Centre de sociologie de l'innovation

Dedicated to the controversial question of whether economics is performative - of whether, in some cases, economics actually produces the phenomena it analyzes, this book features case studies that intend to offer substance to the notion of the performativity of economics in an accessible, nontechnical way.

Controversies over such issues as nuclear waste, genetically modified organisms, asbestos, tobacco, gene therapy, avian flu, and cell phone towers arise almost daily as rapid scientific and technological advances create uncertainty and bring about unforeseen concerns. The authors of Acting in an Uncertain World argue that political institutions must be expanded and improved to manage these controversies, to transform them into productive conversations, and to bring about "technical democracy." They show how "hybrid forums"—in which experts, non-experts, ordinary citizens, and politicians come together—reveal the limits of traditional delegative democracies, in which decisions are made by quasi-professional politicians and techno-scientific information is the domain of specialists in laboratories. The division between professionals and laypeople, the authors claim, is simply outmoded.\n\nThe authors argue that laboratory research should be complemented by everyday experimentation pursued in the real world, and they describe various modes of cooperation between the two. They explore a range of concrete examples of hybrid forums that have dealt with sociotechnical controversies including nuclear waste disposal in France, industrial waste and birth defects in Japan, a childhood leukemia cluster in Woburn, Massachusetts, and Mad Cow Disease in the United Kingdom. They discuss the implications for political decision making in general, and they describe a "dialogic" democracy that enriches traditional representative democracy. To invent new procedures for consultation and representation, they suggest, is to contribute to an endless process that is necessary for the ongoing democratization of democracy.\n

How to address empirically the calculative character of markets without dissolving it? In our paper, we propose a theoretical framework that helps to deal with markets without suspending their calculative properties. In the first section, we construct a broad definition of calculation, grounded on the anthropology of science and techniques. In the next sections, we apply this definition to three constitutive elements of markets: economic goods, economic agents and economic exchanges. First, we examine the question of the calculability of goods: in order to be calculated, goods must be calculable. In the following section, we introduce the notion of calculative distributed agencies to understand how these calculable goods are actually calculated. Thirdly, we consider the rules and material devices that organize the encounter between (and aggregation of) individual supplies and demands, i.e. the specific organizations that allow for a calculated exchange and a market output. Those three elements define concrete markets as collective organized devices that calculate compromises on the values of goods. In each, we encounter different versions of our broad definition of calculation, which we illustrate with examples, mainly taken from the fields of financial markets and mass retail.

Abstract Presented in two parts, this article proposes a research programme devoted to examining ‘processes of economization’. In the first instalment, published in Economy and Society 38(3) (2009), we introduced the notion of ‘economization’. The term refers to the assembly and qualification of actions, devices and analytical/practical descriptions as ‘economic’ by social scientists and market actors. Through an analysis of selected works in anthropology, economics and sociology, we discussed the importance, meaning and framing of economization, unravelling its trace within a variety of disciplinary backgrounds. This second instalment of the article explores what it would mean to move this research programme forward by taking processes of economization as a topic of empirical investigation. Given the vast terrain of relationships that produce its numerous trajectories, to illustrate what such a project would entail we have limited ourselves to the examination of processes we call ‘marketization’. These processes, which constitute but one modality of economization, are discussed here from five vantage points: the things in the market, agencies, encounters, prices and market maintenance.

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

Au début des années 80, un groupe de chercheurs de l’École des mines se penche sur un aspect du monde contemporain négligé par les sciences sociales : les sciences et les techniques. Comment sont-elles produites ? Comment leur validité ou leur efficacité sont-elles établies ? Comment se diffusent-elles ? Comment contribuent-ils à transformer le monde ? Ces travaux donnent naissance à une approche aujourd’hui reconnue : la sociologie de la traduction, dite aussi théorie de l’acteur réseau, avec ses concepts clefs, la traduction, l’intéressement, le script, la controverse, etc. Cette théorie est si féconde que les sciences sociales mobilisent désormais très largement ses concepts, mais aussi ses règles de méthodes et ses outils de travail. Or, nombre de ses textes fondateurs n’étaient pas ou plus disponibles en français. En rassemblant des textes de trois de ses pionniers, Madeleine Akrich, Michel Callon et Bruno Latour, on permettra au lecteur de comprendre les développements de la sociologie de la traduction et la manière dont elle a interrogé le lien social, les machines, les objets, les usagers, les pratiques scientifiques. Pour montrer en conclusion comment cette approche permet de renouveler l’analyse sociologique classique.

Discusses the performativity of economics and proposes theoretical directions to study it from a sociological perspective.

ABSTRACT The contribution of the field of science and technology studies (STS) to mainstream sociology has so far been slim because of a misunderstanding about what it means to provide a social explanation of a piece of science or of an artefact. The type of explanation possible for religion, art or popular culture no longer works in the case of hard science or technology. This does not mean, it is argued, that science and technology escapes sociological explanation, but that a deep redescription of what is a social explanation is in order. Once this misunderstanding has been clarified, it becomes interesting to measure up the challenge raised by STS to the usual epistemologies social sciences believed necessary for their undertakings. The social sciences imitate the natural sciences in a way that render them unable to profit from the type of objectivity found in the natural sciences. It is argued that by following the STS lead, social sciences may start to imitate the natural sciences in a very different fashion. Once the meanings of ‘social’ and of ‘science’ are reconfigured, the definition of what a ‘social science’ is and what it can do in the political arena is considered. Again it is not by imitating the philosophers of science's ideas of what is a natural science that sociology can be made politically relevant.

The idea of reflexivity has much to offer to the analysis of taste - but reflexivity in its ancient sense, a form neither active nor passive, pointing to an originary state where things, persons, and events have just arrived, with no action, subject or objects yet decided. Objects of taste are not present, inert, available and at our service.They give themselves up, they shy away, they impose themselves. ‘Amateurs’ do not believe things have taste. On the contrary, they make themselves detect them, through a continuous elaboration of procedures that put taste to the test. Understood as reflexive work performed on one’s own attachments, the amateur’s taste is no longer considered (as with so-called ‘critical’ sociology) an arbitrary election which has to be explained by hidden social causes. Rather, it is a collective technique, whose analysis helps us to understand the ways we make ourselves sensitized, to things, to ourselves, to situations and to moments, while simultaneously controlling how those feelings might be shared and discussed with others.

Et s'il fallait enfin tirer les conséquences des crises à répétition que nos sociétés traversent lorsqu'elles sont confrontées aux débordements inattendus des sciences et des techniques ? S'il fallait en finir une bonne fois pour toutes avec la vision héroïque des décisions tranchantes et tranchées que le souverain prend en situation d'incertitude et en toute méconnaissance de cause ? Si Alexandre rengainait son épée, le monde s'effondrerait-il ? Non, mais la démocratie, elle, en ressortirait fortifiée. Tel est le propos des auteurs de ce livre. Ces derniers refusent les traditionnelles oppositions entre spécialistes et profanes, professionnels de la politique et citoyens ordinaires. Ils concentrent plutôt leur attention sur les nouvelles relations entre savoir et pouvoir qui émergent des controverses sociotechniques et sur les procédures inventées pour les traiter. L'enjeu est de taille : faire apparaître les conditions dans lesquelles les sociétés démocratiques vont se rendre capables d'affronter les défis des sciences et des techniques, redéfinir un espace public réunissant non pas des individus désincarnés mais des femmes et des hommes pris dans des histoires singulières. Après l'âge de la démocratie délégative, celui de la démocratie dialogique ?

International audience

This article presents the implications, objectives and initial results of a current ethnographic research project on music lovers. It looks at problems of theory and method posed by such research if it is not conceived only as the explanation of external determinisms, relating taste to the social origins of the amateur or to the aesthetic properties of the works. Our aim is, on the contrary, from long interviews and observations undertaken with music lovers, mostly in the classical field, to concentrate on gestures, objects, mediums, devices and relations engaged in a form of playing or listening, which amounts to more than the actualization of a taste `already there', for they are redefined during the action, with a result that is partly uncertain. This is why amateurs' attachments and ways of doing things can both engage and form subjectivities, rather than merely recording social labels, and have a history, irreducible to that of the taste for works.

En trente ans, la « sociologie pragmatique » (aussi dénommée « sociologie des épreuves ») a produit des enquêtes empiriques touchant à l’ensemble des domaines de la vie sociale. En conformité avec les postulats théoriques qu’ils entendaient défendre, les chercheurs qui se reconnaissent dans ce courant sociologique ont mis au point des façons sensiblement nouvelles de conduire l’enquête, de collecter les données, d’explorer les terrains, de penser par cas et de se servir des controverses et des affaires comme points d’entrée dans l’ordre social et dans la question de sa problématique reproduction. L’objectif de cet article est de caractériser en dix points le style pragmatique en sociologie et de préciser ce que sont ses réquisits méthodologiques et ses conséquences pratiques dans la conduite du travail d’enquête.

Le recours aux liens juridiques prend dans nos sociétés une importance grandissante. Il existe pourtant peu d’études empiriques sur la fabrique quotidienne du droit. Alors que la très grande technicité de la matière juridique réserve le droit aux juristes de profession, la sociologie l’explique trop rapidement par les rapports de forces qu’il ne ferait que dissimuler. La méthode ethnographique se trouve donc particulièrement bien ajustée à l’analyse du droit.C’est toute l’originalité de cette étude du Conseil d’État que propose Bruno Latour. Il porte une grande attention aux actes d’écriture, à la fabrication et à la manipulation des dossiers, aux interactions entre les membres, aux particularités du corps des conseillers d’État, et surtout à la diversité des ressorts qui permettent de bien juger. Par une grande qualité de style, l’auteur sait rendre compte de la technicité des jugements et renouer les nombreux liens entre le droit et cette société qui le nourrit et à laquelle il sert, en même temps, de garant.Après l’étude des laboratoires scientifiques, du discours religieux, de la parole politique, Bruno Latour continue, avec le droit, son programme d’anthropologie systématique des formes contemporaines de véridiction.

in Techniques et culture 9

Comment aborder empiriquement le caractère calculateur des marchés sans pour autant le dissoudre ? Dans cet article, les auteurs proposent un cadre théorique qui permette d’analyser des marchés sans négliger ses propriétés calculatrices concrètes. Dans une première section, ils construisent une définition large de « calcul », basée sur les enseignements de la sociologie des sciences et des techniques. Dans les sections suivantes, ils confrontent cette définition à trois éléments constitutifs des marchés : biens économiques, agents économiques et échanges économiques. Ils examinent d’abord la question de la calculabilité des biens : pour être calculés, les biens doivent être calculables. Dans la section suivante, ils introduisent la notion d’agence calculatrice distribuée pour comprendre comment les biens économiques sont effectivement calculés. Finalement, ils considèrent les règles et dispositifs matériels qui organisent la rencontre entre (et l’agrégation de) demandes et offres singulières, c’est-à-dire les organisations spécifiques qui rendent possible un échange calculé. Ces trois éléments définissent les marchés concrets comme dispositifs collectifs organisés qui calculent des compromis sur les valeurs des biens. Pour chacun de ces éléments, les auteurs observent diverses manifestations du calcul ainsi qu’ils l’ont défini, qu’ils illustrent avec des exemples empruntés principalement aux domaines des marchés financiers et de la grande distribution.

Do things such as performance indicators, valuation formulas, consumer tests, stock prices or financial contracts represent an external reality? Or do they rather constitute, in a performative fashion, what they refer to? The Provoked Economy tackles this question from a pragmatist angle, considering economic reality as a ceaselessly provoked reality. It takes the reader through a series of diverse empirical sites - from public administrations to stock exchanges, from investment banks to marketing facilities and business schools - in order to explore what can be seen from such a demanding standpoint. It demonstrates that descriptions of economic objects do actually produce economic objects and that the simulacrum of an economic act is indeed a form of realization. It also shows that provoking economic reality means facing practical tests in which what ought to be economic or not is subject to elaboration and controversy. This book opens paths for empirical investigation in the social sciences, but also for the philosophical renewal of the critique of economic reality. It will be useful for students and scholars in social theory, sociology, anthropology, philosophy and economics.

Ces travaux constituent une enquête anthropologique sur les ressorts du capitalisme contemporain. Ils portent un regard critique sur les formes du capital, la théorie de la valeur, l'analyse financière ou la théorie des marchés efficients.

Au début des années 80, un groupe de chercheurs de l'Ecole des mines se penche sur un aspect du monde contemporain négligé par les sciences sociales : les sciences et les techniques. Comment sont-elles produites ? Comment leur validité ou leur efficacité sont-elles établies ? Comment se diffusent-elles ? Comment contribuent-ils à transformer le monde ? Ces travaux donnent naissance à une approche aujourd'hui reconnue: la sociologie de la traduction, dite aussi théorie de l'acteur réseau, avec ses concepts clefs, la traduction, l'intéressement, le script, la controverse, etc. Cette théorie est si féconde que les sciences sociales mobilisent désormais très largement ses concepts, mais aussi ses règles de méthodes et ses outils de travail. Or, nombre de ses textes fondateurs n'étaient pas ou plus disponibles en français. En rassemblant des textes de trois de ses pionniers, Madeleine Akrich, Michel Callon et Bruno Latour, on permettra au lecteur de comprendre les développements de la sociologie de la traduction et la manière dont elle a interrogé le lien social, les machines, les objets; les usagers, les pratiques scientifiques. Pour montrer en conclusion comment cette approche permet de renouveler l'analyse sociologique classique.

This paper describes the emergence of new activist groups in the health sector, spinning off from internet discussion groups. In the first part, it shows how self-help discussion groups can be considered as communities of practice in which, partly thanks to the Internet media, collective learning activities result in the constitution of experiencial knowledge, the appropriation of exogenous sources of knowledge, including medical knoweldge and the articulation of these different sources of knowledge in some lay expertise. In the second part, it describes how activist groups might emerge from these discussion groups and develop specific modes of action drawing upon the forms of expertise constituted through the Internet groups. Activists groups together with self-help groups might form epistemic communities ( HAAS 1992 ), i.e. groups of experts engaged in a policy enterprise in which knowledge plays a major role : in the confrontation of health activists with professionals, the capacity to translate political claims into the langage of science appears as a condition to be (even) heard and be taken into consideration.