This article described three heuristics that are employed in making judgements under uncertainty: representativeness, which is usually employed when people are asked to judge the probability that an object or event A belongs to class or process B; availability of instances or scenarios, which is often employed when people are asked to assess the frequency of a class or the plausibility of a particular development; and adjustment from an anchor, which is usually employed in numerical prediction when a relevant value (...) is available. These heuristics are highly economical and usually effective, but they lead to systematic and predictable errors. A better understanding of these heuristics and of the biases to which they lead could improve judgements and decisions in situations of uncertainty. (shrink)

How does science create knowledge? Epistemic cultures, shaped by affinity, necessity, and historical coincidence, determine how we know what we know. In this book, Karin Knorr Cetina compares two of the most important and intriguing epistemic cultures of our day, those in high energy physics and molecular biology. The first ethnographic study to systematically compare two different scientific laboratory cultures, this book sharpens our focus on epistemic cultures as the basis of the knowledge society.

There are three components to boundary objects as outlined in the original 1989 article. Interpretive flexibility, the structure of informatic and work process needs and arrangements, and, finally, the dynamic between ill-structured and more tailored uses of the objects. Much of the use of the concept has concentrated on the aspect of interpretive flexibility and has often mistaken or conflated this flexibility with the process of tacking back-and-forth between the ill-structured and well-structured aspects of the arrangements. Boundary objects are not (...) useful at just any level of scale or without full consideration of the entire model. The article discusses these aspects of the architecture of boundary objects and includes a discussion of one of the ways that boundary objects appeared as a concept in earlier work done by Star. It concludes with methodological considerations about how to study the system of boundary objects and infrastructure. (shrink)

Around the globe, economists affect markets by saying what markets are doing, what they should do, and what they will do. Increasingly, experimental economists are even designing real-world markets. But, despite these facts, economists are still largely thought of as scientists who merely observe markets from the outside, like astronomers look at the stars. Do Economists Make Markets? boldly challenges this view. It is the first book dedicated to the controversial question of whether economics is performative--of whether, in some cases, (...) economics actually produces the phenomena it analyzes.The book's case studies--including financial derivatives markets, telecommunications-frequency auctions, and individual transferable quotas in fisheries--give substance to the notion of the performativity of economics in an accessible, nontechnical way. Some chapters defend the notion; others attack it vigorously. The book ends with an extended chapter in which Michel Callon, the idea's main formulator, reflects upon the debate and asks what it means to say economics is performative.The book's insights and strong claims about the ways economics is entangled with the markets it studies should interest--and provoke--economic sociologists, economists, and other social scientists.In addition to the editors and Callon, the contributors include Marie-France Garcia-Parpet, Francesco Guala, Emmanuel Didier, Philip Mirowski, Edward Nik-Khah, Petter Holm, Vincent-Antonin Lépinay, and Timothy Mitchell. (shrink)

As recent studies in economic and financial sociology have underscored, calculation is central to economic practices. While some sociological accounts locate the performance of calculation within individual ability, networks of human agents or their cultural embeddedness, studies operating on the background of the sociology of (scientific) knowledge conceive of calculation as situated in the practice of the participants engaged, the technological tools used and their requirements. The article explores this point further, using a distinction which can be traced back to (...) Heidegger’s notion of Gestell (enframing): the ‘calculation of something’ and the ‘calculation with something’ are analysed taking the practices of risk management departments of big international banks as an example. It is argued that, through the use of calculation tools, the corporate clients are constituted anew and that written documents which are the outcome of this process constitute a social prosthesis for remote communication taking place between subsidiaries and the headquarters of international banks. (shrink)

The ArgumentWhen economists report on research using mathematical models, they use a literary form similar to the experimental report in the laboratory sciences. This form consists of a narrative of a series of events, with a clear temporal segregation of the agency of the author and the agency of the objects of study. Existing explanations of this literary form treat it as a rhetorical device that either conceals the agency of the author in constructing and interpreting the findings, or simply (...) appropriates the appearance of accepted scientific method. This article — based on analysis of a research program in economics, a single article that issued from that program, and in-depth interviews with the authors — proposes an alternate interpretation. Drawing on the praxeological “laboratory studies” tradition in science studies, we treat work with mathematical models as involving the interaction of economists with objects that act independently of the analyst's will. The clear separation of the economist's and the models agency, as depicted in the published report, is not the result of a rhetorical rewriting of actual events, but is a practical accomplishment. Every step in the analytical work that preceded the paper is devoted to developing a procedure in which the economists' agency will be completely accountable in terms of accepted practices, and the performance of the model will be distinct and compelling. (shrink)