From Performativity to Representation as Intervention: Rethinking the 2008 Financial Crisis and the Recent History of Social Science

Abstract

Performativity has been one of the most dynamic research programmes in the last few decades that has sought to move beyond conventional, positivistic understandings of science. This paper interrogates the central premise of performativity – that science makes rather than describes its phenomena – through a critical analysis of the hugely influential performativity turn in economic sociology. The paper argues that while the performativity turn has importantly highlighted how economic theory shapes economic practices, its conflation of economic theory and its objects of analysis renders it unable to recognize economic processes that are not identified by economic models themselves. To address this limitation, this paper then proposes an alternative account, representation as intervention, that retains the critical impulse of exploring how economic models reshape economic life without conflating theories and their objects.

Cyber blame and social theory

“…We can use performance theory as set by our authors like Curran ( 2018 ), Butler ( 1999 ), and Goffman ( 1959 ) to suggest that social life is performed in contexts of created and modified sets of meanings, symbols, locations, and identities. We act in social worlds of meaning that are formed and reformed through everyday enactments.…”

“…Persons create, manage, direct, and modify blame. These can be seen as performances (Joyce and Jeske 2019 ; Curran 2018 ; Butler 1999 ; Goffman 1959 ).…”

The Routledge Handbook of Critical Finance Studies

“…The critical stance of the performativity concept becomes particularly obvious if one avoids its simplistic reading. Indeed, performativity was often understood as the oneway travel of theoretical financial models into the realm of markets without any contingencies and "problematicness" behind this travel and its effects (Curran, 2018). However, the performativity scholars rather strive to understand and show empirically how economic phenomena and events come about and how they are shaped by financial modeling and technology.…”

“…This question has been prominently addressed in the field of critical management studies (Fournier & Grey, 2000), not in the field of critical finance though. From my point of view, there are two understandings of "being critical" that have transpired in finance studies so far (see also Curran, 2018).…”

“…It shifted the attention from how financial models fail to adequately represent the economic reality to how they are used and shape (or perform) reality. For some observers, e.g., and Curran (2018), this move lacks any critical "bite" and rather downplays the essential role of economists and financial theorists in facilitating (or neglecting) major economic instabilities and inequalities. Furthermore, while understanding performativity as an interventional account of financial science ("models and theories shape reality"), some detractors of the SSF wonder why scientists do not interfere with market practices more actively and do not clearly pursue a critical, i.e., ideological, agenda, during those interventions, as the concept of critical performativity (Alvesson & Spicer, 2012;Spicer et al, 2009) suggests.…”