Conclusions

How does the knowledge of the social analyst relate to the plurality of economic knowledges? What kinds of interventions will a reconstructed economic sociology make into the technological economy? First, this book, following Callon’s argument, constitutes a case for placing the anthropology of economic knowledges at the centre of economic sociology.

Second, the approaches explored here point to the value of a radical empiricism which is attentive to the particularities and complexities of places, events and actors. We acknowledge that this approach must address problems of generalisation (which we have explored through the issues of macro-economy and economic forms). Nonetheless, it is through the analytical embrace of the empirical, of the particular case and event, that we can disentangle our own economic constructs from the grand and virtual narratives produced by other economics while at the same time connecting them (politically and analytically) to the economic knowledges of actual social actors.

markets and economic processes through heterogeneous arrangements of ethically impure agents, entangled in contingent circumstances, and evolving dynamically. It is significant that many economic sociologists, including the authors of this article (just like many science and technology researchers before them) are increasingly engaged in messy and impure research - in policy, in politics, in development work, in market research - in which our economic knowledges work alongside others in the generation of new knowledges. The task is to conduct this work with ethical reflexivity and without becoming complicit with economic ‘facts’ or with the ‘objectivity’ of dominant economic narratives.

Notes

1 The chapters by Callon, Meadel and Rabeharisoa, Slater, Strathern and Barry were originally presented at a workshop held at Goldsmiths College, University of London in December 2000.

2 Thrift (1998: 163) argues that academic economics does not have a great deal of importance for business, although it does have significance for states: “[political economy and economics] are important as discursive elements of states,justifying action in producing arenas that the state enacts as ‘economic’”.

3 In this volume, the chapters by Lury and Strathern also seek to reconceptualise the relation between the internal and external, although not in relation to this specific issue.

4 Consider, for example, the efforts of environmentalists to make the effects of develop­ment projects on global warming the object of explicit calculation by international financial institutions in determining funding decisions.

5 Two influential anthologies were titled The Social Shaping of Technology (Mackenzie and Wajcman 1985) and The Social Construction of Technological Systems (Bijker et al.

6 Callon and Latour 1992: 348.

7 Translation could come to follow predictable paths. “A network becomes irreversible to the extent that its translations are consolidated, making further translations foreseeable and inevitable. Under such circumstances, embodied skills, experimental devices, and systems of statements become increasingly dependent and complementary” (Callon 1995: 59, see also Callon 1991).

8 The notion of agencement, used by Deleuze, is usually translated as assemblage or arrangement. These translations do not, however, convey the sense of agency and process suggested by the French term.

9 Writers on governmentality, influenced by Foucault, have made a similar argument. See, for example, Burchell 1996.

10 This image persists. Despite a mass of empirical evidence, and his protestations to the contrary, Manuel Castells finds it impossible to move beyond the vision of structural Marxism in which technology and the economy are ultimately determining. According to Castells: “a technological revolution, centred around information technologies, is reshaping, at accelerated pace, the material basis of society” (Castells 1996: 1).

11 Cf. Rose 1999: 142-5.

12 Callon’s approach can also be distinguished from Habermas in its stress on the right to resist the normative demand for participation in the public sphere. Writing about a patient who refuses to identify with or participate in the politics of a patients’ organisa­tion, Callon and Rabeharisoa note the following: “The triple demand underlying the establishment of a public arena (demand for visibility, demand for debatability and demand for participation and articulation) and which, once accepted, legitimises its existence, is replaced, by the collective, by three counter-demands, a demand for opacity.. a demand for non-argumentation (‘that's how it is and nothing can be done about it') and a demand for exclusion (the collective is not trying to articulate itself to the outside)” (Callon and Rabeharisoa 2003: 28-9).

13 “Homo Sociologicus has become a hybrid, at once actor and sociologist... Consequently the choice of actors with which the sociologists is associated is crucial” (Callon 1999: 72).

14 LAssociation Franyaise contre les myopathies (AFM).

15 On the “circumstances of politics” see Waldron (1999) and Barry (this volume).

16 Since political actions against specific brands (such as Nike, Esso, Starbucks) may affect share prices the distinction between “financial” and “political” reporting may be hard to draw. Demonstrations conducted at company Annual General Meetings are likely to be reported in the financial pages of newspapers.

References

Appadurai, A. (1990) ‘Disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy', Theory, Culture and Society, 7, 2-3, 295-310.

Barry, A. (2001) Political Machines: Governing a Technological Society, London: Athlone.

Barry, A. (2004a) ‘Ethical capitalism', in W Larner and W. Walters (eds) Global Governmentality, London: Sage.

Barry, A. (2004b) ‘Pharmaceutical Matters: the invention of informed materials', in M. Fraser, S. Kember and C. Lury (eds) Theory, Culture and Society, forthcoming.

Barry, A. and D. Slater (2002) ‘Introduction: the technological economy', Economy and Society, 31, 2, 175-93.

Barry, A., T Osborne and N. Rose (eds) (1996) Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, Neo­Liberalism and Rationalities of Government, London: UCL Press.

Bauman, Z. (1987) Legislators and Interpreters, Cambridge: Polity Press.

Beck, U. (1992) The Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, London: Sage.

Bell, D. (1973) The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Forecasting, New York: Basic Books.

Bensaude-Vincent, B. and I. Stengers (1996) A History of Chemistry, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Bijker, W., T Hughes and T. Pinch (eds) (1989) The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Born, G.

Burchell, G. (1996) ‘Liberal government and techniques of the self', in A. Barry, T. Osborne and N. Rose (eds) Foucault and Political Reason: Liberalism, Neo-Liberalism and Rationalities of Government, London: UCL Press, 19-36.

Callon, M. (1987) ‘Society in the making', in W. Bijker, T. Hughes and T. Pinch (eds) The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 83-106.

Callon, M. (1991) ‘Techno-economic networks and irreversibility', in J. Law (ed.) Essays on Power, Technology and Domination, London: Routledge, 132-63.

Callon, M. (1995) ‘Four models for the dynamics of science', in S. Jasanoff, G.E. Markle, J.C. Petersen and T. Pinch (eds) Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, London: Sage, 29-63.

Callon, M. (ed.) (1998a) The Laws of the Markets, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Callon, M. (1998b) ‘Introduction: the embeddedness of economic markets in economics', in M. Callon, The Laws of the Markets, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1-57.

Callon, M. (1998c) ‘An essay on framing and overflowing: economic externalities revisited by sociology', in M. Callon, The Laws of the Markets, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 244-69.

Callon, M. (1999) ‘Ni intellectual engage, ni intellectual degage: la double strategie de l'attachement et du detachement' Sociologie du travail, 41, 65-78.

Callon, M. and B. Latour (1981) ‘Unscrewing the big Leviathan: how actors macrostructure reality and how sociologists help them do so', in K. Knorr-Cetina and A. Cicourel (eds) Advances in social theory and methodology: toward an integration of micro- and macro- sociologies, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 277-303.

Callon, M. and B. Latour (1992) ‘Don't throw out the baby with the Bath School! A reply to Collins and Yearley', in A. Pickering (ed.) Science as Practice and Culture, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 343-68.

Callon, M. and V Rabeharisoa (2003) Gino's lesson on humanity: genetics, entanglements and the sociologist's role', Economy and Society, 33, 1, 1-27.

Callon, M., P. Lascoumes and Y. Barthe (2001) Agir dans un monde incertain: essai sur la dmocratie technique, Paris: Seuil.

Carrier, J. and D. Miller (eds) (1998) Virtualism: A New Political Economy, Oxford: Berg.

Castells, M. (1996) The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, volume 1. The Rise of the Network Society, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

David, P. (1985) ‘Clio and the economics of QWERTY', American Economic Review, 75, 2, 332-7.

Deleuze, G. (1988) Foucault, London: Athlone.

DiMaggio, P. (1990) ‘Cultural aspects of economic action', in R. Friedland and A.F. Robertson (eds), Beyond the Marketplace: Rethinking Models of Economy and Society, Chicago: Aldine.

DiMaggio, P. (1994) ‘Culture and economy', in N. Smelser and R. Swedberg (eds) The Handbook of Economic Sociology, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 27-57.

Du Gay, P. and M. Pryke (eds) (2002) Cultural Economy, London: Sage.

Fine, B. (2003) ‘Callonistics: a disentanglement', Economy and Society, 33, 478-84.

Fine, B. and C. Lapavitsas (2000) ‘Markets and money in social theory: what role for economics?', Economy and Society, 29, 3, 357-82.

Foucault, M. (1986) ‘Nietzsche, genealogy, history', in P Rabinow (ed.) The Foucault Reader, Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Franklin, S., C. Lury andJ. Stacey (2000) Global Nature, Global Culture, London: Routledge. Garnham, N. (1990) Capitalism and Communication, London: Sage.

Gell, A. (1998) Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Ghana, Republic of (2003) The Ghana ICTfor Accelerated Development [ICT4AD] Policy, Accra. Gibson-Graham,J.K., S. Resnick and R. Wolff (eds) (2001) Re/Presenting Class: Essays in Postmodern Marxism, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Granovetter, M. (1973) ‘The strength of weak ties', American Journal of Sociology, 78, 1360­80.

Granovetter, M. (1985) ‘Economic action and social structure: the problem of embedded­ness', American Journal of Sociology, 19, 3, 481-510.

Holm, P (2003) ‘What way up is Callon?', Sosiologisk Arbok, 1, 125-56.

Knorr-Cetina, K. (1997) ‘Sociality with objects. Social relations in postsocial knowledge societies', Theory, Culture & Society, 14, 4, 1-30.

Knorr-Cetina, K. and U. Bruegger (2000) ‘The market as an object of attachment: exploring postsocial relations in financial markets', Canadian Journal of Sociology, 25, 2, 141-68.

Knorr-Cetina, K. and U. Bruegger (2002a) ‘Global microstructures: the virtual societies of financial markets', American Journal of Sociology, 107, 905-51.

Knorr-Cetina, K. and U. Bruegger (2002b) ‘Inhabiting technology: the global lifeform of financial markets', Current Sociology, 50, 3, 389-405.

Knorr-Cetina, K. and A. Preda (2000) ‘Postsocial knowledge societies: the epistemic embeddedness of economic action', in K.S. Althaler, M. Lehmann-Waffenschmidt and K.H. Muller (eds) The Socio-Economics of Long-Term Evolution. Advances in Theory, Complex Modeling, and Methodology, Berlin: Fakultas Verlag.

Lash, S. (1999) Another Rationality, Another Modernity, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Lash, S. (2002) Critique of Information, London: Sage.

Lash, S. and J. Urry (1994) Economies of Signs and Space, London: Sage.

Latour, B. (1993) We Have Never Been Modern, Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf.

Latour, B. (1999) Pandora's Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Law, J. (1991) ‘Power, discretion and strategy', inJ. Law (ed.) A Sociology of Monsters, London: Routledge, 165-91.

Law, J. (1994) Organizing Modernity, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Law, J. (2002) ‘Economics as Interference', in P. du Gay and M. Pryke (eds), Cultural Economy, London: Sage, 21-38.

Law, J. and M. Akrich (1994) ‘On customers and costs: a story from public sector science', in M. Power (ed.) Accounting and Science: Natural Inquiry and Commercial Reason, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 195-218.

Leadbetter, C. (1999) Living on Thin Air: the New Economy, London: Penguin.

Lee, N. and S. Brown (1994) ‘Otherness and the actor-network: the undiscovered continent', American Behavioural Scientist, 37, 6, 772-90.

Lyotard, J.-F. (1984) The Postmodern Condition: a report on knowledge, Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Mackenzie, D. (1996) Knowing Machines: Essays on Technical Change, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Mackenzie, D. (2001) ‘Physics and finance: S-terms and modern finance as a topic for science studies', Science, Technology and Human Values, 26, 115-44.

Mackenzie, D. (2003) ‘Long-term capital management and the sociology of arbitrage', Economy and Society, 32, 3, 349-80.

Mackenzie, D. and Y Millo (2003) ‘Constructing a market, performing theory: the historical sociology of a financial derivatives exchange', American Journal of Sociology, 109: 107­45.

Mackenzie, D. and J. Wajcman (eds) (1985) The Social Shaping of Technology, Buckingham: Open University Press.

Miller, D. (2000) ‘Turning Callon the right way up', Economy and Society, 31, 2, 218-33.

Miller, P. (1992) ‘Accounting and objectivity: the invention of calculating selves and calculable spaces', in A. Megill (ed.) ‘Rethinking Objectivity II', Annals of Scholarship, 9, 1-2, 61-86.

Miller, P. (1994) ‘Accounting, “Economic Citizenship” and the Spatial Reordering of Manufacture', Accounting, Organizations and Society, 19, 15-43.

Miller, P. and N. Rose (1990) ‘Governing economic life', Economy and Society, 19, 1, 1-31. Mitchell, T. (1998) ‘Fixing the economy', Cultural Studies, 12, 1, 82-101.

Mitchell, T. (ed.) (2000) ‘Introduction', Questions of Modernity, Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press.

Mitchell, T. (2002) Rule of Experts: Egypt, Technopolitics, Modernity, Berkeley: California University Press.

Mowery, D. and N. Rosenberg (1998) Technological Change in 20th-Century America, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Negus, K. (2002) ‘Identities and industries: the cultural formation of aesthetic economies’ in P. du Gay and M. Pryke (eds), Cultural Economy, London: Sage, 115-31.

Osborne, T (2004) ‘Ethical capital in the creation of human capital’, paper presented at workshop on Inside/Outside Markets, Ecoles des Mines, Paris, June.

Osborne, T. and N. Rose (1999) ‘Do the social sciences create phenomena? The case of public opinion research’, British Journal of Sociology, 50, 3, 367-96.

Power, M. (ed.) (1996) Accounting and Science: Natural Inquiry and Commercial Reason, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Power, M. (1997) The Audit Society: Rituals of Verification, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Quah, D. (2004) ‘Digital goods and the new economy’, in D. Jones (ed.) The New Economy Handbook, London: Academic Press.

Rabeharisoa, V and M. Callon (1999) Le Pouvoir des Malades: L’association franqaise contre les myopathies et la recherche, Paris: Ecoles des Mines.

Roitman,J. (2003) ‘The pluralization of regulatory authority in Central Africa’, paper presented at Economies at Large workshop, New York University, November.

Rose, N. (1992) ‘Governing the enterprising self’, in P. Heelas and P. Morris (eds) The Values of the Enterprise Culture: The Moral Debate, London: Routledge.

Rose, N. (1999) Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Schumpeter, J. (1943) Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, New York: Routledge.

Serres, M. (1974) La Traduction: Hermes III, Paris: Editions de Minuit.

Star, S.L. (1991) ‘Power, technologies and the phenomenology of conventions: on being allergic to onions’, in J. Law (ed.), The Sociology of Monsters, London: Routledge, 26-56.

Strathern, M. (ed.) (2000) Audit Cultures, London: Routledge.

Strathern, M. (2004) Commons and Borderlands: Working Papers on Interdisciplinarity, Accountability and the Flow of Knowledge, Wantage: Sean Kingston.

Tarde, G. (2001) Les Lois de Limitation, Paris: Les Empecheurs de Penser en Rond.

Thrift, N. (1997) ‘The rise of soft capitalism’, Cultural Values, 1, 1, 29-57.

Thrift, N. (1998) ‘Virtual capitalism: the globalisation of reflexive business knowledge’, in J. Carrier and D. Miller (eds) Virtualism: A New Political Economy, Oxford: Berg, 161-86.

Thrift, N. (2001) ‘It’s the romance not the finance that makes the business worth pursuing: disclosing a new market culture’, Economy and Society, 30, 412-32.

Thrift, N. (2002) ‘Performing cultures in the new economy’, in P. du Gay and M. Pryke, Cultural Economy, London: Sage.

Thrift, N. (2003) ‘Knowing capitalism’, paper presented at ‘Economies at Large’ workshop, New York University, November.

Urry, J. (2002) Global Complexity, Cambridge: Polity Press.

Waldron, J. (1999) The Dignity of Legislation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Webster, F. (1996) Theories of the Information Society, London: Routledge.

Zelizer, VA. (1997) The Social Meaning of Money: Pin Money, Paychecks, Poor Relief and Other Currencies, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Zelizer, VA. (1998) ‘The proliferation of social currencies’ in M. Callon (ed.), The Laws of the Markets, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 58-68.

Zelizer, VA. (2000) ‘Fine tuning the Zelizer version’, Economy and Society, 29, 2, 383-9.

1