Michel Callon's Books

Markets in the Making

Rethinking Competition, Goods, and Innovation

By: Michel Callon

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Markets in the Making

Rethinking Competition, Goods, and Innovation

By: Michel Callon

Slicing through blunt theories of supply and demand, Callon presents a rigorously researched but counterintuitive model of how everyday market activity gets produced. If you’re convinced you know what a market is, think again. In his long-awaited study, French sociologist and engineer Michel Callon takes us to the heart of markets, to the unsung processes that allow innovations to become robust products and services. Markets in the Making begins with the observation that stable commercial transactions are more enigmatic, more elusive, and more involved than previously described by economic theory. Slicing through blunt theories of supply and demand, Callon presents a rigorously researched but counterintuitive model of market activity that emphasizes what people designing products or launching startups soon discover—the inherent difficulties of connecting individuals to things. Callon’s model is founded upon the notion of “singularization,” the premise that goods and services must adapt and be adapted to the local milieu of every individual whose life they enter. Person by person, thing by thing, Callon demonstrates that for ordinary economic transactions to emerge en masse, singular connections must be made. Pushing us to see markets as more than abstract interfaces where pools of anonymous buyers and sellers meet, Callon draws our attention to the exhaustively creative practices that market professionals continuously devise to entangle people and things. Markets in the Making exemplifies how prototypes, fragile curiosities that have only just been imagined, are gradually honed into predictable objects and practices. Once these are active enough to create a desired effect, yet passive enough to be transferred from one place to another without disruption, they will have successfully achieved the status of “goods” or “services.” The output of this more ample process of innovation, as redefined by Callon, is what we recognize as “the market”—commercial activity, at scale. The capstone of an influential research career at the forefront of science and technology studies, Markets in the Making coherently integrates the empirical perspective of product engineering with the values of the social sciences. After masterfully redescribing how markets are made, Callon culminates with a strong empirical argument for why markets can and should be harnessed to enact social change. His is a theory of markets that serves social critique.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

270

Publisher

Princeton University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1942130589

ISBN 13

9781942130581

Acting in an Uncertain World

An Essay on Technical Democracy

By: Michel Callon,Pierre Lascoumes,Yannick Barthe

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Acting in an Uncertain World

An Essay on Technical Democracy

By: Michel Callon,Pierre Lascoumes,Yannick Barthe

A call for a new form of democracy in which “hybrid forums” composed of experts and laypeople address such sociotechnical controversies as hazardous waste, genetically modified organisms, and nanotechnology. Controversies over such issues as nuclear waste, genetically modified organisms, asbestos, tobacco, gene therapy, avian flu, and cell phone towers arise almost daily as rapid scientific and technological advances create uncertainty and bring about unforeseen concerns. The authors of Acting in an Uncertain World argue that political institutions must be expanded and improved to manage these controversies, to transform them into productive conversations, and to bring about “technical democracy.” They show how “hybrid forums”—in which experts, non-experts, ordinary citizens, and politicians come together—reveal the limits of traditional delegative democracies, in which decisions are made by quasi-professional politicians and techno-scientific information is the domain of specialists in laboratories. The division between professionals and laypeople, the authors claim, is simply outmoded. The authors argue that laboratory research should be complemented by everyday experimentation pursued in the real world, and they describe various modes of cooperation between the two. They explore a range of concrete examples of hybrid forums that have dealt with sociotechnical controversies including nuclear waste disposal in France, industrial waste and birth defects in Japan, a childhood leukemia cluster in Woburn, Massachusetts, and mad cow disease in the United Kingdom. The authors discuss the implications for political decision making in general and describe a “dialogic” democracy that enriches traditional representative democracy. To invent new procedures for consultation and representation, they suggest, is to contribute to an endless process that is necessary for the ongoing democratization of democracy.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

301

Publisher

MIT Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0262515962

ISBN 13

9780262515962

World Industrialization

Shared Inventions, Competitive Innovations, and Social Dynamics

By: Michel Vigezzi

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

World Industrialization

Shared Inventions, Competitive Innovations, and Social Dynamics

By: Michel Vigezzi

Based on the paradigms of economics and management, inspired by the history of technology and the sociology of technological change, the concepts of shared inventions and competitive innovations make it possible to analyze the industrialization of the world in a fresh and efficient way. As a new approach, shared inventions are classified in this book as a set of existing knowledge thats often associated with the rediscovery of old techniques. Determining capitalized and collective intelligence, this knowledge and reinvention allows us to create inventions which will be shared, first in their construction, then in their use. Another new approach is that these competitive innovations are defined in World Industrialization by associations of experiences of competitively-motivated actors – actors seeking to complement existing techniques by increasing their competitive power. These shared inventions and competitive innovations will also be defined by trajectories identifying their modes of creation, enabling us to overcome the peculiarities of these actions and competitions. This book also highlights four key areas in global industrialization: the emergence of machinism with the defense of Arts and Crafts from 1698–1760; the changes the Industrial Revolution wrought in developed nations from 1760–1850; the link between technology and social relations within modern companies from 1850–1914; and, from 1914 onwards, the birth of extended machinism, its world wars and its global crises.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

200

Publisher

John Wiley & Sons

Published Date

ISBN 10

1786303965

ISBN 13

9781786303967

Fabricating Silicon Savannah

The Making Of A Digital Entrepreneurship Arena Of Development

By: Michel Njeri Wahome

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Fabricating Silicon Savannah

The Making Of A Digital Entrepreneurship Arena Of Development

By: Michel Njeri Wahome

This book provides a comprehensive overview of technology start-up arenas in Nairobi and examines their global place. These start-ups are popularly perceived as representing future prosperity that is incorporated in the present. The author examines how developing country arenas lay bare the power asymmetries and taken-for-granted assumptions that determine which technoscientific imaginaries become globalized and universal, and are supported by legitimizing narratives, logics and institutions. A framing of ‘catch-up’ or ‘leapfrogging’ for technoscientific development that is based on capitalist modernity is regarded as incontrovertible—so much so that alternative values and approaches to technology production are rarely contemplated. This book documents how actors in Nairobi’s startup arena relate to these imaginaries and the affects, enactments and places that they produce.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

233

Publisher

Springer Nature

Published Date

ISBN 10

3031344901

ISBN 13

9783031344909

La France et ses administrations : un état des savoirs

France and its public administrations : A state of the art

By: Jean-Michel Eymeri–Douzans,Geert Bouckaert

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

La France et ses administrations : un état des savoirs

France and its public administrations : A state of the art

By: Jean-Michel Eymeri–Douzans,Geert Bouckaert

En pleine congruence avec l’ambition du Groupe Européen pour l’Administration Publique d’encourager les échanges interculturels, ce livre constitue une entreprise originale, mi-anglophone mi-francophone. Cet ouvrage issu du Congrès du GEAP 2010 a pour objet de combler un déplorable fossé et de donner une visibilité internationale au « cas français ». Dès lors ce livre, en 18 chapitres rédigés en français par une équipe interdisciplinaire (politistes, sociologues, historiens, socio-historiens, juristes) avec plus de 150 pages en anglais et une vaste bibliographie unifiée, entend offrir à tous les spécialistes de l’administration publique de par le monde un point d’accès unique au plus récent état des savoirs sur l’administration en France – ce pays où le mot État s’écrit avec un E majuscule. ============================================ In full compliance with the ambition of the European Group for Public Administration to encourage cross-cultural exchanges, this book is a genuinely original undertaking. It is a hybrid Anglophone-Francophone product. This book from EGPA 2010 Conference purpose to bridge a regrettable gap and to give international visibility to the “French case”. Thus, this book, in 18 chapters written in French by an interdisciplinary team (political scientists, sociologists, historians, sociohistorians, jurists) with more than 150 pages in English and a vast unified bibliography, offers to all students of public administration in the world a unique entry gate to the latest state of the art of administrative studies in France – this country where the State is to be spelled with a capital S.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

636

Publisher

Primento

Published Date

ISBN 10

2802740849

ISBN 13

9782802740841

End-to-End Quality of Service Over Heterogeneous Networks

By: Torsten Braun,Michel Diaz,José Enríquez Gabeiras,Thomas Staub

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

End-to-End Quality of Service Over Heterogeneous Networks

By: Torsten Braun,Michel Diaz,José Enríquez Gabeiras,Thomas Staub

This book, one of the first of its kind, presents mechanisms, protocols, and system architectures needed to attain end-to-end Quality of Service over heterogeneous wired and wireless networks in the Internet.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

277

Publisher

Springer Science & Business Media

Published Date

ISBN 10

3540791205

ISBN 13

9783540791201

A History of Molecular Biology

By: Michel Morange

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

A History of Molecular Biology

By: Michel Morange

Every day it seems the media focus on yet another new development in biology--gene therapy, the human genome project, the creation of new varieties of animals and plants through genetic engineering. These possibilities have all emanated from molecular biology. A History of Molecular Biology is a complete but compact account for a general readership of the history of this revolution. Michel Morange, himself a molecular biologist, takes us from the turn-of-the-century convergence of molecular biology's two progenitors, genetics and biochemistry, to the perfection of gene splicing and cloning techniques in the 1980s. Drawing on the important work of American, English, and French historians of science, Morange describes the major discoveries--the double helix, messenger RNA, oncogenes, DNA polymerase--but also explains how and why these breakthroughs took place. The book is enlivened by mini-biographies of the founders of molecular biology: Delbrück, Watson and Crick, Monod and Jacob, Nirenberg. This ambitious history covers the story of the transformation of biology over the last one hundred years; the transformation of disciplines: biochemistry, genetics, embryology, and evolutionary biology; and, finally, the emergence of the biotechnology industry. An important contribution to the history of science, A History of Molecular Biology will also be valued by general readers for its clear explanations of the theory and practice of molecular biology today. Molecular biologists themselves will find Morange's historical perspective critical to an understanding of what is at stake in current biological research.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

350

Publisher

Harvard University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0674001699

ISBN 13

9780674001695

Making Christ Present in China

Actor-Network Theory and the Anthropology of Christianity

By: Michel Chambon

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Making Christ Present in China

Actor-Network Theory and the Anthropology of Christianity

By: Michel Chambon

An anthropological theorization of the unity and diversity of Christianity, this book focuses on Christian communities in Nanping, a small city in China. It applies methodological insights from Actor-Network Theory to investigate how the Christian God is made part of local social networks. The study examines how Christians interact with and re-define material objects, such as buildings, pews, offerings, and blood, in order to identify the kind of networks and non-human actors that they collectively design. By comparing local Christian traditions with other practices informing the Nanping religious landscape, the study points out potential cohesion via the centralizing presence of the Christian God, the governing nature of the pastoral clergy, and the semi-transcendent being of the Church.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

297

Publisher

Springer Nature

Published Date

ISBN 10

3030556050

ISBN 13

9783030556051

Moral Gray Zones

Side Productions, Identity, and Regulation in an Aeronautic Plant

By: Michel Anteby

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Moral Gray Zones

Side Productions, Identity, and Regulation in an Aeronautic Plant

By: Michel Anteby

Anyone who has been employed by an organization knows not every official workplace regulation must be followed. When management consistently overlooks such breaches, spaces emerge in which both workers and supervisors engage in officially prohibited, yet tolerated practices--gray zones. When discovered, these transgressions often provoke disapproval; when company materials are diverted in the process, these breaches are quickly labeled theft. Yet, why do gray zones persist and why are they unlikely to disappear? In Moral Gray Zones, Michel Anteby shows how these spaces function as regulating mechanisms within workplaces, fashioning workers' identity and self-esteem while allowing management to maintain control. The book provides a unique window into gray zones through its in-depth look at the manufacture and exchange of illegal goods called homers, tolerated in a French aeronautic plant. Homers such as toys for kids, cutlery for the kitchen, or lamps for homes, are made on company time with company materials for a worker's own purpose and use. Anteby relies on observations at retirees' homes, archival data, interviews, and surveys to understand how plant workers and managers make sense of this tacit practice. He argues that when patrolled, gray zones like the production of homers offer workplaces balanced opportunities for supervision as well as expression. Cautioning against the hasty judgment that gray zone practices are simply wrong, Moral Gray Zones contributes to a deeper understanding of the culture, group dynamics, and deviance found in organizations.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

244

Publisher

Princeton University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1400828880

ISBN 13

9781400828883

From Predators to Icons

Exposing the Myth of the Business Hero

By: Michel Villette,Catherine Vuillermot

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

From Predators to Icons

Exposing the Myth of the Business Hero

By: Michel Villette,Catherine Vuillermot

In the popular imagination, the business media, and the schools of business and management that train new generations of entrepreneurs and executives, achieving extraordinary success in business is attributed to far-sighted individuals who have taken bold risks, provided innovative leadership, and introduced new products, services, or ideas superior to those of the competition. Amid the growing skepticism about the means by which vast amounts of wealth are accumulated and its consequences, however, this belief is long overdue for reevaluation. In From Predators to Icons, Michel Villette, a sociologist, and Catherine Vuillermot, a business historian, examine the careers of thirty-two of today's wealthiest global executives--including Warren Buffett, Ingvar Kamprad, Bernard Arnault, Jim Clark, and Richard Branson--in order to challenge the conventional explanations for their extreme success and come to a better understanding of modern business practices. In contrast to the familiar image of the entrepreneur as a visionary with a plan, Villette and Vuillermot instead discover a far less dramatic process of improvised adaptations gradually assembled into a coherent course of conduct. And rather than being risk-takers, those who are most successful in business are risk-minimizers. Huge gains, these case studies reveal, are most reliably obtained in circumstances where the entrepreneur has established careful provisions for risk reduction. As for the view that innovation makes success possible, the authors find that because innovation is an expensive process that takes a long time to produce profits, innovators first of all require capital; success makes innovation possible. The necessary resources, they show, are most often derived from what they provocatively term "predation" ruthlessly taking advantage of imperfections, weaknesses, and vulnerabilities within the market or among competitors. Finally, From Predator to Icon considers the "practical ethics" implemented during the phase in which capital is most rapidly accumulated, as well as the social consequences of these activities. Drawing on interviews with some of their subjects and, crucially, close readings of the authorized biographies and other hagiographic accounts of these figures, which eliminates the bias of malicious interpretations, Villette and Vuillermot provide revelatory insights about the creation and maintenance of business wealth that will be profitably read by both the captains and the critics of contemporary capitalism.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

272

Publisher

Cornell University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

080147566X

ISBN 13

9780801475665

Do Robots Make Love?

From AI to Immortality – Understanding Transhumanism in 12 Questions

By: Laurent Alexandre,Jean-Michel Besnier

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Do Robots Make Love?

From AI to Immortality – Understanding Transhumanism in 12 Questions

By: Laurent Alexandre,Jean-Michel Besnier

Should we enhance the human condition with technology? Does anyone really want to live for a thousand years? Could AI end up destroying mankind? Discover the incredible potential of mankind's near future as Doctor and entrepreneur Laurent Alexandre and tech-philosopher Jean Michel Besnier go head to head on the big questions in an entertaining and thought-provoking debate on the fundamental principles of transhumanism. This movement seeks to improve the human condition through science - has fast become one of the most controversial the scientific community have ever faced. As great strides are made in using advanced technology to enhance human intellect and physiology, the ethical and moral questions surrounding its possibilities have never been more pressing. Should we change the way we reproduce? Could we enhance the human body with technology to the point where we are all technically cyborgs? Is it possible to make love to a robot?

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

Publisher

Cassell

Published Date

ISBN 10

1788400720

ISBN 13

9781788400725

Markets in the Making

Rethinking Competition, Goods, and Innovation

By: Michel Callon

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Markets in the Making

Rethinking Competition, Goods, and Innovation

By: Michel Callon

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

270

Publisher

Princeton University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1942130589

ISBN 13

9781942130581

Bilinguality and Bilingualism

By: Josiane F. Hamers,Michel Blanc

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Bilinguality and Bilingualism

By: Josiane F. Hamers,Michel Blanc

This updated and revised edition of Hamers and Blanc's successful textbook presents state-of-the-art knowledge about languages in contact from individual bilingualism (or bilinguality) to societal bilingualism. It is both multi- and interdisciplinary in approach, and analyses bilingualism at individual, interpersonal, and societal levels. Linguistic, cognitive and sociocultural aspects of bilingual development are explored, as are problems such as bilingual memory and polyglot aphasia. Hamers and Blanc analyse the relationship between culture, identity, and language behaviour in multicultural settings, as well as the communication strategies in interpersonal and intergroup relations. They also propose theoretical models of language processing and development, which are then applied to bilingual behaviour. Other topics reviewed include language shift, pidgins and creoles, language planning and bilingual education. This book will be invaluable to students, teachers and scholars interested in languages in contact in a range of disciplines including psycholinguistics, linguistics, the social sciences, education and language planning.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

486

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0521648432

ISBN 13

9780521648431

Book's by Michel Callon

Markets in the Making

Markets in the Making

Acting in an Uncertain World

Acting in an Uncertain World

World Industrialization

World Industrialization

Fabricating Silicon Savannah

Fabricating Silicon Savannah

La France et ses administrations : un état des savoirs

La France et ses administrations : un état des savoirs

End-to-End Quality of Service Over Heterogeneous Networks

End-to-End Quality of Service Over Heterogeneous Networks

A History of Molecular Biology

A History of Molecular Biology

Making Christ Present in China

Making Christ Present in China

Moral Gray Zones

Moral Gray Zones

From Predators to Icons

From Predators to Icons

Do Robots Make Love?

Do Robots Make Love?

Markets in the Making

Markets in the Making

Bilinguality and Bilingualism

Bilinguality and Bilingualism

Username

Password

Username

Password

Password again

Birthday

Email