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- Convenors:
-
Jean-Pierre Galland
(Ecole des Ponts Paris Tech)
Ian Graham
Xiaobai Shen (University of Edinburgh)
Aurelie Delemarle (Ecole des ponts ParisTech)
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- Theme:
- Market-making
- Location:
- Economy 16
- Sessions:
- Friday 19 September, -
Time zone: Europe/Warsaw
Short Abstract:
standardisation, markets construction, governance arrangements
Long Abstract:
Our point of departure is the recognition that standardisation offer spaces of action for those seeking to shape socio-technical change. Innovation processes are spaces where we see a significant role for standards. For example, many scholars argue that standardisation has become the main means of constructing and controlling markets in the neoliberal political economy. This growing salience of standardisation has led to the engagement, beyond national and international standardisation bodies, of a heterogeneous array of new actors, such as third-party certifiers, accreditation bodies, NGOs and consumer groups, with the producer and state actors.
The complex relationships between these actors are sources of both solidarities and asymmetries. There is constant tension between resolving conflicts and creating solidarities among actors around both technical and political matters of concern. "Technical solidarities" can lead simultaneously to hegemonic positions and to informational, democratic, or financial asymmetries.
In this track, we want to explore the identification of the solidarities and asymmetries found in the "world of standards". For example: How are new spaces of solidarity being opened in standardisation and innovation processes? What types of governance arrangements are emerging in these spaces of standardisation? What markets are created through these negotiations and what are their characteristics? What are the configurations of actor alignment and situatedness of negotiations that influence the emergence of solidarity or asymmetry? How can STS contribute to the structuring of techno-political debates on these questions?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 19 September, 2014, -Carlos Ferreira (Coventry University)
Paper long abstract:
This paper analyses the challenges involved in the creation of a socio-technical infrastructure in markets for biodiversity offsets. While the emergence of these markets can be traced to the principle of performativity of economics - the application of principles of neoclassical economics to the problem of governing the environment (Callon, 1998b, 2007; Garcia-Perpet, 2007; MacKenzie, Muniesa, & Siu, 2007) - their expansion is beset by obstacles brought about by the commodity exchanged therein. Like other natural resources before, biodiversity is proving to be an uncooperative commodity (Bakker, 2003; Robertson, 2004, 2007), limiting the capacity of commodifying technologies (Kopytoff, 1986) to make things the same (MacKenzie, 2009) and establish equivalence between biodiversity lost in one geographical location and biodiversity gained elsewhere.
Based on published reports and interviews with agents involved in markets for biodiversity offsets in the United States, Germany and England, this article analyses how attempts at making things the same through the creation of standards are impaired by the differing objectives and preferences of different groups of agents. Even as a "best-practice" standard for biodiversity offsetting has been published (BBOP, 2012), which serves as a normative device for agents involved, the development of the respective market agencements (Muniesa, Millo, & Callon, 2007) remains a hot topic (Callon, 1998a, 2009). The result is continued tension, both between geographically-specific markets for biodiversity offsets, and within said markets. This impairs standardisation, and compromises the potential for future market expansion.
Vincent Cardon (Université Picardie Jules Verne)
Paper long abstract:
"Online consumer reviews" (OCR) proliferate on the web. They allow any Internet user to give advices on a broad range of products and services and thereby to guide consumers' choice based on her own experience. This way of evaluating products that is reputed to restore symmetry in the relationships of the demand and supply sides of the market is rather standard and is made of a rating associated with a written review.
I focus firstly on the interaction between these two dimensions, based on a quantitative analysis of users' contributions on the tourism website TripAdvisor. The lexical analysis of 680000 comments reveals widely diverse writing practices and the use of categories of opinion that vary with the rating attributed, the trip's context, the language, and the hotel category. Market and rating hierarchies also have their own textual expressions. The higher contributors rate a hotel, the more they tend to adopt a narrative approach to their consumption experience. OCRs' success also triggered reactions from the industry that resulted in particular in the creation of an AFNOR (French Standardization Agency) think tank. Hotel managers, committed to « moralize » the internet through the fight against « fake » reviews, are trying to impose an objectification and standardization of the reviews of hotels provided by consumers, in order to get a better grip on their reputation. The ethnographic analysis of those reactions is the object of our second focus of our proposal that examines how some technical innovations imply fights between diverse standards.
Amah Edoh (MIT)
Paper long abstract:
Dutch wax cloth, also known as African print cloth, has been designed by Dutch designers in Holland for West African markets since the late 19th century. Vlisco, the company that introduced Dutch wax to the region, standardized its prints' color combinations from the earliest days of trade; for instance, red-blue-gold is known within the company as "Igbo colors," while pink-gold is considered to be Congolese people's preferred color combination.
A new form of standardization is currently at play as the company seeks to create a brand identity for itself and broaden its markets beyond Africa, to European and American consumers. Since 2006, it has been launching four textile collections each year, each characterized by a theme and a "color story." The color combinations prescribed by this "color story" are uniformly applied to the images the company's designers create, leading to visually unified collections and marketing campaigns. This process of standardization is the scene of both harmonization and tension as the cloth moves along its trajectory from concept to design to printed cloth in market stalls and on bodies.
Based on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Holland and Togo, this paper considers the implications of this new standardization practice, "the color story," as Dutch wax designs move along their trajectory, from concept to consumption. How do actors at each node understand and engage with this standardization practice? What insights does the Dutch wax "color story" standardization yield about the relationship between designers, the corporation within which they operate, and users in the formation of European and African markets for Dutch wax cloth?