This article develops an analytical framework to study the role of narratives in markets and argues that there is a relationship between the structure and composition of narratives produced by market actors and market dynamics. With respect to theory, the article bridges the perspectives that study markets as cultures and as fields and draws from the organizational studies approach to the analysis of narratives. Two empirical cases of the crises narratives in the emerging contemporary art markets of Russia and India (...) illustrate the use of the framework. The analysis is based on in-depth interviews with artists and art dealers as well as observations in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, New Delhi, and Mumbai conducted between April 2012 and June 2013. The article shows that there is a widely shared crisis narrative with a coherent structure in the Indian art market. In contrast, fragmented and contested stories that lack narrative structure dominate in the Russian art market. The analysis of the first case highlights the narrative structure and shows the productive work it does in the Indian market—it provides a moral justification of existing market norms and produces a perspective for the future. The analysis of the second case focuses on the context of narrative production and connects the conflicting interpretations of the crisis in the Russian art market to contested hierarchies and persistent uncertainty. (shrink)

Does organizational governance contribute to academic quality? Two top research universities are observed in-depth: Berkeley and the MIT. Three key factors are listed that help generate consistent and lasting high performance. Priority is allocated to self-evaluation and to the development of talent. Values and norms such as community membership, commitment to the affectio societatis, mutual respect and trust strongly regulate the behaviors of the faculty. Complex inner organizational processes are at work making integration and differentiation compatible. Each of these factors (...) contributes to produce top academic quality in a synergetic way. (shrink)

Starting from the assumption that decision situations in economic contexts are characterized by fundamental uncertainty, this article argues that the decision-making of intentionally rational actors is anchored in fictions. “Fictionality” in economic action is the inhabitation in the mind of an imagined future state of the world and the beliefs in causal mechanisms leading to this future state. Actors are motivated in their actions by the imagined future and organize their activities based on these mental representations. Since these representations are (...) not confined to empirical reality, fictional expectations are also a source of creativity in the economy. Fictionality opens up a way to an understanding of the microfoundations of the dynamics of the economy. The article develops the notion of fictional expectations. It discusses the role of fictional expectations for the dynamics of the economy and addresses the question of how fictional expectations motivate action. The last part relates the notion of fiction to calculation and social macrostructures, especially institutions and cultural frames. The conclusion hints at the research program developing from the concept of fictional expectations. (shrink)

This article examines valuation and payment practices of psychoanalysts in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Psychoanalysts do not use explicit sliding scales but rather reach an agreement about fees in conversation with the patient. This negotiation is conducted with some principles of gift-giving, where parties try to give more, rather than through competitive bargaining (an inverted bazaar). Drawing on the sociology of money, morals and markets, and valuation studies literatures, I distinguish four factors to explain this: 1) Some formally produced prices as (...) well as market mechanisms shape benchmarks for fees, but the peculiar service psychologists offer (which makes quality judgments hard), the way patients and therapists are matched, and the lack of public information about prices allow for high flexibility in price-setting; these are structural factors that remain unsaid in the conversation on fees. 2) A professional narrative that highlights a responsibility towards patients that should not be contaminated by economic interest. 3) Psychoanalysts’ elaborations on the meanings of the payment, which should reflect the uniqueness of each patient and the bond analyst-patient and symbolize the patient’s commitment to treatment, involving a cost and a loss beyond the economic. 4) The prevalence of cash, face-to-face payment without intermediaries, which helps desacralize the analyst and disentangle the session from the rest of the economic life of the analyst, but impedes evading moralization of the transaction. Payments in psychoanalysis are delicate arrangements, and analysts often stress about valuation and payments. They have to be careful to ensure this flexibility results in morally acceptable transactions. (shrink)

Progressing beyond the given has been a key modern tendency. Yet modern societies are currently facing the problem of how to put limits on progress, expansion, and growth, live within them, and preserve (rather than transcend) the present. Drawing on economic sociology scholarship on valuation and morality in economic life, this article develops and applies the term economization to analyze the enactment of limits on progress. The question of end-of-life care—when to stop medical efforts to prolong life, postpone death, and (...) advance the scientific frontier—serves as an illustrative empirical case that sheds light on limit-setting in general. My analysis of this case combines historical, ethnographic, and in-depth interview data on US palliative care clinicians, who specialize in making life-and-death decisions in acute care hospitals. (shrink)

Uncertainty is an intriguing aspect of social life. Uncertainty is epistemic, future-oriented, and implies that we can neither predict nor foresee what will happen when acting. In cases in which no institutionalized certainty about future states exists, or can be generated, judgment is needed. This article presents the forms by which uncertainty is reduced as a result of judgments made about different alternatives in a process involving several actors. This type of uncertainty may exist, for example, about which artist is (...) the best, which offer in the market is more valuable, which football team is better than all the rest, or which research proposal will get a grant. The result of different forms of uncertainty reduction is increased certainty concerning alternatives in relation to one another, such as good and bad, rank lists, scores, quality assessment, and “winner and losers.” Based on the result, uncertainty is reduced and action is facilitated. The forms are structural and comprise roles; may be legitimate in a smaller or larger domain; and may exist in all spheres of life, as exemplified in sports competitions, in labor markets, and in the ranking of universities. Three forms of uncertainty reduction based on judgment are identified in this article: (1) decision, made by an authority; (2) valuation, by means of which order arises as a result of actors ascribing values; and (3) contest, by which an order is the result of direct struggle. (shrink)

This is a detailed reply to Kurtuluş Gemici’s article, in this issue of Theory and Society, “Uncertainty, the problem of order, and markets: a critique of Beckert, Theory and Society, May 2009.”.

The range and types of performance metrics has recently proliferated in academic settings, with bibliometric indicators being particularly visible examples. One field that has traditionally been hospitable towards such indicators is biomedicine. Here the relative merits of bibliometrics are widely discussed, with debates often portraying them as heroes or villains. Despite a plethora of controversies, one of the most widely used indicators in this field is said to be the Journal Impact Factor. In this article we argue that much of (...) the current debates around researchers’ uses of the JIF in biomedicine can be classed as ‘folk theories’: explanatory accounts told among a community that seldom get systematically checked. Such accounts rarely disclose how knowledge production itself becomes more-or-less consolidated around the JIF. Using ethnographic materials from different research sites in Dutch University Medical Centers, this article sheds new empirical and theoretical light on how performance metrics variously shape biomedical research on the ‘shop floor.’ Our detailed analysis underscores a need for further research into the constitutive effects of evaluative metrics. (shrink)

Is there such a sub-discipline as “sociology of valuation and evaluation”? Identifying the main focus, the topics, and the analytical designs, i.e., reflecting on a theoretical profile of such an investigation, is far from complete. The main question is indeed—where to start when addressing the sociology of valuation and evaluation? Is it a specific area of research, analysis, and inquiry, with specific objects? Should we confine it to the many important qualitative and quantitative studies dedicated to the measure of market (...) performance, the efficiency of public policy, profitability of private investment, or identification of best practices in various areas ? Beyond business and administration processes, a huge body of research in economic sociology has developed in recent years that has renewed the investigations on economic experience through a moral lens (Lamont 2000; Vatin 2008; Karpik 2010; Beckert and Aspe .. (shrink)

Questions of value are central to understanding alternative practices of food exchange. This study introduces a practice-based approach to value that challenges the dominant views, which capture value as either an input for or an outcome of practices of exchange. Building on a longitudinal ethnographic study on food collectives, I show how value, rather than residing in something that people share, or in something that objects have, is an ideal target that continuously unfolds and evolves in action. I found that (...) people organized their food collectives around pursuing three kinds of value-ideals, namely good food, good price and good community. These value-ideals became reproduced in food collectives through what I identified as valuing modes, by which people evaluated the goodness of food, prices and community. My analysis revealed that, while participating in food collectives in order to pursue their value-ideals, people were likely to have differing reasons for pursuing them and tended to attach different meanings to the same value-ideal. I argue that understanding how value as an ideal target is reproduced through assessing and assigning value is essential in further explorations of the formation of value and in better understanding the dynamics of organizing alternative practices of food exchange. (shrink)