With reference to Granovetter’s (1985) notion of the embeddedness of economic action in social structures, Callon introduced the idea that “…economy is embedded not in society but in economics…” (Callon, 1998b, p. 30). Subsequently, the performativity programme articulated as its central aim “…to study all the theoretical and practical, expert and lay knowledge, know-how and skills developed and mobilized in the process of designing and managing market STAs” (Çalışkan & Callon, 2010, p. 19). But in order to maintain the universality of the performativity thesis, economics has to somehow be made commensurate with all these elements in the process. Enter the idea of an “economics at large” (Callon, 1998b). This concept helps to keep the performativity thesis relevant at the most general of levels by equating economics with all the know-how, knowledge, and skills which go into market design management. In other words, one has to incorporate “…within economics all the knowledge and practices, so often denigrated, that make up for example accounting or marketing” (Callon, 1998b, p. 30). The concept of “law” (Callon, 1998b, p. 28) is also ostensibly included in the idea of economics at large. Taken to its extreme, economics at large includes all the resources which can be associated with economics as an academic discipline in the context of the making of markets:
To make a formula or auction system work, one has to have tools, equipment, metrological systems, procedures, and so on. To establish relations that ‘exist’ between monetary masses and price levels, to act
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on the one in order to control the others, there have to be institutions, systems of observation, codification and data collection, tools for analyzing large numbers, and so on. A host of professions, competencies, and non-humans are necessary for academic economics to be successful. Each of these parties ‘makes’ economics. They are engaged in the construction of a world described and performed by statements and models that we readily agree belong to the world of economics, in the strict sense of the word
(Callon, 2007b, p. 333) What is important here is that this understanding implies that economics becomes an ex post established category potentially encompassing anything. The way this works is underscored by the way much the same applies to the idea of what an economist is: “…I use the word ‘economist’ to denote all agents who participate in the analysis and transformation of economic markets…” (Callon, 2007b, p. 336). This understanding of economics ensures that the performativity thesis constitutes the sought-for tautology. Economics performs the market through processes of design and management, while that which is involved in performing the market through design and management work qualifies as economics. But an issue which then arises pertains to the matter of guidance. How to learn from it? How to make empirically relevant distinctions? This issue has been expressed in the concern that the performativity thesis becomes trivially true, while under its banner researchers do not “…look closely enough at the details of what does and does not count as legitimate ‘economics’ among the agents” (Mirowski & Nik-Khah, 2007, p. 198). One way to deal with the issue of guidance is to deploy the idea of “economics in the wild” (Callon, 2007b). This distinction is a particular application of the more general categories of “secluded research” and “research in the wild” (e.g. Callon, Lascoumes, & Barthe, 2009). When strictly an academic discipline, economics is “confined” (Callon, 2007b) to the laboratories of select institutions. In contrast, economics in the wild denotes the activities involved in market construction taking place on the ground. In this way the idea of economics in the wild serves as a means of subdividing and specifying economics at large. The study of the history of fishing in Norway made by Holm (e.g. 2007) has been treated as a case in point. The inquiry demonstrated the importance of distinct forms of expertise such as halieutics, marine biology, and population dynamics in the making of a market for fish. Such forms of knowledge are included in the idea of economics at large by
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considering them as part of a process of “co-performation” (Callon, 2007b). Acknowledging the importance of other distinct inputs is promoted by considering other forms of expertise as inevitable aspects of a practical performative economics:
Economics in the wild is not pure economics; it is mixed with engineering, life sciences, and management science – its complexity and heterogeneity constitutes its strength and makes it irreplaceable. But it is also about calculations, optimizations, and the management of rare resources. It is imbibed and impregnated by the anthropological program of ‘confined economics’
(Callon, 2007b, p. 338) Introducing the idea of economics in the wild provides a way to focus inquiry and sensitize an investigation to other forms of knowledge and expertise than economics in the more strict sense of the term. But it is only one way. For it is a practical example of the more general idea that in the process of inquiry, something such as the concept of economics in the wild needs to be added to the performativity thesis in order for it to be put to work in an empirical setting. So it goes for all these tautologies. One can take as a different example the well- established sociological notion of “institutional isomorphism” (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). It points out how institutional pressures make organizations within organizational fields become increasingly alike, while that which qualifies an organization as part of an organizational field is that it responds these pressures in this way. Contemplated in strict isolation, such notions do not present much of an input for inquiry. On their own, they make little concrete practical difference. And as the essential aspect of their character is the fact that they are necessarily always true, it makes limited sense to treat them as, for example, a contingent statement. These tautologies are unassailable. One way to put this is to stress that they are immune to what Popper (1959) called “falsification”.
As with the pragmaticist reaction to metaphysics, a way to relate to these tautologies can be to discard them as uninteresting. And when it comes to the performativity thesis as a universal statement about a state of the world, walking away is the solution chosen here. However, taken as a concept or contingent statement in its own right, the notion of performation has much to offer the understanding of Nord Pool. Wind power integration through the introduction and
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reconfiguration of Nord Pool is to a great extent about performation in the sense that it is an instance of “…the process whereby sociotechnical arrangements are enacted, to constitute so many ecological niches within and between which statements and models circulate and are true or at least enjoy a high degree of verisimilitude” (Callon, 2007b, p. 330). The upcoming brief outline of the analysis will thus demonstrate how the notion of performation does have bearing on significant practical aspects of integrating wind power into the Danish electricity system through the electricity market. It helps frame how solving the intermittency problem has been approached by drawing out issues of knowledge and expertise involved in the way Nord Pool has been introduced and reconfigured in order to maintain equilibrium in the electricity system.
Within the performativity programme, the most prolific way to empirically operationalize Callon’s notion of performation has involved an emphasis on the role of knowledge and representations in the making of markets. In other words, the performativity programme has often traced the role of the circulating statements and models themselves. An important example of this focus can be found in the work of Donald MacKenzie (e.g. 2003; 2006; MacKenzie & Millo, 2003). Emphasis has been directed towards economists and economics, in the more strict sense, to the extent that one of the most frequent critiques of the performativity programme is that it overstates the role of these agents. The cause of this emphasis has been attributed to the fact that many ideas and researchers within the performativity programme have ties to the field of STS, which in turn has a history of dealing with knowledge and representation (e.g. Bryan, Martin, Montgomerie, & Williams, 2012; Riles, 2010; Mirowski & Nik-Khah, 2007). Within this stream of the performativity programme, out of all the possible ways in which economics and its object can co-evolve as a STA, the one of greatest priority denotes the manner in which the entity claiming to represent the world helps remake that world in its own image. This particular dynamic has also been specified as Barnesian performativity, and is present in situations where the “…practical use of an aspect of economics makes economic processes more like their depiction by economics” (MacKenzie, 2007, p. 55). While also interested in the role played by knowledge in the wider performation of Nord Pool, the present thesis takes a different route in specifying the impact of know-how and expertise in this context. It does so by pointing out how work with equilibrium maintenance through the introduction and reconfiguration of Nord Pool includes several
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instances of market construction based on three products of technical science. Concretely, expertise here takes the form of control systems engineering for the making of homeostatic control systems, open- and closed-loop control systems, and linear programming or higher order control systems.
In relation to Nord Pool, control systems engineering constituted the “engine” (MacKenzie, 2006) that economics has proven to have been in some financial markets. But the role of economics as part of the introduction and reconfiguration of Nord Pool is also taken up, and it is made clear that economics was indeed also part of the construction of this particular electricity market. However, rather than constituting the main driver in a process of market performation, economics was included in the making of Nord Pool by, in effect, providing the objectives which were set to be achieved through a process of market construction enabling or improving control system operation. The way this works is in the end specified by considering the role of economics using John Searle’s (2001) ideas on conditions of satisfaction, direction of fit, and direction of causation. Drawing on the performativity programme as encompassed in the new new economic sociology, the conceptually informed research question addressed throughout the analysis can here be introduced.
Research question 2: How have control systems engineering and economics been mobilized in the endeavor to integrate wind power into the Danish electricity system through electricity market design and management?
In documenting the role of control systems engineering in wind power integration through the introduction and reconfiguration of Nord Pool, the study augments the performativity programme in a way similar to other inquires' documenting the role of knowledge from other fields than the discipline of economics (e.g. Muniesa, 2014; Riles, 2010). The main point which should be noted is that the knowledge and expertise going into market design and maintenance in the context of Nord Pool is rooted in both control systems engineering and economics. And as will be made apparent in the following section, the former has served as a means while the latter has signified or described the ideal ends for the process of market construction. The means are more specifically homeostatic control systems
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(Schweppe, Caraminis, Tabors, & Bohn, 1980), open- and closed-loop control systems (e.g. Nise, 2004), and linear programming (e.g. Dantzig, 1963) or “higher order” control systems (Dantzig, 1957). The ends described by economics are measures in the form of liquidity (e.g. Keynes, 1930), price elasticity, and societal value or aggregate consumers and producers surplus (Marshall, 1920). Answering research question 2 thus augments the performativity programme in two ways. One is in how it demonstrates that control systems engineering is a generative form of expertise of great importance to market design and management in certain situations. Another is the manner in which economics is shown to have a function in the making of markets different from the one described by the performativity programme up until this point in time.
Outline
Each of the three analytical chapters is devoted to describing the involvement of the technical sciences and economics in market construction in one of these three forms. As with the three different empirical settings in which they are located, homeostatic control, open- and closed-loop control, and linear programming, are variously related and to some extent overlap. In this way, the three approaches to control are all present in all of the empirical accounts. But as each form is central to one of the three cases explored in relation to the introduction and reconfiguration of Nord Pool as part of wind power integration into the Danish electricity system, they are emphasized accordingly.