5. The Problem with Economics: Naturalism, Critique and Performativity

The reflection that follows was initially elaborated as a contribution to the Colloque de Cerisy on ‘The Historical Anthropology of Scientific Reason’ organized by Philippe Descola and Bruno Latour (12–19 July 2006). It was also presented at the ‘Markets, Economics, Culture and Performativity’ Conference at Goldsmiths organized by Will Davies and José Ossandón (6 March 2007) and then transformed into a contribution to ‘Performativities: Contexts, Domains, Perspectives’, a publication project (sadly suspended) prepared by Silvia Posocco and Sadie Wearing. After sleeping for a few years, it gained the opportunity to reach the published side of the world as a contribution to this collection of essays prepared by Ivan Boldyrev and Ekaterina Svetlova. Acknowledgements are also due to funding provided by the European Research Council (grant no. 263529). I thank Daniel Beunza, Ivan Boldyrev, Michel Callon, Will Davies, Philippe Descola, Keith Hart, Petter Holm, Bruno Latour, Scott Lash, Javier Lezaun, Emilio Luque, Donald MacKenzie, José Ossandón, Paolo Quattrone, Ekaterina Svetlova, Silvia Posocco, Yamina Tadjeddine, David Teira, Manuel Torres and Sadie Wearing for their remarks on this unusual essay or for the conversations that contributed to the reflection.

Actor–network theory—a scholarly viewpoint of which Michel Callon is an active proponent—originated as both a materialist approach to the study of science and technology and a pragmatist critique of regular sociological explanatory categories (see Muniesa 2015).

Francesco Guala’s phrasing conveys this idea remarkably well: ‘Economic rationality is not like Newton’s laws, which are supposed to be at work everywhere in the universe. It is a fragile property that must be carefully preserved by creating a hospitable environment’ (Guala 2007, 147).

But see also the clarification provided by Marshall Sahlins (2008).

Eduardo Viveiros de Castro uses the notion of ‘multinaturalism’ to characterize this feature of Amazonian thought (Viveiros de Castro 1998, 2004; see also Latour 2004).

The structural classification proposed by Descola adds to naturalism and animism, two other forms of intellection, which are totemism and analogism. In naturalism, the universality of physicality is linked to the contingency of interiorities. In animism, the generalization of interiority is a counterpoint to the differentiation of physicalities. Totemism is characterized by a moral and material continuity of physicality and interiority. Analogism is the realm of multiple differences at both levels, and of multiple networks of correspondence that make the world readable as an ongoing chain of relations.

This instance of a ‘breaching thought experiment’ is based on a real conversation with a British academic on how to translate slightly ambiguous expressions like ‘économie des conventions’ or ‘économie alternative’, for which both ‘economics’ and ‘economy’ may make sense (but mean entirely different things).

For useful examinations of the origins of the notion of ‘the economy’, see for instance Breslau (2003), Mitchell (1998, 2002, 2008) and Goswami (2004).

This second instance of a ‘breaching thought experiment’ is based on one actual discussion at the seminar of an interdisciplinary academic society which includes economists, sociologists, anthropologists and political scientists as members and which hosts a monthly research seminar in Paris on the ‘social studies of finance’. A clarification was needed to convince one economist (who actually made a point of speaking ‘as an economist’) that ‘sciences sociales’ was short for ‘sciences économiques et sociales’, not a nasty way to exclude economics. The name of the ESRC (the British Economic and Social Research Council) can also serve as a blatant demonstration.

This instance of a ‘breaching thought experiment’ is inspired by observations at one panel discussion at the annual meeting of the Society for Social Studies of Science held in Paris in 2004.

A particularly helpful introduction to the analysis of the role of metrology in the construction of universality is O’Connell (1993).

On the ‘scholastic fallacies’ of economics, see for instance Bourdieu (1997, 2005). On the problems of criticizing the unrealism of assumptions in economics, see Cartwright (1999).

This fourth ‘breaching thought experiment’ is based on memories from the first year of the undergraduate programme in economics at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (I then had to redirect preferences to sociology).

I owe to Petter Holm a particularly brilliant interpretation of neoliberal economics in the light of Right Said Fred’s debut song ‘I’m too sexy’: the music stops abruptly after we hear ‘I’m too sexy for this song’.

This last instance of a ‘breaching thought experiment’ is inspired by the discussions that took place during a workshop on ‘The Performativities of Economics’ held in Paris in August 2004. A number of papers presented at the workshop evolved into contributions to MacKenzie et al. (2007), others were part of Callon et al. (2007).

A follow-up of this discussion can be read in a series of reactions and of further clarifications (Callon 2005; Miller 2005; see also Barry and Slater 2005). An accurate appraisal is offered by Holm (2007).

An almost identical version of the argument is published as Mirowski and Nik-Khah (2008).

The empirical parts of the critique by Mirowski and Nik-Khah focus on an article by Francesco Guala on the role played by economics (game theory and experimental economics) in the construction of spectrum auctions (Guala 2001). A further exchange is available in Edward Nik-Khah (2006) and Guala (2006). See also Callon (2007a), Nik-Khah (2008) and Muniesa and Callon (2009).

I put here the topic of shared academic socialization and scholarly habits aside.

If we play with Descola’s structural categories, we could think of the role of Callon in this ‘breaching thought experiment’ as impersonating the menace of analogism over naturalism, that is, the menace of a style of intellection that would be attentive to varied correspondences between economists and economies, both imitating each other, engendering each other.

In a critical review of MacKenzie et al. (2007) published in the Journal of Economic Literature, David Colander (a reputable economist) says among other things that he does not understand the notion of performativity very well, that he dislikes it and finds it irritating, that proponents in that field think this topic is new but in reality it is not, that the point is about signalling a contradiction in economics but that there is no such contradiction, that most economists are indifferent to science studies and would not care about this discussion, and, finally, that economics should perform more and better (Colander 2008).

I refer instead the reader to the tradition of ‘provocative containment’ examined in Lezaun et al. (2013). I owe to Javier Izquierdo the idea that cultural pranks can operate as vehicles for economic inquiry (Izquierdo Antonio 2010).