"If you're convinced you know what a market is, think again. As product designers and entrepreneurs soon discover, stable commercial transactions are more enigmatic than economic theory makes them out to be. Slicing through blunt theories of supply and demand, Michel Callon presents a rigorously researched but counterintuitive model of how everyday market activity get produced, at scale"--.

• Cover
• Contents
• Preface to The English Edition
• Introduction: The Enigma of The Market
  • From the Streets of London . . .
  • . . . to the Strip in Las Vegas
• I. From Interface Markets to Market Agencements
  • What Is a Market?
  • The Interface Market Model
  • Toward the Model of Market Agencements
  • Chapter Summaries: Understanding Markets as Framings
• II. The Process of Making Goods Mobile and Alienable
  • I. The Process of Market Passiva(c)tion
    • Spaces of Circulation and the Careers of Goods
    • Disentangling Things from a Density of Associations
    • Framing Reentanglement: Passiva(c)tion
    • Nonmarket-Oriented Passiva(c)tion: Keeping while Giving
    • Market-Oriented Passiva(c)tion: Disentanglement with Detachment
    • The Problem of Property Rights
  • II. Market-Oriented Passiva(c)tion Is a Never-Ending Odyssey: The Telling Example of Commodities Deemed Fictitious
    • Human Labor
    • Land
    • Money and Its Derivatives
    • The Passiva(c)tion of Certain Living Beings
    • Some Final Remarks on Overcoming Trials of Strength in Passiva(c)tion
• III. Agencies and Their Qualculative Equipment
  • There Are a Multitude of Agents with Diff erent Equipment
  • Enriching Our Description of Agents and Their Equipment
  • From Calculation to Qualculation
  • Qualculative Agencies
  • Some Examples of Diverse Agencies and Their Equipment
  • Power Dynamics between Agencies
  • Qualculation Devices Are the Equipment of a Habitus
• IV. Organizing Market Encounters
  • Encounters Create Value
  • Encountering Platforms and Their Networks
  • Platforms as Exploratoriums
  • Singular Multitudes
  • Matters of Concern
• V. Affectio Mercatus: Attachments and Detachments
  • Searching for Affectio Mercatus
  • How Goods Get Attached and Detached
  • Three Attachment Devices for Engaging Goods
  • More and More Attaching Attachments?
• VI. Price Formulation
  • Theories of Pricing in Interface Markets
  • Price Formulation
  • Price Formulation Singularizes Goods
  • Why Price Competition and Nonprice Competition Is a False Distinction
  • How Price Becomes a Tool for Ranking
  • Formulations Are Everywhere
  • The Power of Formulas
  • Confronting Formulas
  • How Problems Can Incite Demands for Reformulation
  • What about Morality?
• VII. How Do Market Agencements Evolve?
  • Why the Term Market “Agencements” and Not “Dispositifs”?
  • An Agencement Acts
  • There Are No Market Agencements without Nonmarket Agencements
  • The Dynamics of Concerns
• VIII. The Role of Theorization In Transforming Markets
  • Theory as Contribution to the Expression of Concerns: Reopening the Debate about Financial Markets and Their Design
  • Avoiding the Worst: Climate Change Policies and Theoretical Realism
  • How Market Agencements Coexist: The Case of Genetically Modified Crops
• Notes
• Index