Markets in the Making: Rethinking Competition, Goods, and Innovation
Slicing through blunt theories of supply and demand, Callon presents a rigorously researched but counterintuitive model of how everyday market activity gets produced.

If you’re convinced you know what a market is, think again. In his long-awaited study, French sociologist and engineer Michel Callon takes us to the heart of markets, to the unsung processes that allow innovations to become robust products and services. Markets in the Making begins with the observation that stable commercial transactions are more enigmatic, more elusive, and more involved than previously described by economic theory. Slicing through blunt theories of supply and demand, Callon presents a rigorously researched but counterintuitive model of market activity that emphasizes what people designing products or launching startups soon discover—the inherent difficulties of connecting individuals to things. Callon’s model is founded upon the notion of “singularization,” the premise that goods and services must adapt and be adapted to the local milieu of every individual whose life they enter. Person by person, thing by thing, Callon demonstrates that for ordinary economic transactions to emerge en masse, singular connections must be made.

Pushing us to see markets as more than abstract interfaces where pools of anonymous buyers and sellers meet, Callon draws our attention to the exhaustively creative practices that market professionals continuously devise to entangle people and things. Markets in the Making exemplifies how prototypes, fragile curiosities that have only just been imagined, are gradually honed into predictable objects and practices. Once these are active enough to create a desired effect, yet passive enough to be transferred from one place to another without disruption, they will have successfully achieved the status of “goods” or “services.” The output of this more ample process of innovation, as redefined by Callon, is what we recognize as “the market”—commercial activity, at scale.

The capstone of an influential research career at the forefront of science and technology studies, Markets in the Making coherently integrates the empirical perspective of product engineering with the values of the social sciences. After masterfully redescribing how markets are made, Callon culminates with a strong empirical argument for why markets can and should be harnessed to enact social change. His is a theory of markets that serves social critique.

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Markets in the Making: Rethinking Competition, Goods, and Innovation
Slicing through blunt theories of supply and demand, Callon presents a rigorously researched but counterintuitive model of how everyday market activity gets produced.

If you’re convinced you know what a market is, think again. In his long-awaited study, French sociologist and engineer Michel Callon takes us to the heart of markets, to the unsung processes that allow innovations to become robust products and services. Markets in the Making begins with the observation that stable commercial transactions are more enigmatic, more elusive, and more involved than previously described by economic theory. Slicing through blunt theories of supply and demand, Callon presents a rigorously researched but counterintuitive model of market activity that emphasizes what people designing products or launching startups soon discover—the inherent difficulties of connecting individuals to things. Callon’s model is founded upon the notion of “singularization,” the premise that goods and services must adapt and be adapted to the local milieu of every individual whose life they enter. Person by person, thing by thing, Callon demonstrates that for ordinary economic transactions to emerge en masse, singular connections must be made.

Pushing us to see markets as more than abstract interfaces where pools of anonymous buyers and sellers meet, Callon draws our attention to the exhaustively creative practices that market professionals continuously devise to entangle people and things. Markets in the Making exemplifies how prototypes, fragile curiosities that have only just been imagined, are gradually honed into predictable objects and practices. Once these are active enough to create a desired effect, yet passive enough to be transferred from one place to another without disruption, they will have successfully achieved the status of “goods” or “services.” The output of this more ample process of innovation, as redefined by Callon, is what we recognize as “the market”—commercial activity, at scale.

The capstone of an influential research career at the forefront of science and technology studies, Markets in the Making coherently integrates the empirical perspective of product engineering with the values of the social sciences. After masterfully redescribing how markets are made, Callon culminates with a strong empirical argument for why markets can and should be harnessed to enact social change. His is a theory of markets that serves social critique.

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Markets in the Making: Rethinking Competition, Goods, and Innovation

Markets in the Making: Rethinking Competition, Goods, and Innovation

Markets in the Making: Rethinking Competition, Goods, and Innovation

Markets in the Making: Rethinking Competition, Goods, and Innovation

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Overview

Slicing through blunt theories of supply and demand, Callon presents a rigorously researched but counterintuitive model of how everyday market activity gets produced.

If you’re convinced you know what a market is, think again. In his long-awaited study, French sociologist and engineer Michel Callon takes us to the heart of markets, to the unsung processes that allow innovations to become robust products and services. Markets in the Making begins with the observation that stable commercial transactions are more enigmatic, more elusive, and more involved than previously described by economic theory. Slicing through blunt theories of supply and demand, Callon presents a rigorously researched but counterintuitive model of market activity that emphasizes what people designing products or launching startups soon discover—the inherent difficulties of connecting individuals to things. Callon’s model is founded upon the notion of “singularization,” the premise that goods and services must adapt and be adapted to the local milieu of every individual whose life they enter. Person by person, thing by thing, Callon demonstrates that for ordinary economic transactions to emerge en masse, singular connections must be made.

Pushing us to see markets as more than abstract interfaces where pools of anonymous buyers and sellers meet, Callon draws our attention to the exhaustively creative practices that market professionals continuously devise to entangle people and things. Markets in the Making exemplifies how prototypes, fragile curiosities that have only just been imagined, are gradually honed into predictable objects and practices. Once these are active enough to create a desired effect, yet passive enough to be transferred from one place to another without disruption, they will have successfully achieved the status of “goods” or “services.” The output of this more ample process of innovation, as redefined by Callon, is what we recognize as “the market”—commercial activity, at scale.

The capstone of an influential research career at the forefront of science and technology studies, Markets in the Making coherently integrates the empirical perspective of product engineering with the values of the social sciences. After masterfully redescribing how markets are made, Callon culminates with a strong empirical argument for why markets can and should be harnessed to enact social change. His is a theory of markets that serves social critique.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781942130574
Publisher: Zone Books
Publication date: 12/07/2021
Series: Near Future Series
Pages: 512
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 8.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Michel Callon is Professor Emeritus at the École des Mines in Paris where he is a member of the Centre de Sociologie de l’Innovation. He is coauthor of Mapping the Dynamics of Science and Technology and Acting in an Uncertain World: An Essay on Technical Democracy and editor of The Laws of the Markets.

Table of Contents

Preface to the English Edition 9

Introduction: The Enigma of the Market 15

From the Streets of London…

…to the Strip in Las Vegas

I From Interface Markets to Market Agencements 31

What Is a Market?

The Interface Market Model

Toward the Model of Market Agencements

Chapter Summaries: Understanding Markets as Framings

II The Process of Making Goods Mobile and Alienable 63

I The Process of Market Passiva(c)tion

Spaces of Circulation and the Careers of Goods

Disentangling Things from a Density of Associations

Framing Reentanglement: Passiva(c)tion

Nonmarket-Oriented Passiva(c)tion: Keeping while Giving

Market-Oriented Passiva(c)tion: Disentanglement with Detachment

The Problem of Property Rights

II Market-Oriented Passiva(c)tion is a Never-Ending Odyssey: The Telling Example of Commodities Deemed Fictitious

Human Labor

Land

Money and Its Derivatives

The Passiva(c)tion of Certain Living Beings

Some Final Remarks on Overcoming Trials of Strength in Passiva(c)tion

III Agencies and their Qualculative Equipment 149

There Are a Multitude of Agents with Different Equipment

Enriching Our Description of Agents and Their Equipment

From Calculation to Qualculation

Qualculative Agencies

Some Examples of Diverse Agencies and Their Equipment

Power Dynamics between Agencies

Qualculation Devices Are the Equipment of a Habitus

IV Organizing Market Encounters 201

Encounters Create Value

Encountering Platforms and Their Networks

Platforms as Exploratoriums

Singular Multitudes

Matters of Concern

V Affectio Mercatus: Attachments and Detachments 245

Searching for Affectio Mercatus

How Goods Get Attached and Detached

Three Attachment Devices for Engaging Goods

More and More Attaching Attachments?

VI Price Formulation 287

Theories of Pricing in Interface Markets

Price Formulation

Price Formulation Singularizes Goods

Why Price Competition and Nonprice Competition Is a False Distinction

How Price Becomes a Tool for Ranking

Formulations Are Everywhere

The Power of Formulas

Confronting Formulas

How Problems Can Incite Demands for Reformulation

What about Morality?

VII Howjdo Market Agencements Evolve? 355

Why the Term Market "Agencements" and Not "Dispositifs"?

An Agencement Acts

There Are No Market Agencements without Nonmarket Agencements

The Dynamics of Concerns

VIII The Role of Theorization in Transforming Markets 387

Theory as Contribution to the Expression of Concerns: Reopening the Debate about Financial Markets and Their Design

Avoiding the Worst: Climate Change Policies and Theoretical Realism

How Market Agencements Coexist: The Case of Genetically Modified Crops

Notes 427

Index 499

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“With compelling arguments and fascinating empirical evidence, the brilliant Michel Callon dares us to rethink stale assumptions about how markets work. His Markets in the Making sets out a thrilling research agenda that will shape investigations of economic activity across disciplines.”—Viviana A. Zelizer, Lloyd Cotsen ’50 Professor of Sociology at Princeton University, author of Economic Lives: How Culture Shapes the Economy

“In Markets in the Making, Michel Callon explains the unique view of markets he has distilled from his long career observing markets, in detail, from the perspective of an engineer-sociologist. In a book that will fascinate economists as well as sociologists, he introduces us to a new vocabulary to help us think about markets whose participants may be collectives, and whose infrastructure helps participants determine what they want, and calculate what they need.”—Alvin Roth, Nobel Memorial prize winner for economics and Craig and Susan McCaw Professor of Economics, Stanford University

"Instead of vainly fighting capitalism, Callon employs his thirty years of sociology of economics to explore how market devices could be collectively redesigned to fulfill more progressive functions. No better way to focus attention on concrete fights." —Bruno Latour, Professor Emeritus, Médialab and SEAP, Paris Institute of Political Studies

“Michel Callon has revolutionized our thinking about markets. Here, for the first time, is a full, definitive statement of the views of one of the most influential social scientists of our time.”—Donald MacKenzie, Professor of Sociology, University of Edinburgh

“This rich, deep exploration of the processes by which economic exchanges are constructed and reconstructed is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the operations of markets and their embedding within platforms.”—Julie E. Cohen, Mark Claster Mamolen Professor of Law and Technology, Georgetown Law

“This remarkable book upends not only the model of the market offered by economists but most of the alternative ways of thinking about market processes developed by sociology and anthropology. In Callon’s hands, the concepts of buyer and seller, goods and platforms, innovation and competition, and money and property are all transformed or replaced. This is a profound and important work.”—Timothy Mitchell, William B. Ransford Professor of Middle Eastern Studies, Columbia University

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