Re: PEN-L Digest - 17 Jun 2007 to 18 Jun 2007 (#2007-172)

[Michael Perelman <michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ann, your question is right on target.  Callon is not a walrasian.  After describing 
the strawberry market, he makes a similar point to the one you made.  But the whole 
concept of that strawberry market was walrasian.  Are we one the same page?


On Tue, Jun 19, 2007 at 02:23:47PM -0400, ann li wrote:
> On channeling Walras and a strawberry alarm clock:
> 
> I have some of my usual confusion, so I will apologize in advance for 
> asking a stupid question...
> 
> Michael, how Walrasian is that idea when Callon is positive, yet 
> cautious, regarding the use of ANT since its use does allow for ?the 
> variety of possible configurations of the action? despite some 
> potentially essentialized or dichotomized premises on what constitutes 
> voluntary action? What would this mean for proposing non- or 
> post-walrasian concepts?
> 
> For example, Callon (1997) says further in a similar writing: ?ANT 
> enables one to go further than do traditional socio-economics or 
> analyses in terms of networks proposed by people like Granovetter. 
> Markets are not embedded in networks. In other words, there is no point 
> in adding social, interpersonal, or informal relations in order to 
> understand their functioning. A concrete market is the result of 
> operations of disentanglement, framing, internalization and 
> externalization. To understand a market it is necessary first to agree 
> to take what it does seriously; that is to say, the construction of 
> calculative actors who consider themselves to be quits once the 
> transaction has been concluded. This does not mean that everything has 
> been framed and internalized and that no relations other than market 
> relations exist. I have suggested that complete disentanglement is 
> impossible; framing can function and survive only if there are 
> overflowing and connections which have not been internalized. But it is 
> one thing to see these links and relations as having been voluntarily 
> and actively rejected from the framework of market relations, with the 
> precise aim of locally and temporarily purifying market relations; it is 
> quite another thing to say that the market is possible and functions 
> only because these relations are present and form, in a sense, the 
> substratum of market exchange.? (p.8, 
> http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fss/sociology/papers/callon-market-test.pdf)
> 
> Ann

-- 
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
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