Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-b95js Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-14T04:10:17.285Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 20 - The Camera Is an Engine: Ways of Seeing Perspective, Context and Reflexivity to Make and Shape Markets through Innovative Research Practice

from Part V - The Secret Life of Market Studies Methods

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 November 2024

By
Katy Mason  and
Liz McFall
Edited by
Susi Geiger ,
Katy Mason ,
Neil Pollock ,
Philip Roscoe ,
Annmarie Ryan ,
Stefan Schwarzkopf  and
Pascale Trompette
Susi Geiger
Affiliation:
University College Dublin
Katy Mason
Affiliation:
Lancaster University
Neil Pollock
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
Philip Roscoe
Affiliation:
University of St Andrews, Scotland
Annmarie Ryan
Affiliation:
University of Limerick
Stefan Schwarzkopf
Affiliation:
Copenhagen Business School
Pascale Trompette
Affiliation:
Université de Grenoble
Get access

Summary

This chapter explores the performative power of research methods, and specifically the power of audio-visual technologies – the video camera - in capturing and re-presenting data concerning markets, their innovation and transformation. Our claim is that cameras and their research outputs, are engines of change. They act as market-making devices that not only inform but additionally perform markets. After reflecting on the Market Studies conceptualization of markets and the role of the camera as a market-making device, we show how the camera provides new perspectives, generates a deeper understanding of context and opens-up new opportunities for the reflexive action that has the power to transform both our understandings of markets and how they are performed. We draw on our own experiences and extant research to consider how the camera acts as a socio-technical and sentimental device to shake up existing practices, generating opportunities for new data collection, analysis and new ways of seeing, representing and expressing the politics of markets – transforming them in the process. We argue that i) zooming-out, ii) zooming-in, iii) refocusing, iv) slowing-down action and motion, and v) editing, have the capacity to generate and reveal different constitutive components of a market’s sociomaterial realities by drawing attention to actors, objects and emotions, and their relations with their wider social setting. We conclude that cameras can constitute different realities, breaking down taken for granted binaries, between society and nature, opening opportunities to build moral markets in new and innovative ways.

Keywords

cameramarket-making devicesperformativitymarketographyvideographyvisual methodsmarket practicesvideovideography
Type
Chapter
Information
Market Studies
Mapping, Theorizing and Impacting Market Action
 , pp. 332 - 349
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Akrich, M., Callon, M., and Latour, B. (2002) The key to success in innovation part 1: the art of interessement. International Journal of Innovation Management, 6(2), 187–206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Araujo, L., Finch, J., and Kjellberg, H. (eds.) (2010) Reconnecting Marketing to Markets. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Araujo, L., and Mason, K. (2021) Markets, infrastructures and infrastructuring markets. AMS Review, 11(3/4), 240–251.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bakhtin, M. (1986) Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Benjamin, W. (1985a) One-way street, in One-Way Street: And Other Writings. London: Verso, 45–104.Google Scholar
Benjamin, W. (1985b) A small history of photography, in One-Way Street: And Other Writings. London: Verso, 240–257.Google Scholar
Berger, J. (1972a) Ways of Seeing [TV series]. London: BBC.Google Scholar
Berger, J. (1972b) Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Büscher, M. (2006) Vision in motion. Environment and Planning A, 38(2), 281–299.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Çalışkan, K. (2007) Price as a market device: cotton trading in Izmir Mercantile Exchange, in Callon, M., Millo, Y., and Munesia, F. (eds.), Market Devices. Oxford: Blackwell, 241–260.Google Scholar
Çalışkan, K., and Callon, M. (2010) Economization, part 2: a research programme for the study of markets. Economy and Society, 39(1), 1–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Callon, M. (ed.) (1998) The Laws of the Markets. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Callon, M. (2021) Markets in the Making: Rethinking Competition, Goods and Innovation. New York: Zone Books.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Callon, M., Méadel, C., and Rabeharisoa, V. (2002) The economy of qualities. Economy and Society, 31(2), 194–217.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Callon, M., Millo, Y., and Muniesa, F. (eds.) (2007) Market Devices. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Callon, M., and Muniesa, F. (2005) Peripheral vision: economic markets as calculative collective devices. Organization Studies, 26(8), 1229–1250.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cluley, R. (2022) Interesting numbers: an ethnographic account of quantification, marketing analytics and facial coding data. Marketing Theory, 22(1), 3–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cochoy, F. (2008) Calculation, qualculation, calqulation: shopping cart arithmetic, equipped cognition and the clustered consumer. Marketing Theory, 8(1), 15–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cochoy, F. (2015) Myriam’s ‘adverteasing’: on the performative power of marketing promises. Journal of Marketing Management, 31(1/2), 123–140.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cochoy, F., Deville, J., and McFall, L. (eds.) (2017) Markets and the Arts of Attachment: Abingdon: Taylor & Francis.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cochoy, F., and Mallard, A. (2018) Another consumer culture theory: an ANT look at consumption, or how ‘market things’ help ‘cultivate’ consumers, in Kravets, O., Maclaran, P., Miles, S., and Venkatesh, A. (eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Consumer Culture. London: SAGE, 384–403.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cunliffe, A.L., and Karunanayake, G. (2013) Working within hyphen-spaces in ethnographic research: implications for research identities and practice. Organizational Research Methods, 16(3), 364–392.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Doctorow, C. (2021) The future is in interoperability not big tech: 2021 in review. Electronic Frontier Foundation, 24 December. Available at www.eff.org/uk/deeplinks/2021/12/future-interoperability-not-big-tech-2021-review.Google Scholar
Finch, J., and Geiger, S. (2011) Constructing and contesting markets through the market object. Industrial Marketing Management, 40(6), 899–906.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frankel, C. (2015) The multiple-markets problem. Journal of Cultural Economy, 8(4), 538–546.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frankel, C. (2018) The ‘s’ in markets: mundane market concepts and how to know a (strawberry) market. Journal of Cultural Economy, 11(5), 458–475.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geertz, C. (1973) Thick description: toward an interpretive theory of culture, in The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books, 3–30.Google Scholar
Geiger, S., and Gross, N. (2018) Market failures and market framings: can a market be transformed from the inside? Organization Studies, 39(10), 1357–1376.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goffman, E. (1959) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday.Google Scholar
Golden-Biddle, K., and Locke, K. (1993) Appealing work: an investigation of how ethnographic texts convince. Organization Science, 4(4), 595–616.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodwin, C. (1981) Conversational Organization: Interaction between Speakers and Hearers. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Hagberg, J., and Kjellberg, H. (2015) How much is it? Price representation practices in retail markets. Marketing Theory, 15(2), 179–199.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hawkins, G. (2013) Made to be wasted: PET and topologies of disposability, in Gabrys, J., Hawkins, G., and Michael, M. (eds.), Accumulation: The Material Politics of Plastic. Abingdon: Routledge, 49–67.Google Scholar
Heath, C. (1986) Body Movement and Medical Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hennion, A., Méadel, C., and Bowker, G. (1989) The artisans of desire: the mediation of advertising between product and consumer. Sociological Theory, 7(2), 191–209.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hibbert, P., Sillince, J., Diefenbach, T., and Cunliffe, A. L. (2014) Relationally reflexive practice: a generative approach to theory development in qualitative research. Organizational Research Methods, 17(3), 278–298.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hwang, T. (2020) Subprime Attention Crisis: Advertising and the Time Bomb at the Heart of the Internet. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.Google Scholar
Hyysalo, S., Pollock, N., and Williams, R. (2019) Method matters in the social study of technology: investigating the biographies of artifacts and practices. Science & Technology Studies, 32(3), 2–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ivins, W. M. (1938) On the rationalization of sight: with an examination of three Renaissance texts on perspective, Paper 8. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art.Google Scholar
Kjellberg, H., Azimont, F., and Reid, E. (2015) Market innovation processes: balancing stability and change. Industrial Marketing Management, 44, 4–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kjellberg, H., Hagberg, J., and Cochoy, F. (2019) Thinking market infrastructure: barcode scanning in the US grocery retail sector, 1967–2010, in Kornberger, M., et al. (eds.), Thinking Infrastructures. Bingley: Emerald Publishing, 207–232.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Latour, B. (1987) Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Latour, B. (1991) Society is technology made durable, in Law, J. (ed.), A Sociology of Monsters: Essays on Power, Technology and Domination. London: Routledge, 103–131.Google Scholar
Latour, B. (1993) We Have Never Been Modern. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Laurier, E., Strebel, I., and Brown, B. (2008) Video analysis: lessons from professional video editing practice. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung, 9(3), 1–44.Google Scholar
Law, J. (2004) After Method: Mess in Social Science Research. Abingdon: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Law, J., and Ruppert, E. (2013) The social life of methods: devices. Journal of Cultural Economy, 6(3), 229–240.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levin, C. M., and Re Cruz, A. (2008) Behind the scenes of a visual ethnography: a dialogue between anthropology and film. Journal of Film and Video, 60(2), 59–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lloyd, A. (2010) Framing information literacy as information practice: site ontology and practice theory. Journal of Documentation, 66(2), 245–258.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Loizos, P. (1993) Innovation in Ethnographic Film. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Lomax, H., and Casey, N. (1998) Recording social life: reflexivity and video methodology. Sociological Research Online, 3(2), 121–146.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Luff, P., and Heath, C. (2012) Some ‘technical challenges’ of video analysis: social actions, objects, material realities and the problems of perspective. Qualitative Research, 12(3), 255–279.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McFall, L. (2004) Advertising: A Cultural Economy: London: SAGE.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McFall, L. (2009) Devices and desires: how useful is the ‘new’ new economic sociology for understanding market attachment? Sociology Compass, 3(2), 267–282.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McFall, L. (2014a) Devising Consumption: Cultural Economies of Insurance, Credit and Spending: Abingdon: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McFall, L. (2014b) The problem of cultural intermediaries in the economy of qualities, in Maguire, J., and Matthews, J. (eds.), The Cultural Intermediaries Reader. London: SAGE, 42–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacKenzie, D. (2006) Is economics performative? Option theory and the construction of derivatives markets. Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 28(1), 29–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacKenzie, D., Çalışkan, K., and Charlotte, R., (2023) The longest second: header bidding and the material politics of online advertising. Economy and Society, 52(3), 554–578.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacKenzie, D., Muniesa, F., and Siu, L. (eds.) (2007) Do Economists Make Markets? On the Performativity of Economics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Mason, K. (2012) Market sensing and situated dialogic action research (with a video camera). Management Learning, 43(4), 405–425.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mason, K., Friesl, M., and Ford, C. J. (2017) Managing to make markets: marketization and the conceptualization work of strategic nets in the life science sector. Industrial Marketing Management, 67, 52–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mason, K., Friesl, M., and Ford, C. J. (2019) Markets under the microscope: making scientific discoveries valuable through choreographed contestations. Journal of Management Studies, 56(5), 966–999.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mellet, K., and Beauvisage, T. (2020) Cookie monsters: anatomy of a digital market infrastructure. Consumption Markets & Culture, 23(2), 110–129.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meyer, R. E., Jancsary, D., Höllerer, M. A., and Boxenbaum, E. (2018) The role of verbal and visual text in the process of institutionalization. Academy of Management Review, 43(3), 392–418.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Muniesa, F. (2014) The Provoked Economy: Economic Reality and the Performative Turn. Abingdon: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Musselin, C., and Paradeise, C. (2005) Quality: a debate. Sociologie du travail, 47(3), DOI: 10.1016/j.soctra.2005.09.002.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Neyland, D., and Milyaeva, S. (2016) The entangling of problems, solutions and markets: on building a market for privacy. Science as Culture, 25(3), 305–326.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nicolini, D. (2009) Zooming in and out: studying practices by switching theoretical lenses and trailing connections. Organisation Studies, 30(12), 1391–1418.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ondaatje, M., and Murch, W. (2002) The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.Google Scholar
Ossandón, J. (2019) Notes on market design and economic sociology. Economic Sociology (European Electronic Newsletter), 20(2), 31–39.Google Scholar
Pink, S. (2013) Doing Visual Ethnography. London: SAGE.Google Scholar
Quattrone, P., Ronzani, M., Jancsary, D., and Höllerer, M. A. (2021) Beyond the visible, the material and the performative: shifting perspectives on the visual in organization studies. Organization Studies, 42(8), 1197–1218.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roscoe, P., and Loza, O. (2019) The –ography of markets (or, the responsibilities of market studies). Journal of Cultural Economy, 12(3), 215–227.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roth, A. E. (2012) Prize lecture: the theory and practice of market design. Nobel Prize, 8 December. Available at www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2012/roth/lecture (accessed 28 August 2019).Google Scholar
Roy, D. (2011) The birth of a word. TED talk, 14 March. Available at www.ted.com/talks/deb_roy_the_birth_of_a_word (accessed 1 May 2024).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ruby, J. (1977) The image mirrored: reflexivity and the documentary film. Journal of the University Film Association, 29(4), 3–11.Google Scholar
Ruby, J. (2000) Picturing Culture: Explorations of Film and Anthropology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Ruppert, E., Law, J., and Savage, M. (2013) Reassembling social science methods: the challenge of digital devices. Theory, Culture & Society, 30(4), 22–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sacks, H. (1992) Lectures on Conversation, 2 vols. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Savage, M. (2013) The ‘social life of methods’: a critical introduction. Theory, Culture & Society, 30(4), 3–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schatzki, T. R. (2005) Peripheral vision: the sites of organizations. Organization Studies, 26(3), 465–484.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schegloff, E. A. (1992) Repair after next turn: the last structurally provided defense of intersubjectivity in conversation. American Journal of Sociology, 97(5), 1295–1345.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schwarzkopf, S. (2009) Discovering the consumer: market research, product innovation, and the creation of brand loyalty in Britain and the United States in the interwar years. Journal of Macromarketing, 29(1), 8–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shotter, J. (2000) Inside dialogic realities: from an abstract-systematic to a participatory-wholistic understanding of communication. Southern Communication Journal, 65(2/3), 119–132.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Viola, B. (2004) The Raft [video art]. Melbourne (exhibited at the Melbourne International Arts Festival October 2010 – February 2011; on loan from Bill Viola Studio).Google Scholar
Vom Lehn, D. (2010a) Examining ‘response’: video-based studies in museums and galleries. International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research, 4(1), 33–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vom Lehn, D. (2010b) Generating aesthetic experiences from ordinary activity: new technology and the museum experience, in O’Reilly, D., and Kerrigan, F. (eds.), Marketing the Arts: A Fresh Approach. Abingdon: Routledge, 104–120.Google Scholar
Wernick, A. (1991) Promotional Culture: Advertising, Ideology and Symbolic Expression. London: SAGE.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Woolgar, S. (1990) Configuring the user: the case of usability trials. The Sociological Review, 38(S1), 58–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yin, Y., Jia, J. S., and Zheng, W. (2021) The effect of slow motion video on consumer inference. Journal of Marketing Research, 58(5), 1007–1024.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×