L’Emprise des Marchés : Comprendre leur Fonctionnement pour Pouvoir les Changer

Michel Callon is a French sociologist and an iconic figure of Actor-Network Theory. His latest book, L'Emprise des Marchés, offers a theoretical review of the socio-economic work that he and his team at the Centre for the Sociology of Innovation at Mines-Paristech have carried out since the 1980s on the naturalisation of market activity by economic science. The book deconstructs the objectification of the market so favoured by economic science and puts forward a socio-evolutionary model of commodification. The possibility of freely exchanging a homogenous good for money at a given price results from a social process that systematically involves five distinct phases : passiva(c)tion ; the establishment of qualculating agents ; the organisation of market encounters ; market attachment; and finally price formation. The book describes these five phases chronologically. This dense book begins by criticising the naturalised economic representation of the market-interface. Subsequent chapters treat market transformation as a slow and intentional process structured into the five steps. The last two chapters place the market arrangement framework chosen by Callon into theoretical perspective. The book ends in a very original manner by publishing genuine criticism of the book, received by Callon, and his responses.