1st Edition
The Limits of Performativity Politics of the Modern Economy
The economy is commonly described either as the apolitical realm of calculation or as the fully political one of domination. This book scrutinizes the ways in which the economy is performed, in order to situate where precisely politics is located with regard to economic matters. Politics, the book demonstrates, thus appears at the turning point, in the place where the efficiency of economics is negotiated and where the need to forward it, reshape it, and complement it emerges.
This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Cultural Economy.
Introduction: Performativity, Economics and Politics: An Overview Franck Cochoy, Martin Giraudeau and Liz McFall
Part 1: Performativity, Economics and Politics
1. Performative Agency Judith Butler
2. Performativity, Misfires and Politics Michel Callon
3. Performativities: Butler, Callon and the Moment of Theory Paul du Gay
4. The ‘Performative Turn’ in Science and Technology Studies: Towards a Linguistic Anthropology of ‘Technology in Action’ Christian Licoppe
Part 2: Politically Separating Politics and the Economy
5. The Resources of Economics: Making the 1973 Oil Crisis Timothy Mitchell
6. Pragmatics and Politics: The Case of Industrial Assurance in the UK Liz McFall
7. Performing Physiocracy: Pierre Samuel Du Pont de Nemours and the Limits of Political Engineering Martin Giraudeau
Part 3: Transacting Across the Politics/Economy Divide
8. Gift-Giving or Market?: Economists and the Performation of Organ Commerce Philippe Steiner
9. Performing Border in the Aegean: On Relocating Political, Economic and Social Relations Sarah Green
10. Political Marketing: Multiple Values, Performativities and Modes of Engaging Hans Kjellberg and Claes-Fredrik Helgesson
11. ‘How to Build Displays that Sell’: The Politics of Performativity in American Grocery Stores (Progressive Grocer, 1929-1946) Franck Cochoy
Biography
Martin Giraudeau is a Lecturer in Accounting at the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK. His research focuses on the historical role of accounting and management devices, starting with business plans, in the making of modern economies.
Liz McFall is Head of Sociology at the Open University, UK. Her work explores how markets are made especially for dull products like insurance that people don't really want to buy. She is working on Devising Consumption a book that argues that it takes all sorts of technical, material, artistic and metaphysical know-how to make people want to spend. She is author of Advertising: a cultural economy, co-editor of Conduct: sociology and social worlds and co-editor of the Journal of Cultural Economy.
Franck Cochoy is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Toulouse, France. He has published extensively on the market mediations between producers and consumers, from marketing to packaging, via advertising and other curiosity devices.
