘efficiently’, i.e. to achieve the best mix of cost minimization, quality/variety maximization, and responsiveness to markets. This focus was linked to the assumption that problems within capitalism can be solved through technical-organizational change within the economy and/ or through adoption of new technical-institutional fixes and forms of governance in the wider societal context in which capitalism is embedded. The search for a positive content for post-Fordism can be compared with the rise of Fordism. Gramsci’s comments on ‘Americanism and Fordism’ are helpful here (Gramsci 1971). For he indicates that the emergence and consolidation of a new accumulation regime depends critically on the exercise of political, intellectual, and moral leadership and its translation into the reorganization of an entire social formation. It cannot be secured purely through technological innovation coupled with specific changes in the labour process, enterprise forms, forms of competition, and other narrowly economic matters. A key part of this process, as noted above, is the development of a new ‘economic imaginary’ with its own performative, constitutive force. This involves struggles among economic, political, and intellectual forces to redefine specific economies as subjects, sites, and stakes of competition and/or as objects of regulation and to generalize new norms of production and consumption in this connection. We could see these struggles as analogous to those discussed by Callon under the rubric of qualification–requalification and the logic of framing and externalities – albeit now played out on a wider stage, with larger stakes and, a fortiori, with larger problems of ‘translation’ if the new economic imaginary is to be successfully institutionalized as the basis for a ‘new economy’. A major role is played by the rivalries and struggles of intellectual forces, individually and collectively, in a freefloating or an organized manner, to articulate strategies, projects and visions that seek to reconcile contradictions and conflicts and to resolve dilemmas for various sites and scales of action. The principal forces involved here are organized interests, political parties, and social movements with a central role, in addition, for the mass media rather than the public sphere in mediating their struggles for popular hegemony in these matters. At the same time the new economic imaginary with its associated accumulation strategies, state projects, and hegemonic visions must also be capable of translation into a specific set of material, social, and spatio-temporal fixes (or ‘frames’) that can together provide the basis for a relative ‘structured coherence’ in the expanded reproduction of capital accumulation. In these terms an effective solution to the search for a meaningful ‘post-Fordist’ order in an increasingly integrated world market would involve an ‘economic imaginary’ that satisfies two interrelated requirements. First, it should be able to

152 Bob Jessop inform and shape economic strategies on all scales from the firm to the wider economy, on all territorial scales from the local through regional to the national or supra-national scale, and with regard to the operation and articulation of market forces and their non-market supports. And, second, it should be able to inform and shape state projects and hegemonic visions on different scales, providing guidance in the face of political and social uncertainty and providing a means to integrate private, institutional, and wider public narratives about past experiences, present difficulties, and future prospects. The more of these fields a new economic imaginary can address, the more resonant and influential it will be.10 It is in this context that the KBE has emerged as an increasingly dominant and hegemonic discourse that providing the framework for broader struggles over political, intellectual and moral leadership on various scales as well as over more concrete fields of technical and economic reform (see Table 7.1). Thus the basic idea is being articulated on many scales from the local to the global, in many organizational and institutional sites from firms to states, in many functional systems from education and science through health and welfare to law and politics as well as the economy in its narrow sense, and in the public sphere and the lifeworld. It has been translated into many different visions and strategies (e.g. smart machines and expert systems, the creative industries, the increasing centrality of intellectual property, lifelong learning, the information society, or the rise of cyber-communities). It is capable of being inflected in neo-liberal, neo-corporatist, neo-statist, and neocommunitarian ways and often seems to function like a Rorschach inkblot to provide the basis for alliances and institutionalized compromise among very disparate interests. And, as other contributions to this volume show, there are many disparate forms of knowledge and expertise in the private, public, and third sectors that may prove difficult to subsume under the generic label of symbolic analysis, knowledge work, or knowledge-intensive business services. It is for these reasons that I referred above to the knowledge-based economy as a meta-object of (meta-)governance and it should now be clear that it is an extremely heterogeneous notion. In short, the KBE seems to have become a master economic narrative in many accumulation strategies, state projects and hegemonic visions and has steadily acquired through the 1990s a key role in guiding and reinforcing activities that may consolidate a relatively stable post-Fordist accumulation regime and its mode of regulation. Whether or not it does so, however, will depend on a whole series of issues that affect the ability to implement any given project, let alone the multiple, complex, heterogeneous, competing, and, indeed, mutually, if not frequently also self-, contradictory, projects linked to the KBE. It is in this context that the key issues of translation and authorization arise and these involve, as actor-network theorists have emphasized, more than the performativity of language or discourse. Indeed, as with all evolutionary processes, we must distinguish between variation, selection, and retention. The proliferation of competing discourses during the emerging crisis in/of Atlantic Fordism, the greater resonance of some of these discourses, and the successful institutionalization of relatively coherent economic strategies, political projects, and hegemonic visions involve rather different processes. In this respect, there is many a slip between discursive

Cultural political economy, the knowledge-based economy and the state 153 Table 7.1 Some representative terms linked to the KBE in different functional systems and the wider society Technology

Smart machines – intelligent products – expert systems – new materials – dematerialization – wetware, netware – information and communication technologies – information superhighway – innovation systems

Economy

Knowledge creation – knowledge management – knowledge-based firm – learning organization – knowledge-intensive business services – infomediaries – embedded knowledge networks – e-commerce – learning economy – reflexive accumulation

Capital

Knowledge capital – intellectual capital – intellectual property rights – informational capitalism – technocapitalism – digital capitalism – virtual capitalism – biocapitalism

Labour

Teleworking – intellectual labour – knowledge workers – symbolic analysts – immaterial labour – tacit knowledge – human capital – expert intellectuals – cyborgs

Science

Knowledge base – innovation – scientific and technical revolution – life sciences – technology foresight – triple helix

Education

Lifelong learning – learning society – corporate universities – knowledge factories – advanced educational technologies

Culture

Creative industries – culture industries – cultural commodities – cyberculture – technoculture

Law

Intellectual property rights – rights to information – immaterial objects – biopiracy

State

Virtual state – e-government – science policy – innovation policy – high-technology policy – evidence-based policy

Politics

Electronic democracy – cyberpolitics – ‘hactivism’

Warfare

Smart weapons – cyborg warriors – stealth technologies – networkcentric warfare – information warfare – cyberwar – ‘revolution in military affairs’

Space

Innovation milieu – learning region – intelligent city – informational city – digital city – Silicon Valley – technopoles – knowledge flows – cyberspace – smart community

Societalization

Scientization – information age – information society – knowledge society – virtual community – virtual society – surveillance society – intellectual commons – digital divide – information overload

154 Bob Jessop resonance in a particular conjuncture and a relatively enduring institutional materiality. Nonetheless, with all due caution about the frailty of prediction during a period still strongly marked by the specific crisis-tendencies associated with a transition from one long wave of capitalist expansion and decline to another (see Perez 2002), it does seem that the knowledge-based economy has not only been ‘selected’ from among the many competing discourses about the post-Fordist future but is now subject to ‘retention’ through a complex and heterogeneous network of practices across a wide range of systems and over many scales of action. Whether or not the KBE also offers a scientifically adequate description of the nature of the contemporary economy in all its chaotic complexity is another matter entirely. The emergence of the KBE as the master narrative guiding the transition to post-Fordism is by no means an innocent development. It has material and ideological roots in earlier discussions on post-industrialism but gained momentum in the 1980s as US capital and the US state sought an effective response to the challenge to American hegemony from the increasing competitiveness of their European and East Asian rivals. A growing body of academic studies, think-tank reports, and official inquiries indicated that the US was competitive in the leading sectors of the ‘knowledge-based economy’ (an important discursive innovation in its own right, leading to the ‘reclassification’ of goods, services, industries, commodity chains, and forms of competitiveness) and this prompted a very deliberate and highly concerted campaign to make this the material and ideological basis for a new accumulation strategy tied to the massive extension of intellectual property rights to protect and extend the dominance of US capital. There is no need here to repeat the subsequent history of the attempt to reorient and strengthen the bases of economic competitiveness in this way through a wide range of bilateral and multilateral economic, political, legal, and ideological measures as well as through the dissemination of US technical standards, social norms of production and consumption, and juridical precedents. The rationale for this continuing effort has been quite clearly stated by leading figures in the US administration, namely, that the economic growth and competitiveness of the USA in the twenty-first century will depend on creating, owning, preserving, and protecting its intellectual property. This can be seen as a neoliberal policy for productive capital that safeguards its superprofits behind the cloak of free trade and thereby complements its neo-liberal policy for financial capital. But this strategy has been translated into a successful hegemonic campaign (armoured by law, bilateral trade leverage, diplomatic arm-twisting, and bloodyminded unilateralism) to persuade many other states to sign up to the KBE agenda. The knowledge-based economy has also been warmly embraced as a master narrative and strategy by other leading political forces – ranging from the international level (notably the OECD and WTO but also the IMF, World Bank, and UNCTAD) through regional economic blocs and intergovernmental arrangements (EU, APEC, ASEAN, Mercosur, NAFTA) and many individual national states with widely different positions in the global division of labour down to provinces, metropolitan regions, and small cities. Like the earlier promotion of Fordism as a master narrative and strategy, the ‘KBE’ can be inflected in different

Cultural political economy, the knowledge-based economy and the state 155 ways to suit different national and regional traditions as well as different economic interests. It can also be used to guide economic and political strategies at all levels from the labour process through the accumulation regime and its mode of regulation to an all-embracing mode of societalization. Moreover, once accepted as the master narrative with all its attendant nuances and scope for interpretation, it becomes easier for its neo-liberal variant to shape the overall development of the emerging global knowledge-based economy through the sheer weight of the US economy as well as through the exercise of economic, political, and intellectual domination. This said, we should not neglect the scope for counter-hegemonic versions of the knowledge-based economy and for disputes about the most appropriate ways to promote it. This is why I distinguish between neo-liberal, neo-corporatist, neostatist, and neo-communitarian approaches to the promotion of the KBE (Jessop 2002). Let me illustrate this point with two examples. First, from 1998 to 2002 an interesting conundrum was played out in the international competitiveness benchmarking exercise conducted by the World Economic Forum, with the neoliberal USA and neo-corporatist Finland alternating in the top two positions (see Porter et al., 2000; Cornelius and Schwab 2003). Similarly, at its Lisbon summit in March 2000, the European Council committed itself to making the European Union the leading knowledge-based economy whilst protecting the European Social Model and developing new modes of meta-governance that relied on social partnership rather than market forces alone (see Telò 2002). States and knowledge-based economies Cultural political economy should treat politics and the state in the same way as the economy. For states can also be analysed as imagined political communities with their own specific boundaries, conditions of existence, political subjects, developmental tendencies, sources of legitimacy, and state projects (Jessop 1990; Mitchell 1991). As such they orient political actions that influence the institutional architecture of the state and the exercise of its various state powers. At the same time, states can be imagined as co-existing in complex state systems (e.g. the medieval, Westphalian, and post-Westphalian orders). Moreover, building on these arguments, we can also study how struggles over the boundaries between the economic and the extra-economic (including the political) are central both to economic restructuring and to the transformation of the state and state intervention (Jessop 1999, 2002). Here too we can identify some interesting parallels with actornetwork theory in terms of the notion of ‘punctualization’, i.e. the semblance of solidity and unity to an institutional ensemble or organization as a ‘single point actor’ that, in other circumstances and/or from another perspective, would appear as heterogeneous and disunified (Law 1992). Thus equipped, I now turn to the third part of my argument: the transformation of the state in and through its attempts to transform the economy and its economic agents. This has two interrelated aspects. On the one hand, the state is actively involved through its own distinctive juridico-political powers in the discursive-material constitution of the globalizing KBE as an object of economic governance and in seeking to create

156 Bob Jessop and discipline the subjects deemed necessary to sustain it (e.g. flexible workers, entrepreneurial subjects, respecters of copyright, lifelong learners). And, on the other hand, through its key roles in organizing multiple public–private partnerships and other networks and in shaping attitudes, expectations, and horizons of action, the state also undertakes key meta-governance activities in organizing the conditions for other economic and extra-economic agents to contribute to this process (on the complexities of meta-governance and meta-governance failure, see Jessop 2002). States have been actively involved in shaping the meanings and practices of the new, knowledge-based economy and, in attempting to do so, they have also been transforming themselves, sometimes in a deliberate, reflexive manner, sometimes as the unintended result of these interventions. However, since politics is not just ‘concentrated economics’, state involvement cannot be read off from a given set of economic imperatives. For the particular functions of the state are always overdetermined by its generic role of securing social cohesion in a conflictual society. Thus state involvement in promoting the KBE is mediated through the state projects and strategic selectivities of the state and its exercise of power. In this sense, then, state capacities in promoting the KBE are constrained not only by the specific problems of governing particular technologies in a ‘technological society’ (cf. Barry 2001) but also by the more general problems of governing the political sphere as a whole in the light of new problems of social cohesion associated with this transition (cf. Poulantzas 1978). This said, as the economy comes to be defined and naturalized as knowledgebased and/or knowledge-driven (an ongoing achievement that involves active and extensive discursive as well as material work), states are increasingly involved in promoting the production and diffusion of knowledge. This is one part of the more general structural transformation and strategic reorientation of the Keynesian Welfare National State system associated with Fordism towards what I have elsewhere categorized in ideal-typical terms as the Schumpeterian Workfare PostNational Regime (Jessop 2002). I will ignore this broader set of changes here to focus on how states advance the central role of ‘knowledge’ in the KBE. This role is doubly problematic. On the one hand, knowledge is an extremely heterogeneous and deeply contested category both ontologically and epistemologically and, as social scientists of various stripes have shown, knowledges (or truth regimes) are intimately linked to the material and discursive (or, better, material–discursive) conditions of knowledge production and management. And, on the other hand, knowledge is a collectively generated resource and, even where specific forms and types of intellectual property are produced in capitalist conditions for profit, this depends on a far wider intellectual commons. In this sense, one can regard knowledge as a fictitious commodity analogous to land, labour-power, and money (cf. Polanyi 1957). The state has three key roles here. First, as a privileged instance of the distinction between mental and manual labour (cf. Poulantzas 1978), it is a major player both directly and indirectly in the social production of truth regimes. Second, in the context of the transition to the KBE, it is promoting the commodification of knowledge through its formal transformation from a collective resource (intellectual

Cultural political economy, the knowledge-based economy and the state 157 commons) into intellectual property (for example, in the form of patent, copyright and licences) as a basis for generating profits of enterprise and rents for individual economic entities as well as for its own fisco-financial benefit. And, third, it must also seek to protect the intellectual commons as a basis for competitive advantage for the economy as a whole as well as to develop the bases of the learning society and an informed public sphere. While these tensions may be especially acute for state actors, they also occur on many other scales from individual firms through local ‘innovation milieux’ or ‘learning regions’ to the global ‘knowledge complexes’ involved in genomics and the like. In short, states at all levels are currently involved in helping to manage the contradictions rooted in the nature of knowledge as a fictitious commodity. For, on the one hand, ‘[t]he intellectual commons is fundamental to the production of knowledge’ (Dawson 1998: 281); and, on the other hand, intellectual property is a major source of profit in informational capitalism. States are situated differently in this regard. They tend to polarize, first, around interests in protecting or enclosing the commons (for example, North–South) and, second, around the most appropriate forms of intellectual property rights and regimes on different scales from global to local. Thus, some states are more active than others in enabling the primitive accumulation of intellectual property, in privatizing public knowledge and in commoditizing all forms of knowledge; others are more concerned to protect the intellectual commons, promote the information society, and develop social capital. Given its competitive advantage in ICT products and the knowledge revolution, the American state is the strongest advocate of the neo-liberal form of the knowledge revolution on a global scale. This is especially clear in its advocacy of the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights agreement as a key element in the World Trade Organization (WTO) and in using bi- and multilateral trade agreements, conditionalities and other pressures to seek to enforce its interests in intellectual property rights. Whatever their position on such issues, all states must try to resolve various contradictions and dilemmas in knowledge production whilst eschewing any direct, hierarchical control over it. For example, they ‘must balance the need to protect and maintain the intellectual commons against the need to stimulate inventive activity’ (Dawson 1998: 278). Likewise, in the latter context, they need to balance the protection of individual intellectual property and its associated revenue flows against the collective benefits that derive from the general diffusion of its applications ‘by creating open systems, by moving key intellectual properties into the public domain, by releasing source code democratically’ (Kelly 1998: 28). The latter task is often pursued through state promotion of innovation and diffusion systems (including social capital), broad forms of ‘technological foresight’, coinvolvement and/or negotiated ‘guidance’ of the production of knowledge, and the development of suitable meta-governance structures (Messner 1998; Willke 1997). Thus states sponsor information infrastructures and social innovation systems on different scales; develop intellectual property rights regimes and new forms of governance and/or regulation for activities in cyberspace; promote movement away from national utility structures with universal supply obligations suited to an

158 Bob Jessop era of mass production and mass consumption to more flexible, differential, multiscalar structures suited to a post-Fordist era; and intervene to restructure research in universities to bring it more closely into alignment with the perceived needs of business and to encourage the management and exploitation of intellectual property through spin-offs, licensing, partnerships, science parks, technology parks, industry parks, and so on. More particularly, some states are getting heavily involved in assisting the primitive accumulation of capital (in the form of intellectual property) through private expropriation of the collectively produced knowledge of past generations. This enclosure of knowledge takes several forms, including: (1) the appropriation of indigenous, tribal, or peasant ‘culture’ in the form of undocumented, informal, and collective knowledge, expertise and other intellectual resources and its transformation without recompense into commodified knowledge (documented, formal, private) by commercial enterprises – biopiracy is the most notorious example; (2) divorcing intellectual labour from the means of production – embodying it in smart machines and expert systems – and thereby appropriating the knowledge of the collective labourer; and (3) gradual extension of the limited nature of copyright into broader forms of property right with a consequent erosion of any residual public interest. States have a key role here in changing intellectual property rights (IPR) laws and enabling firms to appropriate the intellectual commons at home and abroad (on all these issues, see Drahos with Braithwaite 2002). States also advance the commoditization of knowledge and the integration of knowledge and intellectual labour into production, whether in the private, public, or third sectors. This is reflected in the increased emphasis on the training of knowledge workers and lifelong learning, including distance learning, the introduction of ICTs and other new technologies into its own spheres of activity and the more general proselytization of the knowledge-based economy and information society. The state also heavily furthers the dynamics of technological rents generated by new knowledge as part of a more general promotion of innovation. This serves to intensify the self-defeating character of the informational revolution from the viewpoint of capital, insofar as each new round of innovation is prone to ever more rapid devalorization. But it nonetheless wins temporary advantages and technological rents for the economic spaces it controls and, insofar as there are sustainable first-mover advantages, it can consolidate longer-term advantages for a region, nation, or triad. This strategy is an important and quite explicit element in the reassertion of US hegemony since the pessimism of the early 1980s. Moreover, if firms in the information economy are to maintain above-average profit rates despite the tendency for technological rents to be competed away, less technologically advanced sectors must secure below-average profits. This is another driving force behind globalization insofar as less profitable firms are forced to relocate or outsource to lower-cost production sites and reinforce the tendencies towards unequal exchange and development associated with globalization. States also get involved in often-contradictory ways in promoting and/or retarding the mobility of productive capital.

Cultural political economy, the knowledge-based economy and the state 159 Such activities tend to subordinate the totality of socio-economic fields to the accumulation process so that economic functions come to occupy the dominant place within the state. Other functions thereby gain direct economic significance for economic growth and competitiveness and this tends to politicize those formerly (or still formally) extra-economic domains that are now direct objects of state intervention. In this context, states also attempt to manage the conflicts between time horizons associated with time–space distantiation and compression – especially in regard to protecting the social capital embedded in communities, promoting longer-term economic orientations and designing institutions that sustain innovation. But this expanding field of intervention means that the state finds it harder to reconcile its responses to ever more insistent economic imperatives with the more general demands of securing general political legitimacy and social cohesion (Poulantzas 1978). I argue elsewhere that this set of functions (and the many other new tasks tied to the shift from state concern with full employment in relatively closed national economies to a concern to promote permanent innovation and economic competitiveness in relatively open economies) is associated with a fundamental restructuring and strategic reorganization of the typical postwar form of state. In telegrammatic form, this shift involves three main trends: (1) a complex rescaling of the national state, with old and new state capacities being located above, below, and across national states; (2) an equally complex shift from top-down government to heterarchic forms of governance based on networks and partnerships, sometimes including, sometimes excluding states; and (3) a growing internationalization of policy regimes. All three changes appear to challenge the continued vitality of the national state but this impression is misleading on several grounds. Above all, it ignores the extent to which it is a particular form of the national state that has been challenged by the crisis of Atlantic Fordism and the transition to a globalizing knowledge-based economy. What we find is the slow reinvention of the national state as state managers redefine the nature and purposes of the state in the light of this transition – to which they themselves are making a key contribution both in terms of discursive practices and in terms of new forms of government and governance. Thus the three above-mentioned trends are actively linked to three other trends that reaffirm the importance of state institutions and capacities. These are: (1) the increasing importance of states, especially the national state, in interscalar articulation, i.e. the modulation of which capacities are recalibrated and rescaled; (2) an increasing role for states, especially the national state, in metagovernance, i.e. the organization of the conditions for self-organization and the continual reweighting of the relative balance of market, network, and state modes of coordination in achieving state objectives; and (3) an increasing role for states, especially the national states in seeking to influence the design of international regimes and to control their implementation (for further discussion, see Jessop 2002). Within this general set of transformations, there is ample scope for variation in and across national states, reflecting national political specificities as well as the relative position of their different economic places and spaces within the emerging globalizing knowledge-based economy.

160 Bob Jessop

Conclusions This chapter has examined the state’s role in the (re-)constitution of the economy as an object of regulation and the shaping of the subjects of economic activity. There are no objective criteria that enable us to identify the necessary boundaries of economic space (on whatever territorial or functional scale). Instead we should pose this issue in terms of an imaginary constitution (and naturalization) of the economy and the resulting construction of a boundary between the economy and its environment. At the same time, the mode of regulation helps constitute and naturalize its objects in and through the very processes of regulation. Of course, naturalizing discursive formations and specific regularizing practices are contestable. Struggles to define specific economies as subjects, sites, and stakes of competition and/or as objects of regulation typically involve the asymmetrical manipulation of power and knowledge and also depend on the resonance of these new narratives with wider cultural and institutional formations and with metanarratives that connect a wide range of interactions, organizations, and institutions or help to make sense of whole epochs (see Somers 1994: 619). But this resonance is also related to material contradictions and tensions in existing and emerging forms of economic regulation and/or governance as these influence personal and organizational experience and challenge the plausibility of technoeconomic paradigms, accumulation strategies, and societal paradigms. Thus, the emergence of a new accumulation regime and its mode of regulation involve a veritable ‘cultural revolution’ as well as radical institutional innovation. Technoeconomic paradigms are transformed – witness the contrast between the discourses of economic and political planning and of productivity based on economies of scale in Atlantic Fordism and the discourses of enterprise, market forces, and flexibility in the early stages of the transition to post-Fordism. Changes are also occurring in organizational paradigms – witness the new-found emphasis in the economic and political spheres on the role of networks, partnerships, stakeholding, and good governance. New norms and expectations must be defined to complement new structural forms and social practices – thus the transition to new accumulation regimes is typically associated with public campaigns to adopt new bodily, production, and consumption practices and to share new visions of economic, political, and social life. All of this involves acts of imagination that establish an ‘imagined economic community’ grounded both in an ‘imagined economic space’ and an ‘imagined community of economic interest’ among social forces. It also involves social mobilization as well as institutional innovation to establish the hegemony of the associated accumulation strategies and to articulate them into different state projects and hegemonic projects. Economic strategies and spatiotemporal horizons must be re-aligned with changes in the structurally inscribed strategic selectivity of modes of growth and their associated political regimes. This is reflected in the rhetoric of the enterprise culture, the knowledgebased economy, and the learning society. This said, it remains the case that ‘there is many a slip ’twixt cup and lip’. For such visions, projects, and strategies must be translated into reality – and this is far from automatic. This is why cultural political

Cultural political economy, the knowledge-based economy and the state 161 economy must not only study changing discourses but also the mechanisms and material practices through which visions, projects, and strategies are realized, imperfectly, if at all. This is where the insights of the Anglo-Foucauldians and actor-network theorists as well as institutional political economy can be brought to bear in analysing the improbable expanded reproduction of capital accumulation. Drawing on these ideas, a research agenda based on cultural political economy would need to address the following questions: (a) how are objects of economic regulation and governance constituted in specific conjunctures and under what conditions, if any, do they become more or less hegemonic despite the inevitable tendencies towards instability and fluidity in social relations; (b) how are actors/ institutions and their modes of calculation constituted and how do they interact to produce these objects both discursively and extra-discursively; (c) how do new spatio-temporal fixes serve as socially-constructed institutional frameworks for displacing and deferring the contradictions and dilemmas of capital accumulation beyond their prevailing spatial boundaries and temporal fixes; (d) what specific discursive practices and structuring principles are involved in consolidating the various discourses that (re-)position subjects and identities, articulate power and knowledge, consolidate truth regimes, and materialize power relations in specific institutional contexts; (e) how do counter-hegemonic forces challenge routinized categories and naturalized institutions, generate new subject positions and social forces, and struggle for new projects and strategies; and (f) how are different forces continually balanced and counter-balanced in an unstable equilibrium of compromise within specific spatio-temporal fixes to maintain what is often little more than a ‘thin coherence’ in different conjunctures?

Notes 1 This chapter has benefited from discussions with Andrew Barry, Ryan Conlon and Ngai-Ling Sum. It also draws on previous work, notably Jessop (1997, 2000, 2002, 2003) and Jessop and Sum (2000). The usual disclaimers apply. 2 The distinction between social and cultural phenomena is analytical and based on their respective emergent properties. Whereas the ‘social’ concerns configurations of social interaction, the ‘cultural’ refers to properties of both narrative and non-narrative discursive formations. However, insofar as social relations are discursively constituted and meaningful, they have a cultural dimension; and, insofar as cultural phenomena are realized in and through social relations, they have a social dimension. 3 Here I follow Wickham (1987) in insisting that the distinction between micro and macro (or between particular and global) is always relative to an object of analysis rather than a fixed property of a given set of social relations. 4 On the doubly tendential nature of these laws (as tendentially reproduced tendential laws), see Jessop (2001a). 5 On spatio-temporal fixes, see Jessop (2001a, 2002). Callon’s notions of ‘framing’ and ‘overflow’ perform similar work but, in developing a more general sociological approach and/or focusing on particular market transactions or specific economic externalities, he does not relate framing to the basic contradictions and dilemmas of capitalist economies (Callon 1988b). Although these different approaches were developed independently, they share several key themes and insights. 6 I follow Polanyi (1982) here in distinguishing between substantive economic activities concerned with material ‘provisioning’ and formal (in the sense of profit-oriented,

162 Bob Jessop market-mediated, formally-rationally calculated) economic activities. 7 Daly rejects the concept of ‘extra-discursive’ but he radically simplifies the distinction between discursive and extra-discursive, reducing it to an issue of epistemology and neglecting the issue of ontology. Contrast Debray (1991). 8 This argument is inspired by, but by no means identical with, Richard Marsden’s comment on the Marx–Foucault relation (Marsden 1999: 149). 9 A ‘leading indicator’ in econometric analysis is an empirical indicator that enables one to anticipate a later event; conversely, a lagging indicator is one that becomes apparent after that event. 10 Cf. actor-network theory on the depth, breadth, and heterogeneity of networks and entanglements in the sedimentation of structures and their associated constraints. The strategic-relational approach is quite consistent with this claim but also emphasizes that constraints are relative to specific actors, identities, interests, strategies, spatial and temporal horizons, etc.

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Performing finance

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Performing finance The industry, the media and its image Gordon L. Clark, Nigel Thrift and Adam Tickell

In the old days, daytime television … programming and advertising took for granted that anybody who was home on the couch at noon was willing to swallow some pretty hokey palaver. That assumption is still valid. My day … starts with a conversation between Mark Haines and Maria Bartiromo on CNBC. … For hours and hours, as the financial news continues, I zone in and out. Hey, what’s that sound? Dum, dum, de-dum, it’s Power Lunch. Now that’s my show [but] I really despise the fact that I’ve been listening to all this nonsense on this channel all morning, for the two-hundredth day in a row, instead of listening to a nice, relaxing Chet Baker album. The problem is, I can’t stop. Without CNBC, I might miss something important, like the collapse of the bhat, or a surprise Greenspan dirge, or a Joe Kernen one-liner that could ruin my day. (Anuff and Wolf, 2000: 131–2)

Introduction International finance has always been intimately entwined with the media. In the febrile environment of eighteenth-century London and Amsterdam, tip sheets circulated around the coffee shops, and the growing formalization of financial markets in the nineteenth century had media analogues in newspapers such as the Financial Times or the Wall Street Journal (Kynaston, 1995). Recurrent speculative bubbles and “irrational exuberance”, from the Tulip mania and the South Seas Bubble right through to the dot.com boom, have been both the object of the reporting media and one of the key means of propagating expectations until the illogics of speculation are undermined, sometimes by the merest rumor (Kindleberger, 1978; Shiller, 2000; Williams, 2001; Thrift, 2001). For example, rampant speculation in English print media about the supposed “unlimited prospects” of canals in the early nineteenth century was repeated in the Argentine railway bubble of the late nineteenth century, an episode which nearly led to the bankruptcy of one of the era’s most powerful institutions: Barings (Tickell, 1996). Similarly, although expressed in ways unavailable to nineteenth-century speculators, the dot.com bubble was also fuelled by claims of a paradigm shift, inscribed and reinforced by the real-time ticker-tapes of the FTSE, NASDAQ and NYSE flowing

166 Gordon L. Clark, Nigel Thrift and Adam Tickell across the bottom of television screens (and broadcast by CNN, CNBC, BBC 24 and other similar 24-hour news organizations). This chapter explores the ways in which the media impact on money and finance, emphasizing how that inscription is not just changing the practices and protocols of finance, but also the media’s nascent transformations of what counts as finance. As the finance industry pays more attention to the media, we can discern three main effects. First, as financial management is now conducted under the media’s gaze, its practices reflect this scrutiny and, consequently, new forms of calculability are evolving. Second, the value of financial products is increasingly, therefore, bound up with the media image of those products as new connections are gradually made. Third, the media has come to play an important role of imposing new rhetorics and other forms of (in)disputability on the finance industry as the industry itself has gained audiences whose nature has become the object of constant research and the subject of constant feedback. Here, then, we consider the impact of these effects on the conduct of business in international finance and, specifically, the investment management industry. The chapter primarily focuses on “wholesale” (and mainly international) finance in contradistinction to retail (and mainly domestic) finance. This distinction is routinely made by those who focus on the role and responsibilities of institutional investors in market-driven processes of financial intermediation (Davis and Steil, 2001). Remarkably variegated and complex institutions and services dominate the industry and its centers of trading and transaction (Clark, 2000). Nevertheless, it is clear that the historical differences between these two sectors of finance are increasingly blurred. International finance has made a transition from an almost entirely producer-led industry (dominated by the print-related media) to a more consumer-driven model of sales and distribution (dominated by television and other electronic images). The chapter is in four main parts. The first part considers the relationship between media and finance in some detail. In particular, we hope to demonstrate that this relationship is not just an epiphenomenal but a constitutive shift. The second part of the chapter then considers how, as a result of the penetration of the media into finance, a whole set of different “financial audiences” have grown up which present a serious challenge to the standard mode of operation of international financial professionals. The third part of the chapter then documents, through participant observation, the belated attempts of a set of investment managers to come to terms with the new mediatized environment in which they now find themselves. The final part of the chapter considers the degree to which the dominance of visual media might prompt a new round of market-related regulation of the international financial markets, one in which financial consumers (or at least their virtual representations) become more important players than heretofore.

The media becomes the money Until the 1960s, the international finance industry received press attention but not much reader attention. Although there had been episodes of intense general interest

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in the stock market (see Kurtz, 2000; Shiller, 2000) there remained no general constituency (as there now appears to be). Even in the United States, international finance remained the preserve of a relatively small number of elites, often connected with the industry (Henwood, 1997; Mayer, 1997). However, from the 1960s, this situation began to change as finance skills began to migrate out of their traditional realm and into corporations. Non-financial companies found that “disintermediation”, raising money directly in the financial markets, was cheaper than borrowing money from banks. Similarly, particularly after the fiscal crisis of New York, US municipalities intervened directly in bond markets (Soybel, 1992).1 More generally, financial literacy began to increase as individual share-holding became more common. Financial information began to become more available at a cheaper price because of technological advances at the same time as a cultural shift took place in the perception of financiers. In Britain, for example, finance was no longer seen as an acceptable career for the not very bright second son of a minor aristocrat. It is now seen as a desirable career for the most able and ambitious university graduates. These developments, in turn, have created a domestic and global market for financial publications. In the early phase of the financialization of Anglo-American societies, the media responded with a set of specialist publications such as Euromoney (“the journal of the capital markets”). In the 1980s and 1990s, however, this situation significantly changed. International finance became more and more visible as the volume of international financial transactions multiplied rapidly – most markedly in the case of derivatives trading, which grew by 2,800 per cent in the decade to 1997 (Tickell, 2000). Culturally, too, finance began to exert an important influence, coming to be seen as the preserve of the young, rich and thrusting individuals. Oliver Stone’s 1987 film Wall Street, intended as a searing indictment of the amorality of financial markets, unwittingly was read by aspirant financiers almost as a training manual. Similarly, the emergence of new media combines during the 1990s, and novel transmission mechanisms that allowed multi-channel TV, meant that there was a profit to be turned from focusing some attention on finance and money. And finally, there was significant state pressure to produce the conditions under which financially aware consumers could come into existence, from consumer legislation to governmental action promoting private pensions and retirement savings (Clark, 2000). The result was clear: key elements of international finance (investing, trading, etc.) developed a growing audience and clientele among the general population, most apparently in the United States, where the rapid growth of mutual funds and related products, the expansion of 401(k) plans, Internet trading and generally available “real-time” (or near to real-time) information all produced a financial ambience in which it appeared that international financial transactions were properly part of middle-class everyday life. Amplifying and driving this emerging state of affairs was the concomitant growth of the financial media. This has taken four main forms. First, there was an explosion of financial publications, from newspapers and specialized magazines to various round-robin publications, including the growth on the Internet of the kinds of tipster publications which would previously have been limited to small specialist

168 Gordon L. Clark, Nigel Thrift and Adam Tickell readerships (Leyshon et al., 1998; Leyshon and Thrift, 1998). Second, and perhaps more significantly, financial reporting became a key feature component of mainstream media. This was manifest both through the growing prominence of the personal finance pages of the newspapers and the specialist financial television programs, and specialized financial television channels (such as CNNfn, CNBC and Bloomberg in the US or the (now bankrupt) Money Channel in the UK). Economic news has become increasingly interpreted solely in terms of its impact on financial markets. A concomitant result of these changes has been that financial journalists and commentators have increasingly become players in their own right (Kurtz, 2000). Third, advertising for financial products exploded (total global spending worldwide tripled during the 1990s; Greenfield and Williams, 2001), fuelling a demand for financial products. And fourth, the supply of financial news and information has been increasingly concentrated into the hands of a very few “news, information and technology” corporations (Craig, 1999, 2001), especially Reuters and Bloomberg. These news and information-gathering corporations increasingly have moved up and down the value chain, supplying information technology and trading systems at one end (such as the famous Bloomberg terminals), financial journalism and “brand-name information” in the middle, and a series of diversified investments in such growing areas as the Internet at the top end. Thus, for the first time, international finance has become a news and entertainment commodity like any other. Through the 1990s boom and bubble, what counted as news and entertainment clearly included finance just as this began to exclude the so-called “hard facts” of the conventional channels such as the BBC, CBS and NBC. In turn, the conjunction of entertainment with finance has made finance open to exactly the same conditions as those driving the production of any other news and entertainment commodity. These conditions are of five kinds. First, the rule of the next story: stories must circulate rapidly in order to provide the daily fuel for morning shows. This means that “tipping points” (Gladwell, 2000), where stories circulate until they gain sufficient currency to change perceptions and – in this case – market sentiments, must constantly be created. Second, the rule of celebrity: money and finance are increasingly represented through personalities whose representation (which often includes ex-cathedra homilies and opinions) is itself a source of profit. Whether financial channel anchors or symbolic analysts from investment banks, personalities like Louis Rukeyser or Maria Bartiromo (CNNfn’s “Money Honey”) do not simply represent finance, they embody it. Third, the rule of celebrity notwithstanding, finance is increasingly governed by a rule of fashion: styles of practice, personalities and products come and go. Being associated with substance is no refuge from the harsh imperatives of media demographics and related image consultants. Fourth, the rule of theatricality: money and finance have an explicitly performative character. They have to be scripted and acted out, as Tsing’s (1999) evocative account of the collapse of a Canadian gold consortium – Bre-X – powerfully demonstrates. Fifth, and last, the rule of emotion: part of the media’s appeal comes from their ability to produce and catalyze emotion. Although a critical appreciation of the role of affect in

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constructing market dynamics can be traced back to Gabriel Tarde’s (1902) tour de force and through both Kindleberger (1978) and the research on behavioral finance (for example, Thaler, 1993), as financial markets have become more mediatized so affect is playing an even greater part in the changing market “sentiment” (see Pixley, 2002).

Plurality of financial audiences I consider the middle-aged Caucasian man in a business suit to be my enemy, and I do not underestimate him. That man – the man who really controlled the stock market during its pre-Internet phase – was a professional money manager, banker, or stockbroker. He may have been slimy, or he may have been the model of rectitude and community service. He may have subjected his investors to a random walk toward bankruptcy, or he may have given them a nice consistent premium over index funds, or he may have merely sold them an index fund. But whatever he was, and whatever he did, chances are that he had access to better tools and more information than I did. As long as there was an inside, and I wasn’t in it, playing the stock market was a dangerous game. (Anuff and Wolf, 2000: 140–1) The deepening connection between the media and international finance is further complicated by another element: the size and composition of the audience. In the past, the audience for international finance was comparatively small and welldefined by market segment, expertise and means of dissemination. This is apparent, for example, in the historically modest (but recently growing)2 circulation figures of the principal broadsheet newspapers such as the Financial Times or the Wall Street Journal. However, if finance was a specialist arena in even the recent past, financial deregulation and the growth of personal investment spawned a growth in, and a transformation of, the audience for financial infotainment (Livingstone, 1999). Consequently, contemporary financial audiences have a number of critically novel characteristics. First, these audiences are heterogeneous. Whilst they continue to include professional financiers, financial advisers and sophisticated retirees, the discursive and economic centrality of financialized capitalism has meant that groups of untrained amateurs who run investment clubs, (a small number of) teenagers wagering their pocket money, and people who simply want to keep a weather eye on their mortgages, insurances and pensions (Lewis, 2001) are a ready audience for financial journalism. Second, and consequent, contemporary financial audiences display much greater levels of financial literacy than in the past, in part precisely because of the barrage of financial media information and advertising. Terms like “selling short” have become a familiar discursive currency and some households now pursue sophisticated, carefully deliberated accumulation strategies involving close attention to the timing of market events and other participants’ choices and options. Though most households do not reach these very high levels of sophistication, their expertise

170 Gordon L. Clark, Nigel Thrift and Adam Tickell has been “bulked out” by a growing army of market intermediaries who have become both a key extension of the production of financial knowledge and a constitutive audience in their own right. Third, contemporary financial audiences are much closer to financial markets and may, indeed, be directly involved in them. Emphatically, the underlying geography of finance remains unchanged and as markets integrate and national states adopt common standards and codes, trading through electronic systems is increasingly concentrated in just a few global markets (Clark, 2002; Laulajainen, 2001). However, real-time electronic communications and media images allow even remotely-located market participants to feel as if they are trading on the floor of the London and New York stock exchanges. In just a short time, Internet banking acclimatized people to making electronic transactions and, particularly during the dot.com boom, a group of these moved into online stock trading. In turn, stimulated by a constant drip feed of information from the financial media, consumer demand for financial services has become continuous, following the ups and downs of the markets in response to the (near) real-time display of events and prices. More and more of the growing financial audience expect a degree of market volatility and anticipate the opportunities for arbitrage between stocks and markets: consequently, the growing demand for real-time passive and active electronic and visual media images.3 In feeding these expectations, providers’ standards of service are constantly critically questioned, albeit from a position of weakness, by their consumers. The canonical example of this phenomenon in motion was the 1990s hightech boom. By the late 1990s, many investment funds’ managers were belatedly concluding that as stock market growth was unsustainable and in “bubble” conditions, their investment strategies should become more defensive. Simultaneously, however, retail consumers, “educated” by financial infotainment and advertising and deluded by projections of their paper gains forward into the future, directly (by switching out of “underperforming” stocks and even, in one notorious case, suing Philips and Drew) and indirectly pressurized funds into maintaining their dot.com investments. Consequently, demand for investments in high-tech meant that high-tech stock values kept accumulating, drawing in more and more marginal players while holding in check even institutional investors convinced that – although the bubble may explode – they could time their market exit (Shiller, 2000; Williams, 2001). In other words, the watching audience became powerful players in their own right, rather than being simply represented in the markets by knowledgeable professionals. While financial institutions may have been privately alarmed by the speed of the escalation of stock-prices (and not all were), they were also driven by audience expectations. On this level, then, assumptions that may have held in the past that financial consumers will comply with professional judgments no longer apply. There are critically important alternative mediating channels and modes of intervention. Added to this, however, the corporate sector is increasingly active in “managing” financial news including reported earnings and assets and liabilities (Lowenstein, 1996). With senior managers’ stock options and compensation tied to the market value of their firms, corporations have sought to bypass market analysts and experts

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by appealing through the media to market participants.4 All large corporations have press offices that attempt to manage “their” news, reaching out to various kinds of investors through the usual road-shows and by attempting to manipulate the more general climate of opinion. The size of corporation undertaking in this activity has decreased over the past decade so that more and more types of firm are managing their media presence. Furthermore, as more corporate treasuries run sophisticated financial operations involving active trading in their own stocks, currency hedging with respect to their global revenues, and investment in related firms, they have become discriminating and demanding customers of financial services. There is (or was), however, one group drawn from within the financial knowledge community itself which has developed a critical role as mediators of knowledge – but only by deploying the new channels of mediation themselves. These are star investment analysts. Investment analysis theoretically provides relatively informationpoor investors with the ability to choose between different stocks or bonds, as dedicated professionals interrogate the “economic fundamentals” of a company’s balance sheet or corporate strategy. However, two major changes in investment analysis have taken place since the 1980s. First, as companies have wished to maintain their share prices, they have increasingly employed financial PR agencies to influence journalists and analysts. Second, mergers and acquisitions between investment banks, stockbrokers and so on has led to potential conflicts between disinterested investment advice and investment banks increasingly treated in-house analysts as marketing departments for fee income generating services. The result is that investment advice tends to be positive (the Wall Street Journal, 1999, calculated that two thirds of stocks were recommended “buys”, one third were “holds” and only 1 per cent were recommended “sells”), coded (even relatively unsophisticated investors may not correctly interpret “long-term hold” correctly as meaning “sell”) or dishonest (Golding, 2001: 201, for example reports “one analyst talking to a fund manager: ‘We are putting out a “buy” recommendation on Company X – it is spelt S E L L!’”). During the dot.com boom, star investment advisers played a very real part in promoting the bubble market, with their strongly positive assessments of companies which had never made a single dollar in profit and their tales of a new economic paradigm (for critical analysis, see Thrift, 2001; Williams, 2001). Notoriously, documents unearthed during investigations by the New York Attorney General showed that the public statements of the brightest star of the dot.com boom, Henry Blodget, differed markedly from his internal assessments at Merrill Lynch. For example, at the same time as he rated excite@home as a “short-term accumulate”, he was telling colleagues that it was “such a piece of crap” and while InfoSpace was recommended as a short- and long-term buy, internal emails described it as a “powder keg” stock (The Economist, 2002). The consequences of these trends are, by now, all too evident. For all the information in the market about stocks and prices, a paradox of the new financial literacy is that information is both less valuable in its own right and harder to judge in terms of its integrity. Information is not knowledge. The reach of financial professionals has, consequently, increased markedly over the past decade. A network which hitherto largely consisted of large corporations

172 Gordon L. Clark, Nigel Thrift and Adam Tickell and institutional clients has now expanded to include a heterogeneous range of financial consumers, often with their own active opinions and opinion makers. Hence the rise of an active audience information-gathering industry that can take in and work on the proliferation of calculative agencies, all searching for and constructing various kinds of financial consumers, either through demographic profiling or increasingly through more sophisticated psychographics (Machauer and Morgner, 2001). This new mode of financialized capitalism is most marked in the United States where retail-orientated firms like Fidelity and Schwab developed a mass-market for traded investment products. Although only the very largest financial conglomerates can reach so far down into the retail market (and are now, in the wake of the dot.com crash, withdrawing from its lowest reaches), it still seems likely that this experience will be vital in Europe as national states increasingly emphasise personal responsibility in providing an income in retirement (Clark, 2002).

The medium and the message I am watching. Mostly, I am watching the commercials. There is nothing that can restore the faith of a day trader faster than a series of commercials for online brokerages. (Anuff and Wolf, 2000: 136) The increasing significance of electronic and visual media has occurred at the same time as the image of international finance has become more complex and difficult to represent. As information technology has taken over many of the functions and relationships of financial practice (like open outcry markets), greater and greater anonymity has accompanied the investment and trading process (Wilhelm and Downing, 2001). Whatever the historical image of international finance was in London and New York, the screen has swamped that image and has replaced it with a cacophony of images, noise and visions. It is also accompanied by a distinctive rhetoric.5 The US television channels CNBC and MSNBC, which are rebroadcast globally, provide illustrative examples. On both these channels, the eye is bombarded by an array of constantly changing images and information. While the program anchor remains important, s/he is constantly framed by an electronic ticker tape displaying the latest prices for stocks and bonds and the aggregate price for the three major US stock indices (priced in red or green depending on the day’s trading). Further, programs are presented at breathtaking speed, interviews are interrupted for breaking news, expert analysis deploys yet more data displays, reports from the New York Stock Exchange or the Chicago Mercantile are formulaically fronted by attractive women and backgrounded by the noise, color and hubbub of open outcry trading. These techniques owe more to MTV than to the “serious and sober” financial journalism of the Financial Times or the Wall Street Journal. In doing so, they breathe a new life into finance, turning it into a living organism. Rather than a rational entity, finance becomes a performative, continuous activity whose appreciation assumes a minimum level of financial literacy.

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Figure 8.1 Talking about finance

We should not underestimate the importance of these screens which are not only consumed by financial end-consumers, and as such are part of the ecology of everyday life, but are also viewed by more skeptical financial professionals who know that outrageous claims on CNBC or CNNfn can still move markets. While they may be consumed by the new financial audience, they are thus constitutive of the entirety of finance. Furthermore, although they have evidently not replaced canonical entertainment programs in the popular imagination, the sheer ubiquity of money channels in hotel chains around the world, or airport lounges, suggest a presence that is coterminous with the service functions for the global economy. These global money shows have a self-conscious attempt to place reporting according to the 24-hour market trading cycle around the world. Managing time is as important as managing the image of financial reporting (Galison, 2000), a feature emulated in the clocks on the trading screens of financial professionals. Such screens accompany the long periods of “down-time” in finance and at least give the illusion that they are making unproductive time more productive, just as laptops, PDAs and mobile phones have made investment management possible while on the move. Increasingly, the “rhythms of reception produced by the cycles and patterns of [financial] broadcasting overlap with the rhythms of social life” (McCarthy, 2001: 196). A useful distinction can be made between the passive components of the screen and the active components of the screen. The former include data, updates of data, and so-called news. These are provided rather than discussed, though the implication is always that this is done in real-time as opposed to the delayed material which dominates news magazine programs. Even so, compared with the Bloomberg channel, the material passively displayed is rarely completely up-to-date. Furthermore, again unlike Bloomberg, data cannot be accessed, displayed and analyzed. While no doubt useful, such passive material is more often than not material for watching and to feed curiosity rather than market trading. By contrast, active components of the screen are presented as if the information and opinion being imparted is urgently needed by the viewing audience. In this sphere of CNBC, “talking heads” dominate with comment, discussion, and the presentation of multi-colored graphics summarizing stock market data. Breathless excitement characterizes such commentary, being associated with “breaking news”,

174 Gordon L. Clark, Nigel Thrift and Adam Tickell “new information”, and “unexpected events”. Talk is fast and furious. Talk is also often interrupted by some sudden happening, and talk moves on at a breakneck pace covering topic after topic – interrupted, of course, by commercial breaks. Flicking between channels as one might between MTV, VH-1, and CNN might also mean missing a so-called vital piece of information mixed in with all the other material so quickly displayed and so quickly discarded. Associated with the “talking heads” are regular trading floor commentaries. In these brief moments of report from the action, reporters appear to stand in the middle of Wall Street jostled by exceedingly active – even frantic – traders going about their business. These reporters may be male or female and report to us as if they know something that we don’t know. Over time, they have gained their own following even if they seem to come and go on and off the program without any announcement of departure. As we move on with the program it seems that its producers have made a couple of very basic assumptions about the time we take to watch as well as our capacity for concentration. In the first instance, program producers assume we dip in and dip out of the program with five minutes here and five minutes there. It appears we don’t follow the program for more than a couple of commercial breaks. Furthermore, it appears that our concentration can only last between 45 seconds and 90 seconds on any one issue. Perhaps they’re right. Perhaps MTV is more challenging and more entertaining! Until recently, much of the active information presented on CNBC has had a positive gloss.6 There were always good stocks, amazing success stories, and hitherto untold opportunities for making a profit. Rarely were investors advised to divest from a particular stock, withdraw from a particular market or given a bleak assessment of market trends (although market bears were treated with respect: the fear that such animals engendered was a perfect emotive counterweight to the relentless good news elsewhere). At the same time, program presenters and pundits took the opportunity to encourage investors to avoid the market herd and take advantage of little-known, out-of-favor opportunities. They know we follow the news, and they know we are self-conscious of our unwillingness to go against market leaders. Like so much of financial market reporting, stocks are hardly ever talked down, while falling share prices are market corrections and even opportunities. Critically, an Orwellian golden rule is that the positive evaluations which turn out to have been wrong are never returned to. He who controls the past truly does control the future, at least on CNBC. All this activity is executed in a most aggressive manner. In the middle-ground, the presenter is newsworthy in their own right. The banter between the host, commentators and guests is positive but combative. Each personality has their apparent important place in the financial industry – otherwise, why would they be on the show? But it is rare for guests to finish their presentations. Being interrupted, being shunted sideways in favor of breaking news, and having one’s image drowned by a graphic are ever-present risks associated with being on the show. However, in contrast, one real advantage of being on the show is that the host never ever questions the veracity of stated opinions. Commentators and guests never have to

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reveal their own interests in the opinions being portrayed and displayed. But we know, of course, that all these pundits have a stake in having their views positively received by the audience (Kurtz, 2000). If they do not directly and immediately benefit from their exposure on the program, can we be sure that their employers do not reach for the calculator to assess likely future bonus payments? While it would be naïve to believe that the audience is uncritical in their construction of these opinions (see, for example, Philo, 1990; Dahlgren, 1992, on the construction of information from TV news media) and that what construction of disputability there is is mainly false, the constant drip of infotainment has a subtly opiate effect (for parallels, see Roscoe and Hight, 2001). After all, advertising and commercial interests dominate the channel so why should we expect “independent” advice as if the audience’s best interests are those served by the program? Indeed, seen in this way, perhaps much of the commentary and opinion given out on channels like CNBC is closer to advertising than independent advice and should be understood as such.

Adjusting to new conditions Institutional investors and fund managers have responded to the increasing anonymity and media-hype surrounding the global finance industry typified by financial channel programs. Even if they no longer hold to the purity of the rational markets hypothesis, economists of finance presuppose that sophisticated professional investors are not responsive to the media: much of the theory of finance maintains that the fundamentals of asset allocation strategy and the largely under-represented and unremarkable imperatives of market competition dominate price formation (for example, compare Rubinstein, 2001, or Campbell and Viceira, 2002, with Shiller, 2000). In any event, to be media-responsive would mean being vulnerable to the harsh discipline imposed on market participants by market arbitrageurs (invoking the evolutionary principal of “survival of the fittest” most often associated with competitive market processes; Clark and Marshall, 2002). These presumptions are, however, based on a false premise. Institutional investors are highly susceptible to external influences in their decision-making processes.7 At financial industry conferences, organizers frequently implore delegates to understand behavioral norms and attitudes in order to make greater profits, whilst the founders of the school of behavioral finance set up a fund management company to put their theories into practice (www.fullerthaler.com). Training in the role of behavior starts with attitudinal analysis of simple puzzles (for example, of a limited set of identified competing nations, which one will win the World Cup? Of those identified as likely finalists which will win? And by what margin?). Once inducted into the process, more complicated tests are introduced. For example, participants may be asked to anticipate the average score (between 1 and 100) of the group. This puzzle is more complicated than it superficially appears, and has natural analogues in the finance industry. By coding and displaying the results, considerable variation in participants’ ability to understand the puzzle is apparent,

176 Gordon L. Clark, Nigel Thrift and Adam Tickell underlining the recursive nature of successful decision-making, and the difficulties encountered because the audience is uncertain as to the composition and attitudes existing in the audience.8 There are three key issues arising from this example. First, even amongst industry experts the context, knowledge of other participants, and the specific questions are all important variables in decision-making. Although familiarity with the process means that participants converge around expected norms and standards, this kind of accumulated knowledge is unusual in the financial industry. Not only do market participants change over time, the issues faced and the setting in which they are played-out also vary in unpredictable ways. There are many risks in simply replicating the past as if the future is yet another version of the past. Producing an investment product, for example, is quite unlike producing a manufactured product (Clark, 2000). Performance is assessed according to a benchmark whose value is only known at the end of future periods of time. Consequently, market agents are vulnerable to unanticipated events and actions within a mandate period. Furthermore, as financial markets are comprised of many different kinds of people, the heterogeneity of market expectations and emotions is a necessary ingredient in sustaining market liquidity; those markets dominated by one kind of participant with common expectations are ultimately self-defeating (Clark, 2002). The issue of market expectations is not simply resolved using the dichotomy between expert and non-expert. For example, at a recent finance industry conference, expert participants were shown two videos. The first advertised investment management by using the tools of the MTV generation, stressing the “hipness” of a product in relation to current trends, while the second was more sober and stressed the relative performance of the product against an appropriate benchmark. When asked to assess these two videos, although a majority preferred the substance, a significant minority of professional fund managers and consultants chose the fashion statement. In assessing the manager as a potential vendor, a bare majority were impressed by the videos and a substantial minority suspended judgment on the grounds of inadequate information (both videos). Those most strongly of this opinion were those employed by consultants whose job it is to be skeptical of performance claims made by investment managers. Pension fund managers and administrators were more willing to suspend judgment; either they rely upon consultants to do the discrimination or they are so used to such advertisements that they treat them as entertainment and judge them according to the norms of such a genre. The growing heterogeneity of expectations and significance of the media has changed the way finance works. For some, especially consultants concerned with advising institutional investors about the investment decision-making process, these kinds of puzzles and video shows have encouraged close attention to the norms and principles under-pinning the process of decision-making. Whereas recognition of psychological biases and related cognitive traps have served as one element in this re-invigorated emphasis on process, check-lists and codes of practice have served as means of encouraging best-practice. Other avenues of process-based advice have included a focus upon decision-making in groups and the limits of

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information-rich decision-making. In essence, commonplace assumptions about the necessary rationality of market agents have had to be rejected in favor of formulating models of decision-making that are sensitive to context, cognition and opinion. Such models may not find favor with many finance theorists. But they are increasingly the focus of industry participants and government regulators. For many years, it was self-evident that financial decision-making would be best when informed by the principles of modern portfolio theory. The conceptual and measurement-related weapons of such theoretically-informed decision-making included the Sharpe ratio, the Black–Scholes option pricing theorem, and the value-at-risk formula (Ezra and Goodwin, 2000). When allied with the efficient markets hypothesis, these concepts were the cornerstone of investment practice. But in combination with those advocating a behavioral approach to decisionmaking, large-scale empirical studies of patterns of market trading have encouraged many in the industry to reconsider the basis of their investment strategies. If there is greater volatility in markets because of systematic differences amongst market participants in terms of their attitudes, expectations, and responsiveness to information and news, then those differences must be the object of investment strategy. In this regard, many large global investment houses have developed trading regimes designed to take advantage of greater (not less) volatility and systemic inefficiency. There remains an unresolved debate as to the significance of market volatility for short-term and long-term investment policy. There is no doubt that being able to take advantage of increased market volatility may generate high rates of return for larger institutional investors who have the resources to mine the data, respond immediately to trigger points, and in general take advantage of the “remoteness” of individual investors from the flow of gossip within and between such firms. In this respect, knowledge of the scope of existing market expectations combined with empirically-tested models of common psychological traits in specific market conditions may provide such institutions with significant tactical advantage in designing market trading regimes. However, it remains to be seen whether tactical advantage can be translated into strategic advantage with respect to long-term asset allocation. Here, there are some who believe that attention to the fundamentals driving long-term rates of return between different classes of financial assets remains an essential component of any winning investment strategy (Campbell and Viceira, 2002). By this logic, the rise of the media image is a real threat to the welfare of most market participants since it continually imposes alien logics of calculation.

Conclusions In this chapter, we have argued that there has been a transformation of the relationship between finance and its media image. As the centrality of the traditional arbiters was unsettled by disintermediation and the growing financial literacy, the media have become a key means of coordination in the financial markets, but a set of arbiters whose primary mode of delivery is infotainment rather than hard news. Over the last two decades of the twentieth century the reporting of finance

178 Gordon L. Clark, Nigel Thrift and Adam Tickell has undergone a revolution. Moving from sober reporting to daily entertainment, has meant moving into a world dominated by video clips, the rush and clash of symbols, and the need to entertain minute after minute, day after day. Stock-tipsters have attained cult followings. These changes are of fundamental importance. Before them, there were producers of financial knowledge (financial professionals and analysts working in, and determining the course of, the markets) at the core and there were consumers of financial knowledge (the media and, through them, investors) at the outside. However much the producers of financial knowledge may dislike it, they now have to share the stage with a set of media which has become both consumer and producer. In a very short time, the Reichian symbolic analysts of finance have had to accommodate an influential external presence and recognize that markets move on their volition. The boundaries between the producers and consumers of financial knowledge are fuzzy. All this might be unproblematic if it were simply the case that such images and personalities are mere “froth” set atop the fundamentals driving investment decision-making. However, during the 1990s individual investors entered the market drawn by the promise of enormous unearned wealth and the erroneous belief that electronic communication networks provided them with sufficient information and knowledge to be competitive with much larger institutional investors. Although the collapse of NASDAQ has meant that some of these have retreated, participation in securities markets is now a permanent feature of Anglo-American life (and the logical outcome of the shifts in welfare in many European countries). Therefore, the close symbiotic relationship between the print media and the large financial houses has been replaced by a close asymmetrical relationship between individual investors and media networks. As a result, the means of the “construction of proof ” (MacKenzie, 2001) have changed. In this respect, at times the print media appear to have become reporters on the sidelines, looking on in dismay as markets move in response to momentary image and untutored opinion (Clark and Wojcik, 2001). There are many implications that flow from these observations. In the first instance, greater scrutiny needs to be paid to the relationship between financial reporting in the print media and financial reporting in the television media. We know little about the design and structure of financial reporting in these rather different environments just as we know very little in fact about the significance of historically derived codes of practice in sustaining the divide between reporting information and making opinions about the significance or otherwise of that information. Even articulating this implies that there are wider media responsibilities than chasing ratings, responsibilities not to hype markets or to chase the latest story. Indeed, the integrity of capital markets may demand (but not necessarily achieve) such distinctions; just as regulators will have paid increasing attention to the integrity of corporate accounting practices in the aftermath of Enron, these same regulators ought to be paying closer attention to the roles and responsibilities of media image managers. Of course, it is arguable that the entertainment value of electronic images has been drastically curtailed by the collapse of the technology, media and communications (TMT) bubble. It is equally arguable that the bubble and bust has

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proved once again that attention to fundamentals is a necessity even if fashion and hype would dictate otherwise. It would seem that both propositions are entirely plausible. However, market volatility remains an important characteristic of AngloAmerican capital markets; diverse expectations and behavior will not simply “go away” by reference to the supposed virtues of fundamentals. Any appeal to fundamentals must be tempered with the realization that such appeals are hardly ever unambiguous and risk-free recipes for long-term investment success. Furthermore, it is apparent to many in the market, whether expert or amateur, that increased market volatility has provided opportunities for risk-taking and reward. There are fashions of theory just as there are fashions in opinion. The increasingly close relationships over the last two decades between financial theorists and investment firms is evidence, surely, of the burgeoning market for ideas. In any event, the transformation of financial reporting into the world of image and entertainment has also transformed how we understand regulation. Whereas in the past the regulation of capital markets was intimately related to “hard data” such as measures of capital adequacy, the efficacy of transaction settlements systems, and the management of risk-taking internal to large financial conglomerates, it is arguable that regulation must also be sensitive to the interests of consumers. Here the world of financial markets is increasingly the world of consumer protection, going beyond regulatory regimes designed to maintain competition and ensure stable markets to regulatory regimes which are sensitive to the possibility that financial institutions may exploit the ignorance and inexperience of consumers. This is surely the implication of recent moves by the New York attorney general (themselves interpreted by some as a calculated media strategy) to hold financial institutions accountable for their expressed opinions (given reservations about the value of stock recommendations). Finally, there remains a most important issue to be confronted: if, as it seems, individuals will be required to bear a higher proportion of the risk associated with their long-term wealth and retirement income, financial literacy must be given greater significance than has been the case. It is apparent in the UK that this issue is an important agenda item for the Financial Services Authority (FSA). The publication of decision trees, flow charts, and handbooks devoted to the assessment of risk all suggest that the FSA has taken on a most important educative role. However, this is just the beginning. Much of this type of educative material presumes a level of cognitive sophistication and access to information of integrity at odds with the actual circumstances of individual investors. Moreover, this type of material suggests a level of quality of information and decision-making competence that would put television outlets like CNBC out of business. If, as we have suggested here, all kinds of market participants are caught-up in the market for image and media time, appeals to rationality shorn of media hype seem to us to be forlorn attempts to institutionalize a clinical conception of decision-making and proof that are at odds with what we are beginning to know about media-driven financial markets which suggest that we may now be beginning a new chapter in the history of how financial markets are co-ordinated (Clark and Marshall, 2002).

180 Gordon L. Clark, Nigel Thrift and Adam Tickell

Notes 1 Some of the more deleterious impacts of a cultural shift within the finance industry towards taking risks also migrated into the corporate and municipal realms, as the behavior of a small number of corporate treasurers and municipal authorities began to resemble gamblers rather than money managers (for example, in Orange County in California and Hammersmith and Fulham in the UK (see Tickell, 2000). 2 For example, the Financial Times has been the only UK newspaper whose circulation figures consistently grow on an annualized basis and now publishes separate editions for the UK, Europe and North America. 3 This demand notwithstanding, what little evidence there is suggests that individuals who actively trade on the financial markets consistently underperform the professionals and the financial markets. For example, empirical research during the 1980s suggested that small speculators in the futures markets lost 20 per cent of their money every year (Zeckhauser et al., 1991). More recently, during the dot.com boom the media widely (over-)reported the emergence of the ‘day-trader’ phenomenon. Day traders are individuals who actively trade stocks on their own account in the hope of arbitraging profits or second guessing market moves. Although a few lionized day traders were wildly successful during the period when the NASDAQ appeared unstoppable and commentators were claiming that the Dow Jones index should properly be valued at 36,000 (Glassman and Hassett, 1999), the majority lost money. 4 As illustrated by the Enron scandal, managing reported earnings and financial positions is a widespread phenomenon. While most obvious in the Anglo-American world, it should be noted that European corporate reporting practices are typically even less shareholder friendly than Anglo-American practices. In fact, so significant is insider information in many continental European countries that common Anglo-American portfolio investment strategies such as passive index matching are demonstrably poor investment vehicles when compared with active stock selection and exclusion (see Clark and Wojcik, 2002, on the design and execution of European investment strategies). 5 Here, we have obviously cribbed our section title and argumentative logic from Marshall McLuhan. See his seminal contributions on the semiotics of the media and the status of image in modern (postmodern) society; McLuhan (1964) and McLuhan and Fiore (1967). Even so, we should recognize that these issues have developed in ways perhaps unanticipated by McLuhan especially as regards the question of peoples’ cognitive capacities to process information and make informed decisions. We should take care not to assume that the medium is in fact the message as if it is in some sense unprocessed by human beings characterized by consciousness and education. 6 This is in stark contrast to the print media where considerable skepticism is now dominant – contrast Levi (1987) with the interpretive understandings of the collapses of Barings (Tickell, 1996) and Long Term Capital (MacKenzie, 2000; de Goede, 2001) – in part because of the different timeframe in which such media run. 7 In constructing this argument, we are drawing upon empirical work carried out over the last five years by the three authors including: (i) over 100 in-depth interviews in major financial institutions in London, New York, Chicago, Frankfurt and Sydney; (ii) observations and discussions at industry conferences, including a recent conference attended by 200 European financial institutions and fund managers; and (iii) research for the [UK] National Association of Pension Funds and Watson Wyatt on decisionmaking models in pension fund investment allocation. This latter study, by Clark, developed formal models which analyzed predetermined protocols and tested responses to a range of variables, including the role of expertise and external ‘noise’. 8 See, for example, the puzzle involving choice amongst a pre-determined set of options set in Clark and Marshall (2002) for participants in the Annual Investment conference of the UK National Association of Pension Funds. Increasingly, these puzzles are based upon cognitive psychology and are designed to record deeply-embedded biases common to all kinds of people whatever their cultures and environments.

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References Anuff, J. and Wolf, G. (2000) Diary of a Day Trader, Methuen. Campbell, J.Y. and Viceira, L.M. (2002) Strategic Asset Allocation, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Clark, G.L. (2000) Pension Fund Capitalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Clark, G.L. (2002) European Pensions and Global Finance, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Clark, G.L. and Marshall, J. (2002) Expertise and Decision-Making in the Real-World, London: National Association of Pension Funds. Clark, G.L. and Wojcik, D. (2001) “The city of London in the Asian crisis”, Journal of Economic Geography, 1, 54–73. Clark, G.L. and Wojcik, D. (2002) “How and where should we invest in Europe? An economic geography of global finance”. Working Paper (SSRN Abstract = 271929). Oxford: School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford. Craig, G. (1999) “Plastic vision: an analysis of Reuters Financial Television”, UTS Review, 5, 111–25. Craig, G. (2001) “The global financial news, information and technology corporations”, Southern Review, 34, 4–13. Dahlgren, P. (1992) “What’s the meaning of this? Viewer’s plural sense-making of TV news”, in P. Scannell, P. Schlesinger and C. Sparks (eds) Culture and Power, London: Sage. Davis, E.P. and Steil, B. (2001) Institutional Investors, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. de Goede, M. (2001) “Discourses of scientific finance and the failure of long-term capital management”, New Political Economy, 6, 2, 149–70. Ezra, D. and Goodwin, T. (2000) “Thoughts on risk measurement as an introduction to risk budgeting”, in R. Layard-Liesching (ed.) Risk Budgeting: A Cutting-Edge Guide to Enhancing Fund Management, New York: Institutional Investor, 14–21. Galison, P. (2000) “Einstein’s clocks: the place of time”, Critical Inquiry, 26, 355–89. Gladwell, M. (2000) The Tipping Point, New York: Little Brown. Glassman, J. and Hassett, K. (1999) Dow 36,000, New York: Random House. Golding, T. (2001) The City: Inside the Great Expectation Machine, London: Pearson. Greenfield, C. and Williams, P. (2001) “Finance advertising and media rhetoric”, Southern Review, 34, 44–66. Henwood, D. (1997) Wall Street, London: Verso Kindleberger, C. (1978) Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises, New York: Macmillan. Kurtz, H. (2000) The Fortune Tellers. Inside Wall Street’s Game of Money, Media and Manipulation, New York: The Free Press. Kynaston, D. (1995) The City of London, Volume 1. A world of its Own 1815–1890, London: Chatto and Windus. Laulajainen, R. (2001) “End of geography at exchanges”, Zeitschrift fûr Wirtschaftsgeographie, 45, 1–14. Levi, M. (1987) Regulating Fraud: White Collar Crime and the Criminal Process, London: Tavistock. Lewis, M. (2001) The Future Just Happened, London: Hodder and Stoughton. Leyshon, A. and Thrift, N.J. (1998) Money/Space, London: Routledge. Leyshon, A., Thrift, N.J. and Pratt, J. (1998) “Reading financial services: consumers, texts and financial literacy”, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 16, 29–55. Livingstone, S. (1999) “New media, new audiences”, New Media and Society, 1, 59–66. Lowenstein, L. (1996) “Financial transparency and corporate governance: you manage what you measure”, Columbia Law Review, 96, 1335–62.

182 Gordon L. Clark, Nigel Thrift and Adam Tickell Machauer, A. and Morgner, S. (2001) “Segmentation of bank customers by expected benefits and attitudes”, International Journal of Bank Marketing, 19, 6–17. MacKenzie, D. (2000) “Long term capital management and the sociology of finance”, London Review of Books, 13 April, 1–5. MacKenzie, D. (2001) The Construction of Proof, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Mayer, M. (1997) The Bankers, New York: E.P. Dutton. McCarthy, A. (2001) Ambient Television, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. McLuhan, M. (1964) Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, New York: McGraw-Hill. McLuhan, M. and Fiore, Q. (1967) The Medium is the Message, New York: Bantam. Philo, G. (1990) Seeing and Believing: The Influence of Television, London: Routledge. Pixley, J. (2002) “Finance organizations, decisions and emotions”, British Journal of Sociology, 53, 41–65. Roscoe, J. and Hight, C. (2001) Faking it: Mock-documentary and the Subversion of Factuality, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Rubinstein, M. (2001) “Rational markets: yes or no? The affirmative case”, Financial Analysts Journal, May/June, 6–10. Shiller, R.J. (2000) Irrational Exuberance, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Shleifer, A. (2000) Market Inefficiency, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Soybel, V.E. (1992) “Municipal financial reporting and the general obligation bond market”, Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, 11, 207–31. Tarde, G. (1902) Psychologie et economie, Paris: Félix Alcan. Thaler, R.H. (ed.) (1993) Advances in Behavioral Finance, New York: Russell Sage Foundation. The Economist (2002) “Wall Street: what glitters ain’t gold”, The Economist, 13 April, 82–3. Thrift, N.J. (2001) “ ‘It’s the romance, not the finance, that makes the business worth pursuing’: disclosing a new market culture”, Economy and Society, 30, 412–32. Tickell, A. (1996) “Making a melodrama out of a crisis”, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 14, 5–33. Tickell, A. (2000) “Dangerous derivatives? Controlling and creating risk in international finance”, Geoforum, 31, 87–99. Tsing, A. (1999) “Inside the economy of appearances”, Public Culture, 12, 115–44. Wilhelm, B. and Downing, J. D. (2001) Information Markets, Boston: Harvard Business School Press. Williams, K. (2001) “Business as usual”, Economy and Society, 30, 399–411. Zeckhauser, R., Patel, J. and Hendricks, D. (1991) “Nonrational actors and financial market behavior”, Theory and Decision, 31, 257–87.

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The objectivity of the brand Marketing, law and sociology Celia Lury

Introduction In this chapter, I want to develop the argument that the brand is a complex object or abstract thing. I will do this by focusing on the argument that what has come to define the brand1 in the contemporary era is the organisation and functioning of a set of relations between products or services. I will demonstrate that these relations are dynamic, that is, they are probabilistic, global and transductive (these terms will be outlined below). It is the dynamism of these relations that makes the brand a complex object and a peculiar kind of social fact. I will outline here the role of both marketing and the law in the staging of this complex objectivity, identifying the ways in which possibility is introduced into the object of contemporary capitalism (Massumi 2002). In the final section, I will explore how the realisation of this possibility is restricted in practice, and conclude by considering how sociology might contribute to the objectivity of the brand. Before developing this argument in any detail though, let me first address the issue of how it is that something as abstract and intangible as a brand may be described as a thing or an object at all. To get at what is at issue here, consideration of something whose objectivity we take for granted may be helpful: a car. We are easily able to accept that a car is an object, although it typically comprises many thousands of parts or components. Moreover, while each of these parts is more or less essential to the capacity of the object to move its passengers from one place to another, none of the individual components has this capacity. It is their relation to one another that makes the components of a car into a car. We also tend to think of the car as a discrete or closed object, but it is of course only a functioning car when it is in a controlled relation to elements of its environment: the atmosphere, the driver and roads. In other words, the car is an object in a dynamic relation to its environment. In both these respects, the objectivity of the brand may be described in a parallel way; it is an object that emerges in relations between parts or rather products and in a dynamic relation to the environment, that is, to consumption or everyday life. But as indicated above, it will be suggested that what really distinguishes the brand as an object of the contemporary economy is

184 Celia Lury not simply that it is a set of relations between products, but that it is a set of relations between products in time. To understand the peculiarity of the objectivity at issue here, I draw (implicitly) on a tradition in philosophy in which time is internal to the processes by which the (physical and social) world operates (Bergson 1991; Whitehead 1967, 1970; Deleuze 1986, 1989). This is an approach in which time is dynamic, where dynamism is not an activity of fixed objects moving through space, but rather a process of immanent or objective differentiation. In this view, no object is fixed or closed, but rather is a set of more or less self-organising processes in time. To explore what this might mean, let me return to the example of the car, an object that we more normally think of in terms of complicatedness rather than complexity. Thus, we tend to think of the components of the car as staying the same in time, or at least, as all ageing at the same rate; it is only when the car breaks down that we might acknowledge that one part has aged faster than another. But of course, some components of the car are designed to manage the temporality of the relations between the components themselves and their relation to the environment. That is, many of the parts have some kind of feedback mechanism, whose function is to manage change (that is, to organise temporal differentiation). Moreover, the number of these feedback elements in the car has increased enormously in recent years (Manzini 1989). As a consequence, the car is not simply complicated but also increasingly complex, that is, it is more open, more able to be responsive to change (for further discussion of complexity in relation to contemporary social sciences see Waldrop 1994; Thrift 1999; Urry 2003). And while the parts or products of the brand may not be in such close or proximate spatial relation to each other as in the case of the car, it is their complex relationality – like that of the car – which is at issue here in terms of its emerging objectivity. In what follows then, the focus will be on the peculiarity of the dynamic relations between the products that comprise the objectivity of the brand.

The objectivity of marketing Let me start then with a somewhat cursory account of the development of marketing2 in the last fifty or so years (for a fuller account see Cochoy 1998 and Arvidsson, forthcoming). Marketing has always concerned the definition of products as both objects within competitive market relations and as objects of consumption; that is, in marketing products must be defined in terms of their similarity or difference – their substitutability – from other objects that might occupy the same social space (in relation to competitors) and in terms of their integration in social life (in relation to consumers) (Slater 2002). But this is the period that sees the increasing influence of marketing in the economy. Specifically, it is through the use of market information about competitors, but also, crucially, about consumers that the discipline of marketing has come to play a role in the (ongoing) production of an abstract object, the brand. Of course the claim that information became central to the organisation of the market in this period is not to say that it has not always been important. In all markets, supply and demand transform each other

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through a sort of back-and-forth movement of information between the two, a kind of dance between the producer and the consumer (Storper 2001). The argument being made here is that the novel understandings of information developed in the immediate post-war period (Hayles 1999) play a key role in this interchange, and contribute to the emergence of a new, more abstract object in the economy. The notion of the brand being developed here is thus part of a broader analysis of the implications of the use of information in the integration, co-ordination and organisation of the objects of economy and of everyday life (Kwinter 2001). More particularly, the 1950s and 1960s sees a call for marketing knowledge to lead rather than follow practice, for a shift from descriptive to prescriptive practices, and from inductive to deductive methods of analysis. The increasing legitimacy of marketing in this period is described by Cochoy as being in part a consequence of internal developments: the abandonment of institutional economics by marketers and the adoption of a combination of quantitative techniques and behavioural sciences. On the one hand, the implementation of operations research and econometrics contributed to the development of marketing science, a research stream that was concerned to model and optimise market activities. On the other hand, the importation of statistics, psychology and behavioural analysis gave rise to what has come to be called consumer research. This involves the use of economic, social and psychographic demographics to map target markets (Cochoy 1998). Crucially, the active role awarded to marketing involves a reorganisation of product qualification trials (Callon, Meadel and Rabeharisoa, this volume), and legitimates an increasingly important role for marketing in product development, product differentiation and product classification. The measuring devices involved in the process of qualification–requalification by marketers included statistical devices which increasingly showed that ‘beyond prices, the result of competition depended on the management of the multi-dimensional aspects of products – above all, brands, services, packaging. It showed that one had to play on these many dimensions in order to shape the markets’ (Cochoy 1998: 213). In other words, statistical manipulations begin simultaneously to decompose the fixity of the product and reconstitute the objects of economic analysis at a different level, that of the market. In these calculations, the market is not conceived as a static context for transactions in which fixed entities or products are exchanged, but as a verb, an activity, as marketing; in short, the product is not simply brought to the market, the market is brought to the product. As a consequence, the bundle of qualities, attributes or characteristics comprising the product was both multiplied – with attention to the so-called multi-dimensional aspects of the product – and dispersed across different stages of production and distribution. The previously existing distinction between the processes of production (as the source of value) and those of distribution (of an already fixed product) begins to be eroded. The publication of Theodor Levitt’s manifesto for a marketing revolution in 1960 is instructive here. The distinction between selling and marketing was crucial to his argument. Selling, he said:

186 Celia Lury … focuses on the needs of the seller, marketing on the needs of the buyer. Selling is preoccupied with the seller’s need to convert his product into cash, marketing with the idea of satisfying the needs of the customer by means of the product and the whole cluster of things associated with creating, delivering and finally consuming it. (quoted in Mitchell 2001: 76–77) More generally, what emerged in this period was a widely adopted programme of marketing management. This involved the idea of the ‘marketing mix’ which sought to present the best marketing policy as an optimal and controlled combination of the four Ps – price, promotion, place and product strategies (Cochoy 1998). This was the first stage of what might be called a probabilistic programme of marketing management. In this programme, the characteristics of a new object – the brand – begin to emerge from the statistical calculation of the probabilities of interconnections between parts (the four Ps) of a decomposed process of production and distribution. In the following years the commercial success of the ‘marketing mix’ led to further shifts in the role of marketing in the qualification and requalification of products. Marketers found ways to show that products are not adequately defined by their functional properties alone. Qualification trials demonstrated that the product could not be limited to its physical characteristics, that is, its objective existence extends beyond being a discrete physical good. In short, product qualification in terms of physical or functional properties was increasingly found inadequate for the objectifying or performative purposes of marketing. Instead, the pattern of customers’ needs as identified through the use of the behavioural sciences in consumer research – in particular psychological theories of the self, such as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs – were used to define the emerging object of the brand. In short, the mediation of the exchange or interaction between producer and consumer leads to processes of product differentiation and the emergence of objective qualities in an abstract thing, the brand. What is at issue here is the emergence of an object characterised by transductive relations, where transduction is ‘a process whereby a disparity or difference is topologically and temporally restructured across some interface’ (Mackenzie 2002: 25). The developments in marketing described here – the application of the marketing mix, the use of information about the consumer in the qualification of products, and, as will be discussed later, the use of the product as a marketing tool – are absolutely fundamental in this regard. They organise the interface – the asymmetrical communication of information – between producer and consumer and produce the specific attributes of particular brands. This key stage in the emergence of the brand is linked to a changed view of the producer–consumer relationship in marketing: no longer viewed in terms of stimulus– response, the relation was increasingly conceived as an exchange or perhaps better an interaction. This view was advocated most explicitly by the proponents of a new organisational model for advertising agencies, which put ‘account planning’ at the heart of the advertising process. This position was first developed by the London branch of international advertising agency J. Walter Thompson and the London

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agency Boase, Massimmi and Pollit in the 1960s, and was taken up more generally first by advertising agencies in the 1980s and then by design consultancies in the 1990s (Julier 2000). In this model, the account planner, whose role is to act as a representative of the point of view of the consumer within an agency, co-ordinates the various other aspects of the advertising process. The role was designed to ensure that brand ‘essence’ was maintained throughout the execution of the advertising design or creative process and to offer the client an objective view of the consumer’s experience (Julier 2000: 19–20). At the same time, the traditional marketing concern with social distinctions and categories was supplemented by attempts to map constellations of cultural dispositions, values and references – so-called taste cultures or life styles. This attempt was characterised by a desire to get more knowledge not simply about consumption as a moment of exchange but as a set of heterogeneous activities, in which value is added to the product. Put simply, the growing objectivity of the brand was linked to an expansion of the use of qualitative methods in the market research industry. Here, as in the social sciences more generally, there was an interpretative turn (Lury and Warde 1996). In a further crucial stage in the development of branding, from the 1970s onwards there is a move away from the branding of stand-alone products to the branding of product ranges and to the branding of services. Alongside the use of the brand to secure demand and often a price premium for the manufacturer by guaranteeing consistent quality, there is an increasing emphasis on qualitative differentiation across product ranges or within services. The product mix that is produced in this way is sometimes said to have three (objective) dimensions: width, depth and consistency. The width of the product mix refers to the number of different product lines established by a company (or brand proprietor). The depth of the product mix refers to the average number of items offered by the company within each product line. The consistency of the product mix refers to how closely related the various product lines are in end use, production requirements, and distribution channels. Or to put all this another way, the establishment and maintenance of links between a product item, a product line and a product assortment comes to be increasingly organised in relation to a new object, the brand. To understand what is at issue here, think of the respective attributes of the brands Wilkinson Sword and Gillette, both of which include razors in their product ranges. However, while Wilkinson Sword claims to be ‘the name on the world’s finest blades’, Gillette says that it is ‘the best a man can get’ and is the brand name of a wide range of products including not only razors but also after-shaves and deodorants (G. Lury 1998: 66). The brands respectively position themselves in the ‘blades’ or shaving market and the broader men’s toiletries market and emerge as qualitatively different objects. Once the distinctive objectivity of the brand is developed in this way it may come to function as a medium for new product or service development. For example, One general rule with the Levi’s brand is that all innovations must be ‘Levi’slike’. What that means is that innovations are pursued or rejected based on their compatibility with the core values and attributes of the brand. (Holloway 1999: 71)

188 Celia Lury This process is usually described in the marketing literature as brand extension. Thus, for example, the Persil trade mark for detergents has been extended to Persil washing-up liquid, the Mars trade mark for chocolate bars has been extended to ice creams, and the Smirnoff vodka brand recently introduced a citrus-flavoured, single-serve drink, Smirnoff Ice. Similarly, starting with women’s skin-care products, Nivea (a brand belonging to the company Beiersdorf) has been extended into men’s products, including deodorants, shampoos and electric razors (that dispense moisturiser). The luxury fashion brand Versace has been extended to include a hotel and hospitality service; the product brand Lynx has established a Lynx Barber shop. In all these examples, the company makes use of the reputation of the existing brand to enter a new market more cheaply, establish the product or service more quickly and increase the overall exposure of the brand.

The objectivity of the law A number of accounts of brands stress their role as a mark of ownership or badge intended to create trust in the consumer as a guarantor of the quality of particular products through the identification of an origin. And certainly there are grounds to support this view. This is the notion of the brand as a badge of origin. Thus trade mark law is acknowledged to have historically been a means to secure a monopoly on the use of that mark with the dual purpose of protecting the owner from unfair competition and the consumer from ‘confusion’ as to the origin of the good. As such, trade mark is a form of intellectual property right that has historically been asserted by manufacturers of products. Importantly, although the law has long accepted that the ‘origin function’ can include selection as well as manufacture, in many respects the notion of an origin for a product or service is increasingly difficult to sustain (see Lury 2004, for further discussion of this argument). There are a number of shifts – partial and uneven but significant nonetheless – that are relevant here. First, a number of recent cases (for example, Sabel BV v. Puma AG, Rudolf Dassler Sport, 1998) suggest that the law is responding to changes in the organisation of production such that the product is recognised to be constituted in a process (although see below for the important limit to this). That is, it seems that the law is willing to recognise and provide protection for goods that are marked by a sign whose distinctiveness is not intrinsic to the mark as such. Rather, the distinctiveness of the sign recognised in law as a trade mark is held to be perceived by the consumer in a process of ‘global appreciation’, that is, in the relations between the mark and the sign and the goods and services established in the course of trade. This ‘course’ is explicitly recognised in law to be a dynamic, fluid or global process. Or to put this another way, the activity of the course of trade that is the basis of the claim to the property rights at issue cannot be broken down by the law into discrete stages; rather the converse. The very distinctiveness of the goods themselves is held to be a function of the channels – in which is included packaging (such as jars) and the shelving in supermarkets – via which they are distributed. In this respect, the law may be seen to acknowledge a process of production in which a product is never

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simply identical with itself, but is transformed as it is brought to market or is marketed. As will be discussed later, there are limits to the legal recognition of this non-identical product. Nevertheless, the thing that is the foundation of property rights is recognised to be realised in a process of production that occurs in time through the structuring of the market. In other words, in current legal reasoning, the thing that is the object of the claim is not described as a discrete entity whose nature may be fixed or attributed to a clearly identifiable point of origin. Instead, the course of trade is understood as an activity of bringing something to market, an activity in which the thing is not fixed, but is globally distributed or in process. Secondly, there has been a shift in the basis on which the range of goods and services that a trade mark may take as its object is legally adjudicated. Until recently, the originator of a mark was unlikely to be able to control the use of a mark in relation to products in different trade classifications of goods, since it was held that there was unlikely to be confusion as to the origin of trade. However, following the so-called Ninja Turtles case (Mirage Studios v. Counter-Feat Clothing, 1991), the application of a mark across classes of goods can now be prevented by the originator of the sign, under the law of passing off, if that originator has a business selling the right to use the sign. In this case, the plaintiffs licensed the reproduction of fictitious cartoon characters, the ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’, but did not manufacture any goods themselves. The defendant made drawings of turtle characters using the concept but not copying the plaintiff ’s drawings, and licensed them for use on clothing. The plaintiff sued for copyright infringement and passing off. The court held that there was a case to answer in passing off on the grounds that the public would be aware of the licensing industry and would assume a connection between the plaintiff and the defendant. This shift thus secures legitimacy in law for the more or less unlimited transference of the sign so fundamental to licensing and the associated practice of merchandising. It seems to indicate an internal reversal within trade mark law: ‘While unfair competition law is based on the prohibition against palming off one’s goods as the goods of another, licensing itself is essentially a “passing off ” ’ (Gaines 1991: 214). In according property rights in trade mark on these changing terms then, the law acknowledges that marketing is of increasing importance to the economy and secures recognition of a thing-in-process as an incentive for innovation and as a medium of competition. In short, the law provides support for the exclusive ownership and exploitation of the brand as an abstract, indeterminate and dynamic thing.

The emergence of the brand By the 1980s and 1990s there was a rapid increase not only in the branding of services but also in corporate branding, that is, the branding of a company rather than particular products. This results in a situation in which ‘the bulk of consumer spending is on corporate brands (motor cars, financial services, telecommunications and utilities) rather than on product brands’ (Mottram 1998: 63). For example, Mitsubishi manufacture cars, stereos, medical equipment and textiles, as well as

190 Celia Lury being in the shipbuilding and banking industries. Similarly, the Virgin brand includes air and rail travel services, a music company, financial services, fashion and drinks. Indeed, the commercial success of the marketing management model outlined above has been such that the brand has been extended beyond business through the invention of social marketing. This term refers to both marketing applied to non-business organisations (including political parties, charities and campaigning groups; see Szersynski 1997), places (towns, regions and countries) and to an approach which proposes that business should acknowledge its ‘strong social influence on a society’s sense of purpose, direction and economic growth’ (Hart 1998: 213). Since brands play such a fundamental role in society, we believe it is the responsibility of brand owners to begin to ask themselves more wide-ranging and searching questions: rather than ask a straightforward question such as ‘Will it sell?’ they must ask a series of more complex questions: ‘Will it make a contribution to our customer’s success?’ ‘Will it improve the customer’s and society’s well-being?’ ‘Does it add to our country’s cultural stock or bring pride to our nation?’ (Hart 1998: 213–14) As Cochoy (1998) notes, social marketing is oriented towards fundamental research, towards the study of the consumer for his or her own sake as it were, rather than towards the study of the consumer for the optimisation of markets. A number of other commentators have also argued that the figure of the customer or the consumer is central to many recent attempts to reconstruct institutions and practices in both the public and private sectors (Keat et al. 1994; du Gay 1996; Abercrombie and Longhurst 1998). In this pursuit of the consumer, contemporary marketing makes use of an everincreasing set of approaches including anthropology, sociology, cultural studies and semiotics (and marketing and advertising executives – with job titles such as ‘Experience Officer’ – are themselves increasingly drawn from those with educational qualifications in these fields). The use of ‘cultural’ approaches by not only brand management and design agencies but also the marketing personnel in large corporate firms contributes to a more situated model of the consumer, supplementing and deepening previous constructions of the individuated, rational consumer. In seeking to develop their Vision of the Future (1996), for example, Philips makes use of practices of modelling or simulating everyday life. Multidisciplinary teams are brought together to develop ‘scenarios’, that is, ‘short stories describing a product concept and its use’. Such scenarios are then evaluated in relation to four ‘domains’ that ‘represent all aspects of everyday life’: ‘personal’, ‘domestic’, ‘public’ and ‘mobile’. New products are then proposed for production in the form of ‘tangible models, simulations of interfaces and short films’. The rise of social marketing also contributes to a devaluing of what has come pejoratively to be called rear-view marketing and the rise of the aspiration among marketers to be

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able to provide future knowledge of consumer behaviour. Companies such as the Future Laboratory seek to present information about the future to clients such as the BBC, Proctor & Gamble, and Marks and Spencer. It provides information about changes in consumer and lifestyle trends, edits a magazine called Viewpoint that ‘offers a more directional look at a single trend set to impact on the culture over the coming year and beyond’, and uses video-makers, photographers and ‘guerrilla researchers’ to produce custom-made reports for clients. The development of a more situated model of the consumer has also been fed by the development of retail management and retail design, ‘theming’, event-based and ambient-marketing sub-disciplines, in all of which the brand is staged as a performance or event of some kind. Niketowns provide an obvious example. Another is Original Levi’s Stores which are said to provide ‘an invaluable test-bed for new ideas, such as powerful point-of-sale strategies related to our advertising campaigns’ (Holloway 1999: 76). Similarly, Sony showrooms located in global cities including Tokyo, New York and Paris are furnished with ‘lifestyle settings’ such as bedrooms, offices and lounges, and consumers are encouraged to play with Sony products. Their behaviour and preferences are closely monitored by Sony staff. The showroom thus becomes a laboratory for analysing consumer reactions to different products. This information is passed on to Sony headquarters which then feeds into subsequent product research and development. (Julier 2000: 106) In such marketing practices, the brand seeks to incorporate not only (aspects of) the consumer but also (aspects of) the context of use or wider environment, inserting itself into activities and entities that exceed the individual consumer. Or to reverse this point of view, points of access to the brand now include not simply the point of purchase and associated advertising and promotion, but also ‘special’ events. Such events – openings, launches, visits, specially arranged performances and happenings – extend the openness of product–product and product–consumer relations. In these and other ways, the brand is presented as open-ended, as questiongenerating, in process and requiring completion (Knorr-Cetina 2000). Thus Phil Knight, for example, the Nike CEO, describes the consequences of the selfrecognition of the company as a marketing company in terms of a re-evaluation of the product – in the Nike case, to a view of the product as a marketing tool (Willigan 1992). This view was also adopted by Microsoft, when it sent out 350,000 beta-tests of Windows 98 to computer users. At an estimated labour cost of around $3,000 per test, the net customer contribution to the development of Windows 98 has been calculated to be in the region of $1 billion, probably more than Microsoft invested itself in the development of this new product (Mitchell 2001: 230). Similarly, in March 1999, personal computer manufacturer Compaq, under their ‘FreePC’ scheme, began to give computers to consumers for ‘free’ in exchange for

192 Celia Lury information on consumption habits (Mackenzie 2002: 151). In Britain, the energy drink Red Bull was given away ‘free’ at clubs and dance music festivals before it was marketed or sold anywhere else. It appeared in the Play Station game Wipeout, and was available in chill-out rooms at these venues with a soundtrack by the Chemical Brothers. Only when the brand had become part of dance music culture, was it marketed – as a ‘cool’ drink – to the general public (Grant 1999 in Arvidsson, forthcoming). A similar shift in perspective was also made by Levi’s as illustrated by the Levi’s ‘Personal Pair’™ programme. This is a mass customisation programme, introduced in 1995, in which a consumer’s measurements are taken and entered into a computer. This information is sent directly to a factory and personally fitted jeans are produced and delivered on a pair-by-pair basis within two weeks, resulting in what Levi’s describe as ‘a genuine one-on-one relationship with our target consumers’. However: The programme is also important for another reason: size, style and colour preference details of each consumer can be stored and accessed, giving the company a wealth of valuable information about each Personal Pair consumer. Since these individuals tend to be some of the most motivated and loyal Levi’s brand consumers, our ability to know who they are and what they want most provides us with a powerful way to ensure their continued engagement with the Levi’s brand today and in the future. (Holloway 1999: 71) Consumers are explicitly adopted as salespeople and as marketing tools. One much discussed example of this is the practice of cool-hunting as developed by socalled cool consultancies such as Sputnik, The L. Report and Bureau de Style, and ‘bro-ing’. The latter is the name given to the practice of ‘giving’ prototype shoes and clothing to selected individuals in black inner-city neighbourhoods in New York, Philadelphia and Chicago by Nike marketers in order to monitor their use and evaluate their likely success (Klein 2000: 72–5). In another case, in 1998, the Korean car manufacturer Daewoo hired 2,000 students on 200 US campuses ‘to talk up the cars to their friends’ (Klein 2000: 80); in another, some market researchers working for Nike asked schoolchildren to undertake research, by, for example, collecting and presenting evidence of ‘their favorite place to hang out’ (Klein 2000: 94). As Michael Dell (of Dell computers) puts it: Our best customers aren’t necessarily the ones that are the largest, the ones that buy the most from us, or the ones that require little help or service. … Our best customers are those we learn the most from. (quoted in Mitchell 2001: 230) At the same time, with the intensification of consumerism and the development of hybrid forums (including consumer advice organisations), consumers are themselves acquiring greater knowledge of marketing and can increasingly position their own consumption choices in terms of marketing practices. As Callon says:

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The forum … the great divide between specialists and laypersons is redistributed. It creates material conditions for cooperation between laboratory research performed by experts and specialists, on the one hand, and research ‘in the wild’ that makes it possible for laypersons to be vigilant and sometimes prompts them to propose guidelines for new research. (Callon et al., this volume) This consumer reflexivity is sometimes described as what is called ‘co-training’, as, for example, when Amazon.com recommends books to a customer on the basis of previous purchases. As Mitchell describes it, ‘[t]he customer realizes he is training Amazon.com as to his tastes and preferences, while Amazon.com trains the customer to get most value from its services and infrastructure’ (Mitchell 2001: 230). More generally, consumer market reflexivity has contributed to the proposal by marketers for the practices of marketing to be deployed to develop ‘deep’ relationships with consumers: so-called relationship marketing. This is said to involve moving beyond a one-way model of exchange or communication and a singlestage transaction model of consumption to the advocacy of an on-going ‘dialogue’ between producers and consumers. In this and other ways, brands are now developed as a response to – and as a means of managing – a relation that is constituted by marketing practices as not merely two-way, but also as long-term, interactive and inherently open-ended. As a consequence, the objectivity of the brand is abstract, dynamic and indeterminate.

The prejudices of complexity Of course, neither marketers nor the law can be held entirely responsible for the new role (and commercial success) of brands. That the adoption of this marketing framework was to prove so effective is in large part a consequence of its relation to other changes in the production process, notably those changes associated with flexible specialisation (Harvey 1990; Lash and Urry 1996; Castells 1996). This is production that is flexibly organised for specialised rather than mass production and decentralised through the use of communication media and information technologies. These changes meant both that product differentiation in terms of function was less and less often able to sustain competitive advantage (because it could be imitated so quickly) and that the production process was itself more flexible, more able to adapt or flexibly respond to requirements for new or differentiated products. The emergence of the brand as a complex object must thus be seen in the context of an economy in which flexibility is a necessity, in which the differentiation of products enables the management of change. But, so it has been argued here, marketing played a key role in the organisation of this flexibility, especially in so far as it contributes to the use of information about the consumer in the structuring of markets. Marketing not only provides the rationale for increasing the rate of product differentiation (as markets are conceived to be dynamic) but also provides the framework within which product differentiation occurs (as markets are reconfigured in terms provided by marketing knowledge about the consumer).

194 Celia Lury Put more radically, the practices of marketing help produce a new object: an object that is produced in and as probabilistic, transductive and global relations between products (or services). In other words, marketing provides the conditions for the emergence of a thing of possibility, an object of manageable flexibility; it is a matter of indeterminacy within limits. However, the opportunity to realise the possibilities of this abstract object are unevenly distributed and poorly realised. While the brand has the potential as a complex object to bring ‘an understanding of the outside, of society, economy and customer, to the inside of the organization and to make it the foundation for strategy and policy’ (Drucker, quoted in Mitchell 2001: 77), its possibilities are often not acknowledged. The interface of the brand typically organises the interaction between ‘producer’ and ‘consumer’ in profoundly unequal and asymmetrical ways and the brand as it is protected by trade mark law is the basis for the growth of legally protected monopolies that restrict opportunities for competition by other companies. In short, while exerting a profound influence on the social and political organisation of the work process, the objectivity of the brand does not often extend the possibilities for action (Barry 2001). The situation remains much as it did when Levitt called for a marketing revolution in 1960: When it comes to the marketing concept today, a solid stone wall often seems to separate word and deed. In spite of the best intentions and energetic efforts of many highly able people, the effective implementation of the marketing concept has generally eluded them. (quoted in Mitchell, 2001: 77) Moreover, while I have suggested that the activity embedded in the thing that is the object of trade mark law is recognised to be a process in which something is brought to market, the legal representation of this activity is also uneven. Case law acknowledges the activities of many of those involved in the qualification– requalification of products, explicitly including market researchers, but only minimally acknowledges the activities of consumers. In this regard, consider a ruling relating to the opposition of the name Rysta as a mark to indicate that a company had repaired second-hand stockings by an invisible mending process (Aristoc v. Rysta, 1945). Of three grounds for opposition, one was that this was not in fact a proposed use of the mark as a trade mark (Trade Mark Act 1938). In accepting this argument, Viscount Maugham notes that in an earlier Act (the Trade Marks Act 1905), the purpose of the mark is stated to be ‘indicating that they are the goods of the proprietor of such trade mark by virtue of manufacture, selection, certification, dealing with, or offering for sale’. He continues that while the relevant section of the 1938 Act is much vaguer – merely stating that the purpose of the mark is to indicate ‘ “a connection in the course of trade” between the goods and the proprietor of the mark …’ – it seems to him ‘beyond doubt’ that hitherto a registered trade mark has the purpose of indicating the origin of the good, that is, as he puts it, ‘either manufacture or some other dealing with the goods in the process of manufacture or in the course of business

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before they are offered for sale to the public’ (in Cornish 1999: 464). It is this ‘before’ that indicates not simply the partiality but also the prejudice of the legal representation of consumer activity, since it implies that the dynamic or global process of bringing something to market is brought to culmination or fixed at the moment of sale. To put this another way, while the distinctiveness of the object before sale is not fixed at any particular stage or moment in time in legal thinking but established in dynamic relations between stages, such dynamism is halted at the moment of sale. Any activity which occurs after sale is typically recognised to be discrete (i.e. separable from other stages of activity and from the thing itself). The activities of the consumer are not recognised to be constitutive of its distinctiveness. The implication is that they do not contribute to the improvement of the object or resource in Lockean terms; they are insufficiently objective – or objectifying – for the law in this respect. Consider also the case of British Sugar v. James Robertson (1996), in which Jacob J. seeks to answer the question as to whether a product is a jam or a ‘dessert sauce or syrup’. British Sugar produced a large number of sugar-related products under the general mark, ‘Silver Spoon’. One of these was a syrup-topping for ice cream and other desserts which they marketed as ‘Silver Spoon Treat’ in toffee and other flavours. They also registered ‘treat’ for dessert sauce and syrups. They brought a case for infringement against James Robertson, the well-known jam manufacturer, for their product ‘Robertson’s Toffee Treat’, a toffee-flavoured spread. In considering whether the Robertson product did indeed fall within the specification of goods for which the mark is registered – one condition required in law to establish infringement – Jacob J. notes that the plaintiff, British Sugar, themselves describe the relevant product as a dessert sauce or syrup. Thus, the small print on the back of the jar says: Toffee Treat is delicious at breakfast, with desserts or as a snack anytime. Spread Toffee Treat on bread, toast or biscuits, spoon it over yoghurt or icecream or use as filling for cakes. Jacob J. continues in his representation of the plaintiff ’s case: So, say British Sugar, the product can not only be used on a dessert, but Robertson’s positively suggest this. Thus, even if the product has other uses, it is, inter alia, used on desserts. … It does not matter if … other uses are much commoner: the fact that the product can be used as a dessert sauce means it is one. (in Cornish 1999: 471) Jacob J. disagrees with this view: ‘I reject this argument’. A number of reasons are given for this rejection. These include the fact the use of the spread with dessert is judged likely to be slight, and here he cites an estimate that: ‘all potential uses of the product, other than as a spread, amounted to less than five per cent of the volume’. He further argues that while even jam can also be used as a dessert and

196 Celia Lury ‘everyone knows and sometimes does that’, no-one would describe jam as a ‘dessert sauce’ in ‘ordinary parlance’. Further, Jacob J. continues, Supermarkets regard the product as a spread. The jam jar invites use as a spread. When it comes to construing a word used in a trade mark specification, one is concerned with how the product is, as a practical matter, regarded for the purposes of trade. After all a trade mark specification is concerned with use in trade. The Robertson product is not, for the purpose of trade, a dessert sauce. (in Cornish 1999: 471) In short, Jacob J. thinks that the use of ‘treat’ causes the plaintiff no harm, because ‘by and large one is not in practice a substitute for the other’. That something has the potential to be used as another product would be (or has potential uses that everyone knows and sometimes does), does not, in this ruling, mean that it is the other product or indeed that it is sufficiently similar to it to be substitutable. But the trial of substitutability in real practice, as advocated here, is a much cruder qualification trial than that staged by marketing. In marketing, it is precisely the staging of the possible uses of something that produces the (emergent) object of the brand at the level of the market, not a majority of real uses in practice. In short, the trial of the object in the law courts does not produce the same something that is produced in the qualification trials of marketing; in respect to consumer activities at least, the legal object is a matter of the real rather than of the possible. This discrepancy between objectivity in the law and in marketing is revealing for what it suggests about the respective representation of consumer activities. It might be seen to suggest that marketing provides a more adequate (a more just) representation of the objective activities of the consumer than the law. But this is not so. On the one hand, marketers explicitly acknowledge the value of consumer activities in the building of brands. On the other hand, trade mark holders are explicitly advised by marketers to be wary of acknowledging the activities of consumers as objective. Consider, for example the following ‘rule’ given by marketers to trade mark owners as to correct or incorrect usage of trade marks: A trade mark is an adjective. It is not a noun and it is not a verb. It should always be used in print as an adjective qualifying a noun or noun phrase. The noun or noun phrase which the trade mark adjective must qualify is of course the generic name for the product. (Blackett 1998: 60–1) This ruling is deemed necessary by marketers since the property rights acquired by registration of a trade mark can be lost in those legal cases in which consumer activities are – exceptionally – held to be objectifying. In a judgement often referred to as genericide, it is legally established that if a trade mark becomes the generic name for the thing itself, then the trade mark owner loses exclusive rights to the mark (Coombe 1998; see also Gaines 1991). Examples of words that started off

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their lives as trade marks but now have lost their status as private property include gramophone, zip, tabloid and escalator. Other marks, while still registered, are frequently thought of by the public as being common names, for example Biro, Thermos, and Cellophane. In these and other cases then, trade mark owners are advised by marketers that they must continually watch to ensure that brand and genre remain distinct if they wish to continue to assert property rights. In the terms of the genericide ruling, it seems that the law is willing to recognise the thing that is the object of a property right as brought into being in consumer activity. This is because it is common or generic, that is, it is not merely a potential use that everyone knows but only sometimes does, but a real use that everyone does. But with this ruling in mind, marketers insist that what they produce is merely an adjective, a qualification of something that exists in its own right, independently of the trials of either the law or marketing. It thus reverts to a notion of objectivity in which the possible is a mere may-be. In sum, what has been argued here is that the brand is an object that is both dynamic and indeterminate; it is an abstract machine for product differentiation; it is an artefact that adapts through continuous feed-back and feed-forward. In ideal typical terms, the peculiar objectivity of the brand enables the communication of information relating to a continuously evolving multi-dimensional system, including its ability to mutate in time (Kwinter 2001: 47). That this ideal is even conceivable is a consequence of the increasing role of information in the coordination and conduct of the processes of production. That is, it is a consequence of the use of technologies and logics that act on the generation and processing of information, resulting in significantly extended scales of organisation, much more rapid processes of circulation, and a new centrality of information to processes and products (Castells 1996). But the possibility introduced into the economy in this way is only partially realised. In particular, it has been argued here that the qualification trials of both law and marketing are such as to produce not simply a partial but a prejudiced objectivity. That is, the object produced in these trials, especially as they relate to substitutability of products, is dependent on, but does not recognise, the activities of consumers.

Coda: sociology and the brand as a social fact Describing the societies in which we live is a general Euro-American project, so Marilyn Strathern (this volume) says. She further notes that the interest of economists is that their descriptions are meant to help us act; even if their knowledge is not predictive, it is meant to stimulate future policy and/or market behaviour. This is one type of description, she says, a type that makes use of information about the world that purifies it, that transforms its dimensions into calculable measurements. But the mode of description of the objectivity of the brand is different; it is an object into which possibility has been introduced. As such, it contains within itself not only a descriptive but also an imperative (Simon, 1981) and is an example of what Strathern describes as a second type of description, in which:

198 Celia Lury The normative guideline, the ethical principle, has already jumped from description to action; it pre-empts the connection. The anticipation of action is as much a condition of the description, we might say, as a consequence of it. … Action is already implied. (Strathern, this volume) I have argued here that abstraction, dynamism and indeterminacy are the characteristics of the social fact – or objectivity – of the contemporary artefact that is the brand. As a consequence while the brand may be totalising, it is not and cannot be a total fact (Mauss 1976). It is not a ‘bare fact’ but rather a ‘happening fact’ (Whitehead 1970). This is the source of its value as an object of contemporary capitalism, but it is also what makes it partial or open to other interests. I want to conclude by suggesting that sociologists need to be able to address this object – and others like it – not only in terms of the descriptive but also of the imperative. This would involve sociologists contributing to the implication of action in the object, and to the object in action, without becoming complicit in objectivity. It would involve the multiplication of partial solutions to the complex problem of ordering the economy.

Notes 1 Although I will consistently speak about ‘the brand’ or ‘branding’, I hope I will not be taken too literally. There is no single thing at issue here, or even a single set of convergent processes. To understand my use of the phrase ‘the brand’ to imply a single, specific thing that is in all instances the same is to give what is at issue a kind of misplaced concreteness, to mislocate the abstract in the concrete, to present a complex artefact as an immediate matter of fact (Haraway 2000; Whitehead 1970). To put this another way, to assume that what I have called the brand is a single thing would be to mistake the layers of abstraction and processing that have gone into producing the brand. My aim is rather to see how the ‘thingyness’ or ‘objectivity’ of the brand is something that has gradually emerged slowly and unevenly over the last 150 years or so, and then more intensively but still not always coherently over the last 50 years. The method of working adopted has thus been working back from an object toward ‘the system of mutual implication, the system of regularities, and the coherent network of conditions of possibilities that give the object its body and its sense’ (Kwinter 2001: 215; Haraway 2000: 92–3, 95) and forward to the object as a possible set of relations and connections. 2 Of course the emergence of the brand is not the inevitable result of a single tendency (‘the rise of marketing’), there are multiple processes at issue, including developments in graphic and product design, media, accounting and law as well as retail management and marketing. The activities of the law in this regard are discussed in Lury, forthcoming.

References Abercrombie, N. and Longhurst, B. (1998) Audiences: A Sociological Theory of Performance and Imagination, London: Sage. Arvidsson, A. (forthcoming) ‘The labour of consumption. The power of brands’, Journal of Consumer Culture.

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Index 201

Index

action: as external internality 79; political 86 actor-network 8–10, 146, 148; criticism of 108–9; and Marxism 147–9 Agamben, G. 86 agency 9, 60; calculative 69 AIDS 119 Amazon.com 193 anthropology: of consumption 44–5; of economics 101–2, 114; of science and technology 12, 101 anti-politics 86; and calculation 87, 88, 89 apresentation 131 Arendt, H. 118, 119 Arrow, K. 101 Atlantic Fordism 142, 150–1 Balfour Beatty 92 Bank of International Settlement survey 130 Barings 165 Barry, A. 18–19, 68, 76 Bartiromo, M. 168 Beck, U. 16, 104 Blodget, H. 170 Bloomberg 125, 168; channel 173 Boase, Massimmi and Politt 187 Boltanski, L. 113 Bourdieu, P. 61, 116, 117, 120 Boyer, R. 150 brand 21, 186; marketing 21, 184–6; and intellectual property law 188–9; as object 183–4 Bretton Woods Agreement 130 Bre-X 168 bridgehead centers 137–8 British Sugar v. James Robertson 195–6 bro-ing 192

BSE 91 Bush, V. 101 calculation 11–12, 38, 48n25, 53–4; cultural 59, 63; and markets 52; political effects of 16, 89, 94; politics of 87–8; see also economic calculation ‘calculativeness’ 53, 54, 56, 57–8 Callard, F.J. 148 Callon, M. 17, 52–64, 86, 148, 192–3; actor-network theory 8–9; calculation 12–14, 69, 87–8; economic sociology 7–8, 51; economics 18–19; Canadian Royal Commission on New Reproductive Technologies 71–8 Canadian society 72–4 capitalism 14–15, 112–13 car 31–2; purchase of 52, 88 Carrier, J.G. 61–2 Castells, M. 129 Chamberlin, E. 33–4, 36–7 citizenship 103 CNBC 168, 172, 173–4 CNNfn 168 Cochoy, F. 36, 185, 190 Commission of Enquiry 70 Compaq 191–2 competition 34, 38, 45, 63; monopolistic 33; and patents 69 computer screen 123–4, 126–7, 129; electronic broker (EBS) 125, 126, 127; introduction of 131; reality 133; Reuters conversational dealing 125, 127 consumer rights 54 consumers’ attachment 36, 37, 38–40, 43–4, 45; production of 108–9 consumers’ detachment 38–40, 41

202 Index contestation 85, 87, 105 co-operation 30, 116–17 corporate branding 189–90 cultural calculations 59, 63 cultural turn 12, 143 culture 13, 62, 108, 153; and economy 58, 63; of markets 57, 64 decent society 76–7 descriptions 78; as basis for action 78, 197 digital divide 115, 153 disease gene patents 69 disentanglement 52, 53, 58, 64, 78, 107–10; and marketing 62, 63; see also entanglement distributed cognition 36,38, 42, 45, 48n25 donor insemination 74–5 dot.com bubble 165, 170 du Pont 68 Durkheim, E. 146 e-commerce 42–3, 162 economic actors 4, 5, 28, 57, 59 economic calculation 12, 53, 88 economic knowledge 5–6, 15, 20, 22–3 economic sociology 2, 22, 56, 64, 115–16, 143; critique of 13; and science and technology studies 7, 8, 9–12 economics 10, 22, 47n11, 60–2; mediatisation of 21; and politics 15–19, 143; as science 101–2; as technology 3–4, 10 economy of qualities 30, 35, 40–1, 43, 44–6 economy of relations 45 entanglement 52, 53, 58, 107, 109; hot 70; production of 108 Epstein, S. 119 ethical principle 66–7, 69–70, 77, 78 Euromoney 167 European Council 155 exchange 53–4, 60; gift 55; see also market exchange exchange controls 130 expert knowledge 6, 16, 17, 18, 20–1, 29, 86 experts 91, 95, 96n13, 105, 114–15, 176 externalities 18, 55, 56, 64, 66, 102; generation of 69, 74; internal 18, 70, 77 financial audiences 169–70 financial information 167, 171, 172–5 financial media 167–8

Financial Services Authority (FSA) 179 Financial Times 165, 169 Finland 155 Fligstein, N. 122 flow architecture 122, 123, 132–5 foot-and-mouth disease 92 foreign exchange market 124, 130, 135–6 Foucault, M. 4, 120 framing 13, 16, 18, 55–8, 66, 109; ambiguity of 57, 60; as blocking device 68; and calculation 87–8; devices 72; instability of 89; as marketing 62–4 France 115 Future Laboratory 191 Gadrey, Jean 40–3, 44 Ghana 20 Gibson-Graham, J.K. 112 Giddens, A. 136 Gilette 187 global book 138–9 global markets 135–6; temporality of 136–8 global reflex system (GRS) 123–4, 126, 133 GMO 92, 104, 106, 110 Goffman, E. 59 goods 29–34, 108; marketing of 63; singularization of 35–8, 41–5, 47n18; see also attachment, qualification of goods, trade mark government: technologies of 85 governmentality 61 Gramsci, A. 150, 151 Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) 136 Habermas, J. 118, 119 Hatfield rail crash 92–4 homo economicus 13–14, 53, 54, 56 hybrid forums 28, 30, 46 information 2, 7, 70, 71, 75; acting on 68, 77–9; effect of 67; production of 66, 76 information and communication technologies 42–3, 45, 125, 129, 158 InfoSpace 170 innovation 8, 9–10, 19, 153, 157, 158, 187 intellectual property 154, 156–8 intellectual property laws 158, 188 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 115, 154 interbank currency markets 124

Index 203 International Meridian Conference 136 Internet 42–3, 115; see also information and communication technologies IVF 74 J. Walter Thompson 186–7 Japan 130 Jessop, B. 15, 20, 58 Jospin, L. 115 Kindleberger, C. 169 Knorr-Cetina, K. 11, 19, 60 knowledge 2, 19, 29, 69, 78, 157, 171; accumulation of 158; production of 104, 105, 117, 119–20, 156–7; see also economic knowledge, expert knowledge, non-expert knowledge knowledge-based economy 66, 142, 152–55, 160–1; emergence of 152, 154; and national states 155–8; representative terms of 153 Latour, B. 8, 9, 109 Law, J. 146 Laws of the Markets 3, 16, 48n25, 66–7, 84 Levi’s 187, 192 Levitt, T. 185–6 Luckman, T. 131 Lury, C. 21 Lynx 188 Mackenzie, D. 10–11 Manhattan Project 101 Margalit 76 market boundaries 57, 58–9, 63, 102 market exchange 52, 54, 58 marketing 5, 59, 62–4, 101; development of 184–5; social 190–1; see also brand marketing marketing mix 186 markets 51, 52, 55, 57, 58, 60, 63, 133; behaviour 15, 54; and democracy 103; dynamics of 33; dual logics of 108; embedded 122; evolution of 28; organisation of 16, 28–9, 105–6; politicisation of 106–7; and science 101–2 Marx, K. 56, 146–8 Méadel, C. 37–9 measurement 11, 78, 88–92, 95 media 165–7, 176–9 Mekeo 70 Merrill Lynch 170 meta-governance 155–6

metal fatigue 92–4 metrological regimes 89–92 metrology 11, 95, 96n12 Microsoft 191 Miller, D. 52–4, 56, 58, 61–2 Mirage Studios v. Counter-Feat Clothing 189 Mitchell, A. 193 Mitsubishi 189 Money Channel 168 MSNBC 172 NASDAQ 178 national state 155–9 Nelson, R.R. 101 neo-liberalism 4, 61, 106–7 network 19, 60, 109, 122, 128–9, 139 network market 129–30, 132 new economy 18–21, 142; see also knowledge-based economy New York 124, 126 Nike 191 non-expert knowledge 5, 8, 20 non-experts 176 Nowotny, H. 70 OECD 115, 154 opinion 73 overflowing 64, 59, 57, 52, 67; and competitiveness 66; consequences of 102 Papua New Guinea 70 patent 66–8, 78; and invention 68; blocking 68–9 Playstation 192 Polanyi, K. 13, 58, 146 political economy 14, 51; cultural 143–5, 160–1 political space 102–3 politics 87; of calculation 87; and the political 86; and technological economy 94–95; technology of 84–5 pollution 88–91 post-Fordism 149–51 Pottage, A. 78 product 30–40, 63, 185–6 product mix 187 property rights 111–12 qualification of goods 30–1, 34–6 qualification of products 29, 30, 34–5, 37 qualification-requalification: and marketing 185; process 32–5, 37–40, 42–5

204 Index Rabeharisoa, V. 37–9, 86 Railtrack 92–3 Rawls, J. 118 Red Bull 192 religion 76 representative democracy 84–5 Reuters 125, 168; Monitor 131–2 risk 78, 104 Rose, N. 4 Rukeyser, L. 168 Schumpeter, J. 9, 10 Schutz, A. 131 science and technology studies (STS) 1, 3, 7, 8–12, 148 screen 172–3; see also computer screen Serco 91 Serres, M. 9 Siegler, M. 70 Singapore 126 Slater, D. 15 Smirnoff 188 social actors 57, 59–60, 106, 113, 119; see also economic actors social movements 104, 118, 119 Sony 191 star investment analysis 170 Stengers, I. 87, 94 Strathern, M. 18, 197–8 supply and demand 29, 34, 35, 37–8, 45 Sydney 124 Tarde, G. 169 technology 8, 9–10, 19, 68, 153; economy as 4, 20; of government 2, 4, 5, 85 Telerate 125 telex 131 terminals 19, 125–6 Thomas, N. 53, 60 Thrift, N. 5

Tiananmen Square 86 time zones 138 Tokyo 126 Touraine, A. 119 trade mark 188, 189,196; law 188, 204 traders 124, 127–8, 132 trading floors 124–6 trading room 130 transactions 29, 53–4, 58, 60, 107, 108; and alienation 55–6; over-the-counter 124, 130 translation 8 Tsing, A. 168 United Kingdom 89, 130; government laboratories 91–2; Health and Safety Executive 93; political debate in 113; railway network 93 USA 130, 155; knowledge-based economy 154; presidential elections 85; times 136 Versace 188 Virgin 190 virtualism 4, 61–2 voting 84–5 Waldron, J. 85–6, 87 Wall Street 167 Wall Street Journal 165, 169 Weber, M. 85, 146 Weir, L. 72 Wilkinson Sword 187 working class movement 106 World Bank 154 World Economic Forum 155 World Trade Organisation (WTO) 154, 157 Zurich 124, 126