Ethical consumption applications as failed market innovations: exploring consumer (non) acceptance of ‘quasi’ market devices

ABSTRACT

In this paper, I conceptualise ethical consumption applications (ECAs) as market innovations inflected in processes of configuring market actors and market (re)framings. The introduction of ECAs through the work of civil society is not only about changing frames of market exchange, but also work in the register of making ‘good consumers’ and consumers as ‘agents of change’ and moralising markets. Thus, a more accurate concept for these devices is suggested: ‘quasi’ market devices. The main aim of this paper is to analyse how consumers attached to and resisted use of ECAs designed to assist in product choices and shape responsible everyday practices. Based on qualitative fieldwork in Sweden, the article applies a methodology grounded in Science and Technology-inspired market studies in combination with Consumer Culture Theory’s (CCT) interest in identity work and sense-making associated with technology consumption. Although available at the time of the empirical data collection period of the study, all three apps were off the market during the analytic work of this paper; a major argument for focusing on barriers to acceptance of the apps and trying to conceptualise how such non-acceptance can be understood.     

‘Its gait is too brisk:’ money mobility in Karachi’s foreign exchange market

ABSTRACT

The global spread of finance capitalism has ushered in a speculative nature of currency trade and has given rise to new forms of subjectivity. Narrowing the ethnographic gaze on a thirty-seven year old currency trader in Karachi, this paper advances two arguments. The first argument relates to the materiality of foreign exchange and their effects on traders’ bodies. In spot trading, the currency traders experience foreign currency as an affective quality breathing down heavily on the senses. The second argument points to an interconnected nature of foreign exchange markets. Using Knorr Cetina and Breugger's notion of ‘global microstructures,’ I demonstrate the ways in which a currency trader, operating in a post-9/11 counter-terrorist surveillance milieu in the country, negotiates the micro and global scales of economy. Grounded in ethnographic research in Pakistan, this paper explores the ways in which foreign currency, especially of the metropole, is circulated, exchanged, and imagined in a postcolonial context, and hence contributes to an emerging scholarship of anthropology of money and finance.     

When socialists marketize: the case of China’s wind power market sector

This paper analyzes China’s attempt at maintaining and stabilizing the market framing of wind power development as ‘sustainable.’ Drawing on mixed data and new directions in the social studies of marketization, the analysis focuses on the Chinese government’s responses to the ‘quality crisis’ in the wind turbine industry. Employing five types of framing – goods, marketizing agencies, market encounters, price-setting, and market design and maintenance – the paper sheds light on flexible government interventions to steer the socio-technical assemblage around wind power towards a ‘turn to quality.’ In essence, this is a study of market construction in the context of Chinese wind power experiments. The paper contributes to new directions in market studies by (1) demonstrating the importance of attending to the contested algorithmic transformation of wind resources to wind power; (2) taking market studies to a transitional and developmental context, which renders marketization prone to constant overflowing; and (3) elucidating a particular Chinese model of experimental market construction ‘through embracing overflowing.’ The paper proposes new trajectories for future market studies with a focus on non-Western contexts, to reveal the wide variety of how marketization unfolds.     

The paradoxes of creativity in Guangzhou,China’s wholesale market for fast fashion

ABSTRACT

In Guangzhou’s fast fashion sector, creativity operates as practices in boundary-making, which emerge in spaces within the blurred boundaries that delineate original and copy production. Using the Xi Fang Hang market as a case study, I demonstrate how the quick turnover of fast fashion commodities compels different groups of market participants to claim contesting definitions and practices of creativity. While building managers and wealthy entrepreneurs mobilise techniques of rent extraction and claim originality as rightful sources of creativity, less established migrant entrepreneurs use design copying as a tool for market survival. With limited resources and formal education in fashion and merchandising, migrants claim success in delivering the right styles and trends at the right time and in keeping their businesses afloat. Together, these competing practices constitute what I call ‘paradoxes of creativity’, dynamics that highlight creativity as a fluid cultural category that is always subject to tensions and contestations.     

The moral economy of face: marketized gift and depoliticized solidarity in South Korea’s fair trade

ABSTRACT

Metaphors of ‘face’ are often found in South Korea’s fair trade activism, as fair trade is frequently described as ‘face-to-face commerce’ and its goal is presented as pursuing ‘global trade with a human face.’ By asking how and why fair trade relies on the metaphors of face, this article analyzes the political implications and limits of the trope. I first examine the intimate connection between gift-exchange and face based on Marcel Mauss’s analysis of the gift and I present face as a locus of symbolic recognition and politics. Next, drawing on ethnographic research into Beautiful Coffee, the largest fair trade organization in South Korea, I illuminate fair trade as a hybrid practice of ‘marketized gift-exchange’ in which the various faces of producers and consumers are produced and circulated along with market transactions. In examining the meanings of those faces, I maintain that the prevalent metaphor of face in fair trade betrays the contradictory nature of market-based solidarity that is sought through the activism to redefine the whole economic structure based on moral and ethical practices.     

Toward a moral economy of money? Money as a creature of democracy

ABSTRACT

This paper proposes a novel approach for understanding money users’ relation to monetary governance institutions. It first describes the stakes involved in monetary governance from a neo-chartalist/MMT perspective. In a second step, it discusses existing contributions on the relation between money issuer and money users, highlighting the literatures on central bank legitimacy and the social construction of money. It argues that neither allows for an analysis of the relation between monetary institutions and money users that takes the latter’s knowledge seriously. It then argues that the concept of moral economy can enrich scholarly analysis. Moral economies of money are defined as collective practices in which money users articulate demands as part of an understanding of money as a public good. Finally, the paper deploys the moral economy of money perspective to reconstruct the changing relation between institutions of monetary governance and money users since the Great Depression in the U.S. It shows how New Dealers silenced a moral economy of money, discusses fragmented moral economies after World War II, and the partial reemergence of such moral economies after the Great Financial Crisis. The paper concludes by discussing political implications and suggestions for further research.     

Stock market response to changes in movies’ opening dates

How does the market react to news regarding large uncertain projects? We analyze stock market reactions to information about changes in opening dates of movies, and present two main findings. First, we find systematic negative stock price responses to the scheduling changes we consider, suggesting that any changes are interpreted as bad news by the market. Second, we find that the market reaction is greater for movies with higher production costs, but is unrelated to subsequent box office revenues. This may point to a limited ability of the market to predict the box office performance of a movie, and to increased sensitivity of the market to cost effects, which are easier to forecast.     

A test of Rosen’s and Adler’s theories of superstars

This article compares and contrasts Adler and Rosen’s theories regarding the stardom and popularity of musical artists through the impact of local linguistic policies on consumers’ decisions to buy recorded music (CDs). Spain, with local linguistic policies implemented in Catalonia and the Basque Country, serves as an ideal quasi ‘natural experiment’ for testing these theories. The authors’ predictions are addressed within a multilevel regression framework, with two main results: first, contrary to Rosen’s predictions, the impact of local linguistic policies on the probability of buying music CDs is positive; second, local linguistic policies seem to contribute to increasing the production of music CDs in local languages, increasing the popularity of local artists with their audiences.     

Zhao Chants Master’s Songs

~~Zhao Chants Master’s Songs@David     

Aesthetics Guru’s Passion for Rocks

~~Aesthetics Guru’s Passion for Rocks@David     

Facelift Restores Buddha’s Tang Glory

~~Facelift Restores Buddha’s Tang Glory@David     

Tea Party Celebrates Wang’s Dedication

~~Tea Party Celebrates Wang’s Dedication@David     

Bourdieu’s Cleft Sociology of Science

The paper examines Pierre Bourdieu’s extensive writings on the production of scientific knowledge. The study shows that Bourdieu offered not one but two - significantly different - approaches to scientific knowledge production, one formulated in his theoretical, or programmatic, writings on the subject, the other developed in his empirical writings. Addressing the question as to the relevance of Bourdieu’s work for science studies, the analysis argues that the former of these two approaches is at once very visible in Bourdieu’s work but characterized by limitations from the standpoint of scholarship in STS, whereas the latter approach is less conspicuous but of broader empirical value.