ANTHEM

The socializing finance blog has a very informative summary of the “Performativity as Politics: Unlocking economic sociology” conference that took place in Toulouse in October. The conference explored the political dimensions of the actor-network theory approach to performativity that has developed within economic sociology, by bringing it together with alternative conceptualisations of performativity and politics from other fields. A 10-page document with the abstracts (PDF) of the talks is also available.

A recording of Graham Harman’s ANTHEM seminar talk at the LSE yesterday, entitled “Assemblages According to Manuel DeLanda,” and the discussion that followed, is available here (1 hr 47 min). A PDF file of the PowerPoint slides can be downloaded from here.

Harman evaluated the ontological assumptions behind DeLanda’s realism, his notion of assemblage and his theory of causation, by tracing their origins in Deleuze and Bhaskar, among others. He then contrasted DeLanda’s ontology with that of Bruno Latour and concluded by presenting his own object-orientated approach to thinking about causation, objects, and emergence.

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The most recent issue of Economic Sociology - The European Electronic Newsletter (Vol. 10, No. 1, November 2008) is out. The contents include “Accounting for Economic Sociology” by Andrea Mennicken, Peter Miller, and Rita Samiolo; “Talking Numbers - Governing Immaterial Labour” by Uwe Vormbusch; “Accounting at the Heart of the Performativity of Economics” by Eve Chiapello; “Global or Local? Travelling Management Accounting Ideas” by Albrecht Becker; and an interview with Anthony Hopwood. Go to the Economic Sociology website or download the PDF directly from here.

Those interested in economic sociology, the performativity of markets, and the role of actor-network theory in producing these types of accounts might also be interested in Do Economists Make Markets? On the Performativity of Economics, a new book edited by Donald MacKenzie, Fabian Muniesa & Lucia Siu.

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On 7 December 2007 a few members of ANTHEM attended a memorable discussion session on the occasion of the launch of Market Devices, a volume edited by Michel Callon, Yuval Millo and Fabian Muniesa. The book, published in the Sociological Review Monograph Series, is a collection of case studies on the performativity of markets, building on the efforts of Michel Callon to extend actor-network theory into the domain of economic sociology.