How are ‘Things’ Exchanged?

4.3.1 Market exchange

Individuals and organizations are engaged in purposeful social and economic exchanges with other people and organizations. The main purpose of market exchanges is utilitarian (Bagozzi, 1975), whether dealing with tangible goods or intangible services. Exchange is a basic human activity within social lives and is central to marketing (Håkansson and

Prenkert, 2004). An exchange aims to meet and satisfy a human need. It is a conjunction of meaning between action and reaction, or a kind of interaction. Market exchange theory has its roots in economic sociology and the sociology of science (Callon, 1998b; Callon and Muniesa, 2005) and has a significant impact on market theory and marketing practices (Alderson, 1965; Hunt, 1976; Kotler, 1972; Sheth and Garrett, 1986). Many scholars have

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defined market exchange. Hodgson (1988) states that market exchanges match the exchange of property to the exchanges between products and money, showing the materiality characteristic of market exchange. Bagozzi (1975) points out that marketers have tended to regard ‘exchange’ as signifying a special type that focuses primarily on direct exchanges of tangible goods between two parties. Granovetter (1985) refers to the concept from Polanyi (1957) that market exchange is embedded in the structure of social relations, and regards embeddedness as economic behaviour. He points out that exchanges are submerged in social interaction. This is an epiphenomenon of the market. Araujo (2007) proposes a definition of the process of market exchange as: ‘a process of framing that allows distinct agents to come together and agree a price for the exchange of goods and money'. Three necessary conditions exist for market exchange to take place: actors in the exchange, some specific interest for exchange, and embeddedness. Callon (1998a) extends Granovetter’s (1985) perspective on embeddedness in the structure of social relations and the supporting role which the modern industrial society plays in smoothing market

exchanges. This concept is also bound up with materiality (Orlikowski, 2007) in the presence of two or more parties, units, actors or agents (Alderson, 1965). The agents that construct exchanges are human actors, interacting with each other and exhibiting human behaviour (Hagberg, 2010). Hagberg also points out that market agents (buyers and sellers) are shaped by the process of exchange through practices (Araujo et al., 2008) rather than through pre-existing conditions in markets.

Buyers and sellers can be configured in certain relationships according to a particular mode of exchange (Callon and Muniesa, 2005) with the objective of exchanging goods and services to realise economic purpose (Callon, 1998b). Kjellberg and Helgesson (2007b) examine the connections between the ways in which economic exchanges take place by analysing the modes of exchange, the constitution of objects and the agents of exchanges.

They take the concept of ‘mode of exchange’ from Lie (1992) as being to combine practices and activities in order to promote market exchanges. This helps to investigate constructed exchange relations (Lie, 1992). Three modes of exchanges are examined and compared: full service exchange, self-service exchange and distance exchange (Kjellberg and Helgesson, 2007b). Their empirical outcomes demonstrate that the self-service mode of exchange is the one that is involved in the process of gradual configuration and

reconfiguration. This supports Callon (1998b, p. 253): ‘framing represents a violent effort to extricate the agents concerned from [the network of interactions in which they are involved] and push them onto a clearly demarcated stage which has been specially

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prepared and fitted out'. The configuration of the mode of exchange, exchange objects and exchanging agents are intertwined in the process of framing.

In the process of realising that market exchanges produce a set of practices (Lie, 1992), buyers and sellers encounter exchange possibilities (Spillman, 1999) and further develop their relationships and the framing of market exchanges. Araujo and Kjellberg (2009) address the fragile, incomplete and temporary features of the framing, and indicate that a multidimensional boundary delimits what is to be considered as part of the process of exchange between sellers and buyers. Buyers and sellers are configured on both sides of the boundary but they can be disrupted by the to-be made or ready-made events brought about by buyers, sellers or others, and this can be a condition for exchanges to take place.

The study of Kjellberg and Helgesson (2007b) focuses on changes in physical properties, and in the agents and objects involved in dyadic exchange relations but does not take changes of context into account. Different modes of exchange involve different sequences of events for agent configuration. Any change in the process of the exchange reality has consequences for market shaping. For instance, changes in regulations influence

normalising practices and the resulting relationships between buyers and sellers.

There seems to be a gap in the research on the condition and consequences of the configuration of exchange agents in dynamic and networked contexts. I examine agent configuration in the next section in order to understand how actors are involved in market shaping.

4.3.2 Agents configuration - agencement

Research about the configuration of agents in market exchanges originates from a

recognition that markets are not created a priori but are shaped by actors. The analysis of the configuration of agents indicates that configurations are shaped by a variety of factors including human actors, tools, equipment, technical devices etc. This concept has been referred to as agencement by Callon (2005, 2008). Two important implications of this approach are addressed by Hagberg (2010). These are the role of material devices in markets and the unstable nature of actors, both of which could change depending on the entities that construct them. Du Gay indicates that agency:

is distributed in the sense that the capacity to exert agency resides not simply in human beings but in the agencement – those fixtures and fittings, material

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arrangements and devices which help furnish them with certain characteristics and enable them to act in particular environments. Different agencement produce different forms of action. Agency, rather than being a singular, universal and human-centred capacity, is distributed, plural and contingent upon particular socio-technical arrangements. Social agency does not have a unitary form. It varies with the forms of discourse, techniques and practices defining a given activity…

(2008, p. 50)

Agencement is a French word indicating ‘arrangement’ (or ‘assemblage’) and refers to ‘the idea of a combination of heterogeneous elements that have been adjusted to one another' (Çalışkan and Callon, 2010). Agencement is defined as arrangements endowed with the ability to act in different ways, depending on their configuration. Agencies are

consequences of socio-technical agencements depending on associations between social and material entities (Araujo and Kjellberg, 2009). Çalışkan and Callon (2010) highlight the socio-technical arrangement of markets and distinguish markets from other economic organizations. Callon (2009, 2010) explores the concept of socio-technical arrangements (STAs), referred to by Deleuze and Guatarri (1972), from three perspectives: (1)

distributed action and cognition; (2) the anthropology of science and technology, mainly based on actor–network theory (ANT); and (3) the socio-anthropology of incapacity, focusing on socio-technical arrangements and actions. Based on Callon’s perspective of distributed action and cognition, collective action is to be carried out through a

combination of arrangements, including ideas of incremental innovation and technologies.

Three advantages of adopting the concept of agencement according to Çalışkan and Callon (2010) are: (1) analysing the categories of agency is not as essential a task as describing agencements compared with analysing agencements themselves; (2) agencement enables us to make changes of size intelligible because a firm or a team can act as a single entity which is neither simpler nor more complicated than a single human being; this provides a way of analysing the practice of a firm through the activities of its representative; (3) agencement leaves the configuration of agency wide open, which enables the distribution of collective actions and regulatory responsibility. It is more precise to refer to socio-technical agencements rather than just agencements (Çalışkan and Callon, 2010) because STAs consist of material, technical and textual devices together with human beings and their cognition. From the perspective of an analysis of STAs, the concept of the market can

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be explained through three characteristics (Çalışkan and Callon, 2010):

(1) Markets organise the conception, production and circulation of goods, as well as the voluntary transfer of some property rights attached to them. These transfers involve a monetary compensation which seals the goods’ attachment to their new owners.

(2) A market is an arrangement of heterogeneous constituents that deploys the following: rules and conventions; technical devices; metrological systems;

logistical infrastructures; texts, discourses and narratives (e.g. on the pros and cons of competition); technical and scientific knowledge (including social

scientific methods); and the competencies and skills embodied in human beings.

(3) Markets delimit and construct a space of confrontation and power struggle.

Multiple contradictory definitions and valuations of goods as well as agents oppose one another in markets until the terms of the transaction are peacefully determined by pricing mechanisms.

Based on Du Gay (2008), studying agencement provides a way to engage in deeper

research into agent configuration in market exchanges. Agencements produce differentiated agents and positions in the market, and distribute agencies within socio-technical

arrangements. As Callon and Çalışkan (2010) state: ‘Agencements denote socio-technical arrangements when they are considered from the point [of] view of their capacity to act and to give meaning to action’. Thus, the development of STAs is regarded as a process that involves a set of devices to combine social entities in markets. This is called

‘marketisation’ by Çalışkan and Callon (2009, 2010). The study of marketisation is the effort made to describe, analyse and make intelligible the shape, constitution and dynamics of a market's socio-technical arrangement. The process of marketisation is the main

research focus of the so-called market studies developed by the Market Studies Group within the IMP.

4.3.3 Actors in STAs

The centralities (main agents) of marketisation are actors in practice. They are

heterogeneous entities playing a main role in the agencement around market practice.

Buyers and sellers are opposed in market exchanges and embedded with social and

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material interests, which require them to follow economic calculation. Actors, such as sellers, buyers and others, evolve in agencement (Hagberg, 2010) and develop so that relationships rather than a single transaction are established through the process of exchange.

Araujo and Kjellberg (2009) conceptualise actors from a practice-based approach and propose that: (1) actors are positioned within temporal frames in which interactions between entities are part of some ‘real-time’ event or situation; (2) actors are emergent outcomes of associations seeking temporary interests in goods and services in markets; (3) actors are recognised by others so that relationships and networks are a priori issues; and (4) actors act as collectives with heterogeneous elements. Thus actors can be conceptualised as comprising STAs with specific characteristics.

Depending on the nature of the arrangements, of the framing and attribution devices, we can consider agencies reduced to adaptive behaviours, reflexive agencies, calculative or non-calculative agencies, or disinterested or selfish ones, that may be either collective or individual . . . (Re)configuring an agency means (re)configuring the socio-technical agencements constituting it, which requires material, textual and other investments.

(Callon and Çalışkan, 2005)

Kjellberg and Helgesson (2007b) provide an illustration of this in their study of the

introduction of self-service in food retailing, and also highlight that market innovation may involve the active reconfiguration of market agencies. This thesis draws attention to actors.

In industrial markets, an actor is ‘made up of human bodies but also of prostheses, tools, equipment, technical devices, algorithms, etc.' (Callon, 2005, p. 4).

The discussion in this section about theories regarding agent configuration and socio-technical agencement strongly contributes to developing an understanding of the calculative practice of markets and the actors’ role in shaping markets. The concept of STAs enables us to follow the long-term chain of the distributed and invisible role of actors. The agencement is translated from actors’ cognition and involves multiple collaborating interactions (Hutchins, 1995) so as to influence further exchange relations between the actors. In this process, actors encounter, negotiate, bargain, collaborate,

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conflict, compromise or even end relationships (Amason, 1996; Araujo and Minetti, 2010;

Corsaro and Snehota, 2012; Fynes, et al., 2005; Tähtinen et al., 2007).