Actor-network Theory -  Alternative Approach to Understanding the Market Cover Image

Akter-mreža teorija - Alternativni pristup razumijevanju tržišta
Actor-network Theory - Alternative Approach to Understanding the Market

Author(s): Damir Kukić, Edin Tabak
Subject(s): Communication studies, Sociology of the arts, business, education, Socio-Economic Research
Published by: Hrvatsko Filozofsko Društvo
Keywords: actor-network theory; performativity; market; Michel Callon;

Summary/Abstract: Many economic theories are based on the assumption that the rules of the market are the results of “natural” tendencies of rational individuals to gain their interests, and that those »natural laws« enable the market to be self-regulated. Their critics insist on a more significant role of state and society in the regulation of the market. Differences between these two camps are apparent: the first approach is based on rational individuals, the second one is based on the embeddedness of markets in the social and political context. However, both approaches are based on modernist dichotomies between subject and object, individual and collective, nature and society, which make it difficult to render the complexity of linking heterogeneous actors in the market. This text will propose Actor-Network Theory as an alternative approach to understanding markets. Such an approach implies that neither can market be self-regulated nor can a state regulate it. The market is instead viewed as an actor-network in which heterogeneous actors participate in its construction and maintenance.

  • Issue Year: 38/2018
  • Issue No: 03/151
  • Page Range: 527-538
  • Page Count: 12
  • Language: Croatian