Economizing Habitus

Pierre Bourdieu's classical sociology and the actor network-based ‘economization’ literature are often considered contradictory, despite some agreement on the constructed nature of economic man. Through an examination of the publishing industry, we argue that Bourdieu's concept of habitus may offer a useful contribution to the literature on economization. We examine how those new to a field come to understand their position and the role of material devices in structuring this. We argue that Bourdieu's theory, appropriately stated, sheds light on the tacit assessments made by market agents alongside their involvement in network-based calculative mechanisms and allows studies of markets to deal with some persistent criticisms of the economization programme.     

‘This could be our reality in the next five to ten years’: a blogpost platform as an expectation generation device on the future of insurance markets

William James (1919) characterises hypotheses as either live or dead. A hypothesis is live when it is taken into account as a ‘real possibility’. We follow James’ suggestion to not attribute intrinsic properties to hypotheses, but rather investigate how they came into being and look at the effects they generate. Expectations of digital technologies are a topic of vivid debate in the insurance industry. Before these expectations can become ‘live’, they have, in the first place, to be generated by market devices. We investigate how the reinsurance blogpost platform Open Minds functions as an ‘expectation generation device’ on the future of insurance markets. Combining Beckert’s work on the role of fictional expectations with the pragmatist turn in sociology of markets, we propose to study ‘expectation generation devices’, provoking expectations on economic markets. In our empirical analysis, we demonstrate the explicit fictional character of the Open Minds contributions, and analyse how a contained space of openness is generated to provoke expectations. We demonstrate how Open Minds can become live through circulation to other expectation generation sites in the insurance industry and beyond. We conclude by reflecting on the importance of expectation generation devices as a particular type of market devices.     

Towards a commodity theory of token money: on ‘Gold standard thinking in a fiat currency world’

ABSTRACT

Via a discussion of public debates surrounding the potential minting of a trillion dollar platinum coin in the context of the American debt ceiling crises of 2011 and 2013, this essay seeks to make sense of the popular persistence of ‘commodity’ or ‘metallist’ understandings of money's value in the face of a scholarly consensus that all currency is ‘token’ or ‘fiat’ in nature. Scholars from Knapp to Desan have elaborated token theories of commodity money, wherein both precious and non-precious currencies are treated as the products of social construction. By contrast, I suggest the need to supplement such approaches with what I term a commodity theory of token money, wherein money objects made from both precious and non-precious materials are treated as inherently valuable. Exploring the semiotic convergence between gold, Bitcoin and modern paper money, I suggest that the broadly Peircean notion of rhematization in which symbol and indexical signs are (mis)taken for iconic ones is particularly suited to unpack the continuing social salience of commodity theories of money across the gold/paper divide. Moreover attention must be paid to how we define the icon itself.     

Quality in the Performing Arts: Aggregating and Rationalizing Expert Opinion

The article is concerned with the issue of quality in drama, opera, and ballet, respectively. Relying on data from an expert opinion survey and from the statistical yearbook on theatres in Germany, the problem is addressed to what extent quality is linked to certain economic variables. After appropriately aggregating the ordinal expert judgments while controlling for expert-specific standards it is shown that this link is considerably closer for ballet and opera than for drama. Furthermore, in all three art forms positive but decreasing marginal returns of artistic expenses in terms of quality prevail.     

Expert Judgment Versus Public Opinion – Evidence from the Eurovision Song Contest

For centuries, there have been discussions as to whether only experts can judge the quality of cultural output, or whether the taste of the public also has merit. This paper tries to answer that question empirically, using national finals of the Eurovision Song Contest. We show that experts are better judges of quality in the sense that the outcome of finals judged by experts is less sensitive to factors unrelated to quality than the outcome of finals judged by public opinion. Yet, experts are not perfect; their judgment does still depend on such factors. This is also the case in the European finals of the contest.     

New technology and market structure: Evidence from the music recording industry

This paper explores how new scale-reducing technology induced two periods of substantial new entry into the music recording industry. Many of the new firms were product innovators, whose products became popular with consumers. This in turn leads to shifts in the distribution of industry market share, and hence market structure. Reconcentration in the industry resulted largely from horizontal mergers, among other reasons. New digital distribution networks may induce a third-wave of industry deconcentration.     

A Model of the Danish Book Market

Traditionally, books have been a majorfactor in the cultural life of a nation, although littleattention has been paid to the book market. In anattempt to redress this situation, a simple macromodel of the (Danish) book market is presented wheredemand, conventions in the publishing industry, andtechnology interact. The results are dramatic as thebook market has changed decisively in the past twodecades, in effect forcing us to reconsider what itmeans to publish and to be an author.