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.

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.

The economy of qualities 29

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 Jeunemaitre 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.

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

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