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Do instruments such as performance indicators, valuation formulas, consumer tests, stock prices or financial contracts represent an external reality? Or do they rather constitute, in a performative fashion, what they refer to? The Provoked Economy tackles this question from a pragmatist angle, considering economic reality as a ceaselessly provoked reality. It takes the reader through a series of diverse empirical sites - from public administrations to stock exchanges, from investment banks to marketing facilities and business schools - in order to explore what can be seen from such a demanding standpoint. It demonstrates that descriptions of economic objects do actually produce economic objects and that the simulacrum of an economic act is indeed a form of realization. It also shows that provoking economic reality means facing practical tests in which what ought to be economic or not is subject to elaboration and controversy. This book opens paths for empirical investigation in the social sciences, but also for the philosophical renewal of the critique of economic reality. It will be useful for students and scholars in social theory, sociology, anthropology, philosophy and economics.

Do things such as performance indicators, valuation formulas, consumer tests, stock prices or financial contracts represent an external reality? Or do they rather constitute, in a performative fashion, what they refer to? The Provoked Economy tackles this question from a pragmatist angle, considering economic reality as a ceaselessly provoked reality. It takes the reader through a series of diverse empirical sites - from public administrations to stock exchanges, from investment banks to marketing facilities and business schools - in order to explore what can be seen fr.

"NESARA/GESARA" pops up easily when one searches for the financial element in conspiratorial, millennialist fantasies today. The acronym, NESARA, stood initially for National Economic Stabilization and Recovery Act: a rather fringe policy proposal ideated in the 1990s by Harvey F. Barnard, a consultant and founder of a NESARA Institute established in Greenwell Springs, Louisiana. The initiative, which took the form of a proposed bill but was never introduced before the US Congress, consisted in a systematic monetary and fiscal reform aiming at "general prosperity" (against the "contrived scheme" put in place by "power brokers in Washington, DC") and included things such as the restoration of gold as constitutional currency, the end of the Federal Reserve System, the elimination of national debt, the abolition of compound interest on loans, and of income tax. The 2000s saw the acronym evolve, now standing for National Economic Security and Reformation Act and referring to a rather esoteric version of the plan, soon acquiring a planetary dimension, in the form of a Global Economic Security and Reformation Act, GESARA. Shaini Goodwin - a spirituality and investment consultant known as the "Dove of Oneness" in New Age internet circles - spearheaded this new conspiratorial interpretation. The "global currency reset" and the general "revaluation" the reform called for were considered to be in fact underway, although in a secret, occulted fashion, with an adverse league of political and financial elites conspiring against the changes. NESARA/GESARA also started to carry a distinctive spiritual, prophetic element, with the restoration of the fair, original, real value of persons and things being connected to the equilibrium of energies - at once planetary, cosmic, mystical, psychic, extra-terrestrial, interdimensional, divine, and economic.

The quandaries of business valuation have marked the pedagogy of business administration since early attempts at institutionalizing the managerial discipline. It is however now commonly admitted, at least in legitimate financial and entrepreneurial circles, that the value of a business (that is, the monetary assessment of a functioning enterprise established in a competitive environment) resides primarily in its earning power or, in other words, that what a business is worth equals its capacity to generate a stream of revenues for the investor or investors that provide it with funding. How did this idea take shape and how did it permeate the business mind? An examination of early pedagogical materials at the Harvard Business School (an influential reference for the socialization of the businessperson) and, in particular, of the vagaries of the idea of capitalization and its exercising in the classroom provides a fine occasion to advance understanding of the meaning of such ideals of business and business value, and of their institutionalization. This empirical study can, in turn, be employed in order to discuss and refine critically our interpretation of what a convention of economic valuation is and how it operates. (author's abstract)

Un robot walrasien. Cotation électronique et justesse de la découverte des prix
Fabian Muniesa
L'article interroge le thème de l'informatisation et l'automatisation des marchés financiers à travers un élément particulier : sa relation avec un certain « effet de justesse » dans ce que les économistes appellent « découverte des prix ». Nous exploitons pour cela le cas de l'automatisation de la cotation à la Bourse de Paris. L'article montre, dans un premier temps, comment l'essor de toute une industrie des technologies de cotation est lié à des enjeux de « qualité des cours » qui mobilisent des représentations spécifiques de l'efficience de la découverte des prix. Nous analysons, en particulier, l'algorithme de cotation et les problèmes qu'il doit résoudre pour trouver un prix qui représente de manière « adéquate » l'état du marché : nous comparons notamment le cas du marché continu et celui du marché de fixing. Dans un second temps, nous analysons les images économiques qui ont souvent servi d'argument en faveur de l'automatisation de la cotation, et du fixing électronique en particulier. Nous montrons la façon dont ces images mettent en scène une certaine idée de la perfection marchande qu'on retrouve dans le schéma intellectuel du « commissaire-priseur walrasien ». Dans un dernier temps, nous montrons comment une justification de type walrasien peut émerger dans une situation concrète : nous avons exploré l'installation récente d'un « fixing de clôture » à la Bourse de Paris et la façon dont cette innovation met en scène des arguments à propos de la justesse de la formation des prix. Cette analyse permet de comprendre les effets de justesse exprimés dans une organisation technique particulière de la cotation et, partant, le sens que ce mode de rationalisation marchande peut avoir, notamment par rapport aux « utopies » de la théorie économique néoclassique.