Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T06:43:50.506Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 6 - The Performativity Test

from Part II - Post-Performative Approaches to Studying Markets

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 November 2024

Susi Geiger
Affiliation:
University College Dublin
Katy Mason
Affiliation:
Lancaster University
Neil Pollock
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
Philip Roscoe
Affiliation:
University of St Andrews, Scotland
Annmarie Ryan
Affiliation:
University of Limerick
Stefan Schwarzkopf
Affiliation:
Copenhagen Business School
Pascale Trompette
Affiliation:
Université de Grenoble
Get access

Summary

It is no longer news to argue that economics is performative, that it does not only describe markets, but takes part in producing or manufacturing them. Once accepted as close to a matter of fact, the performativity argument risks becoming too much of a general statement. So, what’s next for performativity? This chapter turns the performativity into an empirical research agenda which moves from demonstrating the existence of performativity to putting the performativity argument to the test and investigate sites and modes of performativity. We need to distinguish between the performativity of research as constitutive, that is how knowledge production has an effect on the world; while simultaneously being aware that this is not by itself enough to effectively shape actual markets. To find empirical and analytical ways to observe performativity in action, we go back to one of the original sites from where the performativity of economics argument was developed: economic and marketing experiments. We find that both much more is made in these settings than the making of actual markets, for instance the making of economics as a discipline and so also knowledge of markets, and much less, as the markets produced in these settings do not always move out of them.

Type
Chapter
Information
Market Studies
Mapping, Theorizing and Impacting Market Action
, pp. 100 - 113
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Asdal, K. (2011) The office: the weakness of numbers and the production of non-authority. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 36(1), 19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Asdal, K. (2014) From climate issue to oil issue: offices of public administration, versions of economics, and the ordinary technologies of politics. Environment and Planning A, 46(9), 21102114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Asdal, K., Brenna, B., and Moser, I. (eds.) (2007) Technoscience: The Politics of Intervention. Oslo: Oslo Academic Press.Google Scholar
Asdal, K., and Cointe, B. (2021) Experiments in co-modification: a relational take on the becoming of commodities and the making of market value. Journal of Cultural Economy, 14(3), 280292.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Asdal, K., and Cointe, B. (2022) Writing good economics: how texts ‘on the move’ perform the lab and discipline of experimental economics. Social Studies of Science, 52(3), 376398.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Asdal, K., and Huse, T. (2023) Nature-Made Economy: Cod, Capital, and the Great Economization of the Ocean. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Austin, J. L. (1962) How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Barry, A., and Slater, D. (2002) Introduction: the technological economy. Economy and Society, 31(2), 175193.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Böhme, J. (2016) ‘Doing’ laboratory experiments: an ethnomethodological study of the performative practice in behavioral economic research, in Boldyrev, I., and Svetlova, E. (eds.), Enacting Dismal Science: New Perspectives on the Performativity of Economics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 87108.Google Scholar
Butler, J. (2010) Performative agency. Journal of Cultural Economy, 3(2), 147161.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Çalışkan, K., and Callon, M. (2010) Economization, part 2: a research programme for the study of markets. Economy and Society, 39(1), 132.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Callon, M. (ed.) (1998) The Laws of the Markets. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Callon, M. (1999) Actor network theory: the market test, in Law, J., and Hassard, J. (eds.), Actor Network Theory and After. Oxford: Blackwell, 181195.Google Scholar
Callon, M. (2007) What does it mean to say that economics is performative?, in MacKenzie, D., Muniesa, F., and Siu, L. (eds.), Do Economists Make Markets? On the Performativity of Economics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 311357.Google Scholar
Fourcade, M. (2011) Price and prejudice: on economics and the enchantment (and disenchantment) of Nature, in Beckert, J., and Aspers, P. (eds.), The Worth of Goods: Valuation and Pricing in the Economy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4162.Google Scholar
Frankel, C., Ossandón, J., and Pallesen, T. (2019) The organization of markets for collective concerns and their failures. Economy and Society, 48(2), 153174.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grandclément, C., and Gaglio, G. (2011) Convoking the consumer in person: the focus group effect, in Zwick, D., and Cayla, J. (eds.), Inside Marketing: Practices, Ideologies, Devices. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 87114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guala, F. (2007) How to do things with experimental economics?, in MacKenzie, D., Muniesa, F., and Siu, L. (eds.), Do Economists Make Markets? On the Performativity of Economics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 128162.Google Scholar
Harrison, G. W., and List, J. (2005) Field experiments. Journal of Economic Literature, 42(4), 10091055.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
ISO (2007) ISO 8589:2007. Sensory analysis: general guidance for the design of test rooms, 2nd ed. Geneva: ISO.Google Scholar
Lezaun, J. (2007) A market of opinion: the political epistemology of focus groups, in Callon, M., Millo, Y., and Munesia, F. (eds.), Market Devices. Oxford: Blackwell, 130151.Google Scholar
Lezaun, J., Muniesa, F., and Vikkelsø, S. (2013) Provocative containment and the drift of socio-scientific realism. Journal of Cultural Economy, 6(3), 278293.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacKenzie, D. (2006) Is economics performative? Option theory and the construction of derivatives markets. Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 28(1), 2955.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacKenzie, D., Muniesa, F., and Siu, L. (eds.) (2007) Do Economists Make Markets? On the Performativity of Economics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Mirowski, P., and Nik-Khah, E. (2007) Markets made flesh: performativity, and a problem in science studies, augmented with a consideration of the FCC auctions, in MacKenzie, D., Muniesa, F., and Siu, L.-S. (eds.), Do Economists Make Markets? On the Performativity of Economics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 190224.Google Scholar
Mitchell, T. (2005) The work of economics: how a discipline makes its world. European Journal of Sociology, 46(2), 297320.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitchell, T. (2008) Rethinking economy. Geoforum, 39(3), 11161121.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Muniesa, F. (2014) The Provoked Economy. Economic Reality and the Performative Turn. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Muniesa, F., and Callon, M. (2007) Economic experiments and the construction of markets, in MacKenzie, D., Muniesa, F., and Siu, L. (eds.), Do Economists Make Markets? On the Performativity of Economics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 163189.Google Scholar
Muniesa, F., and Trébuchet-Breitwiller, A.-S. (2010) Becoming a measuring instrument. Journal of Cultural Economy, 3(3), 321337.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pollock, N., and Williams, R. (2016) How Industry Analysts Shape the Digital Future. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schneider, T., Brenninkmeijer, J., and Woolgar, S. (2022) Enacting the ‘consuming’ brain: an ethnographic study of accountability redistributions in neuromarketing practices. The Sociological Review, 70(5), 10251043.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schwarzkopf, S. (2021a) Market research as ascetic detachment: product testing in a German market test town. Consumption Markets and Culture, 24(4), 329342.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schwarzkopf, S. (2021b) Ten little jurors in the training camp: a genealogy of audience simulation. Journal of Cultural Economy, 14(6), 732749.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sorgner, H. (2017) Economics in the laboratory: a case study on epistemic practices and valuations in experimental economics. Master’s thesis, Department of Science and Technology Studies, University of Vienna.Google Scholar
Teil, G. (1993) Représenter les consommateurs. Gérer et Comprendre Annales des Mines, 32, 7484.Google Scholar
Teil, G. (1998) Devenir expert aromaticien: y a-t-il une place pour le goût dans les goûts alimentaires? Sociologie du travail, 40(4), 503522.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Teil, G., and Muniesa, F. (2006) Donner un prix: observations à partir d’un dispositif d’économie expérimentale. Terrains & Travaux, 2(11), 222244.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×