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 economy of qualities 45 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.

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 andjudgement 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.

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 Thevenot (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. (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.

12 Economic agents have re-appropriated this concept which had disappeared from the vocabulary of political economics.

13 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.

14 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).

15 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.

16 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”.

17 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).

18 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.

19 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.

20 A cogent demonstration of this was done by C. Smith in his work on public auctions (Smith 1989).

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.).

2 8 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’economie des qualites', Politix, 52, 2000, 211­39.

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