The economy of qualities

By Michel Callon, Cécile Méadel, V. Rabeharisoa. 2002

1,334 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The aim of this paper is to highlight the main characteristics of what the authors call 'the economy of qualities'. The authors show that qualifying products and positioning goods are major concerns for agents evolving within the 'economy of qualities'. Competition in such an economy is structured through two basic mechanisms. The first is what the authors propose to call the process of singularization of products. The second is the mechanism whereby consumers are attached to, and detached from, goods that are proposed to them. At the heart of these logics, one can find multiple socio-technical devices that are designed by economic agents, which ensure the distribution of cognitive competencies, and which constantly and finely tune supply and demand. Relying upon Jean Gadrey's work, the authors claim that the economy of qualities is nowhere more effective than in services providing activities, and especially in those sectors that invest heavily in New Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). Finally, the authors suggest that, in the economy of qualities, the functioning and the organization of markets are issues that are shared by scholars and actors. In these highly reflexive markets, a collaboration between them is needed.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2c6298f567f7ee602ae07652c3ed6950810b4a8f

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Citations in the corpus

Geographies of markets: Materials, morals and monsters in motion (2011, background): “Echoing what Michel Callon (Callon et al., 2002: 196) has termed ‘economists in the wild’, however, economic entities do not so much take form according to the prescriptions of neoclassical economics, but are shaped by the normative prescriptions and the practical knowledge of applied sociotechnolog”
Economic markets as calculative collective devices (2005, background): “The process of individualization or singularization consists in a gradual definition of the properties of the product, shaped in such a way that it can enter into the consumer’s world and become attached to it. Throughout the process the thing, a product undergoing qualification, is progressively tr”
A new perspective on market dynamics (2014, background): “In sociology, the actor–network theory (see Callon, 2007; Callon et al., 2002; Latour 1987, 2007) emphasizes the qualification of goods as a potential source of market plasticity.”
Co-producing Transition: Innovation Processes in Farms Adhering to Solidarity-based Purchase Groups (GAS) in Tuscany, Italy (2011, background): “However, niches can also strengthen themselves by adopting (and adapting) technologies and enrolling actors of the dominant regime, thus detaching them from conventional networks and reattaching them into alternative ones (Callon et al., 2002).”
Tools of the trade: the socio-technology of arbitrage in a Wall Street trading room (2004, positive): “This paper is part of a research agenda that breaks with that pact by turning to problems of valuation and calculation (White, 1981, 2001; Boltanski and Thevenot, 1991, 1999; Stark, 1999, 2000; Thevenot, 2001; Callon and Muniesa, 2002; Callon et al., 2002; Girard and Stark, 2002).”
Alternative (Shorter) Food Supply Chains and Specialist Livestock Products in the Scottish–English Borders (2005, background): “…leading multiple retailers have established local food sourcing schemesöASDA (local choice), Somerfield (local life), Waitrose (locally sourced), etc. (5) For Callon et al (2002), the central concern is the requalification of products and the redefinition of their properties and characteristics.”
Peripheral Vision (2005, neutral): “Throughout the process the thing — a product undergoing qualification — is progressively transformed into a good (Callon et al. 2002).”
Intermediaries, Users and Social Learning in Technological Innovation (2008, background): “Instead of an “invisible hand”, it is these very tangible networks that are recently raised to the fore as being able to shape, respond to and maintain seemingly abstract characteristics such as styles and tastes (Hennion, 1989; Callon et al., 2002).”
The social order of markets (2009, background): “When consumers are "attached" (Callon et al. 2002) to goods, expectations are stabilized and uncertainty with regard to the value of a product reduced.”
Markets, market-making and marketing (2007, background): “The framework proposed by Callon et al. (2002) and Callon and Muniesa (2005) leaves a number of questions open.”
An Essay on the Growing Contribution of Economic Markets to the Proliferation of the Social (2007, background): “In an earlier publication we introduced the concept of the economy of qualities to characterize this transformation (Callon et al., 2002).”
Service, services and products: rethinking operations strategy (2009, background): “However, as the offering moves further away from one encapsulated neatly in a physical artefact, more work is required to stabilise and qualify what the service is and to make it tradable (Callon et al., 2002).”