In this thesis, I investigate sense-making processes in financial markets. My focus is on the role of narratives in these routine activities in digital market places or what Cetina and Preda (2007) describe as scopic market systems. I conceptualize narratives told by market professionals in these systems as another form of market device (Callon et al., 2007) which combines different modes of knowing and explanation to cope with flows of data/information and funds, and works to generate value from assets exposed to markets. From a sociological perspective, I argue that the substitution of social network-based information search and face-to-face exchange relationships in financial markets with flow-based and anonymised representations and exchange relationships do not undermine the importance of social networks in shaping sense-making and decision-making in financial markets. However to argue so, I broaden the concept of social network with the help of Bourdieu’s (1997) notion of economic, social and cultural capital. I introduce the notions of field and meta-field of power, habitus, and position-taking by Bourdieu (1997, and Wacquant 1992) to my conceptual discussion of financial markets. In light of this, I describe financial markets as hierarchical and competitive structures inhabited by different groups of investors and intermediaries and shaped by competition and conflict among these groups. I argue that these groups’ position in the field is conditioned by their economic, social, and cultural capital which are generated and sustained within and outwith the field. Consequently, I suggest that these groups’ sense-making and investment activities and their use of market devices including storytelling acts should exhibit distinctive modes in accordance with the specific positions they have voluntarily or involuntarily taken in the field. To substantiate these claims with narrative evidence, I present the case of the Istanbul Stock Exchange (ISE) in Turkey. Opened in 1985, the ISE provides an instrumental case to study the role of sense-making narratives as another form of market device in scopic market systems with a Bourdieusian sociological framework. As gathered from publicly available information and early pilot fieldwork in the ISE headquarters, the ISE as a field has been occupied by three dominant investor types since 1991. These are domestic retail (DRIs), domestic institutional (DIIs), and foreign institutional investors (FIIs). These three groups have a dominant weight in either trading volume or share ownership in the ISE. Drawing on my (participatory) observations between 2008 and 2009 in an asset management company and four brokerage houses which served DRIs and/or DIIs and FIIs, I present evidence on how distinct combinations of economic, social and cultural capitals among these dominant investor-intermediary groups shape their sense-making activities and consequent sense-making stories in the ISE.

Digital technology has radically disrupted the established ways of organising the film industry. However, digital initiatives such as marketing and distribution strategies involving social media and online distribution have also provided means through which filmmakers manage this environment. I investigate the role of the digital data involved, which I term Digital Engagement Metrics (DEMs), in market reconfiguration. Through exploratory, longitudinal case study of market construction for independent films, the thesis articulates the interdependent combination of attributes that co-constitute DEMs' highly mobile, and multifaceted valuation capacities, and develops a conceptualisation of their role as a market device. I engage with the literature of translation, calculation, and the performativity and materiality of markets. I then develop an approach for tracing market activity to understand the interaction of networked agencies that shape the arrangement of economic transactions. My analysis is delivered in three empirical chapters, which provide rare data on the emergent digital practice of a film production company. I chart the progressive establishment of DEMs' role in the hybridisation of established market attachment frameworks, and the instantiation of new modes of coordinating market actors. I conclude that the dynamic assembly, content and distributed architecture of market arrangements involving DEMs simultaneously shape the product and enable its calculation. In addition to extending the reach of market studies into a new empirical field, I make a number of contributions to the theoretical literature. My findings bring two coordinating kinds of performativity into focus. These are the creation of felicitous conditions required to mobilise DEMs as an organisational concept, and the digital materialisation of the audience both as the market, and as a qualified property of the market object. Reading DEMs through the market devices lens renders previously hidden modes of calculation visible, and this has implications for developing assemblage-oriented research in the creative industries.

Cette thèse étudie le rôle de la critique dans la construction sociale des marchés. Le commerce équitable, et plus précisément la mode éthique, sont analysés comme cas extrêmes d’incertitude morale pesant sur l’organisation des marchés. Au travers d’une analyse qualitative de données secondaires, d’observations, d’entretiens et d’objets, cette recherche suit les acteurs dans les controverses qui performent le marché de la mode éthique. Inspirée par la sociologie pragmatique, elle éclaire les cadrages, recadrages et débordements qui solidifient ou déstabilisent les compromis portant sur la valeur des biens et sur les règles de l’échange. À l’origine, le cadre du vêtement équitable valorise l’artisanat, les conditions de production et les principes du commerce équitable. Puis, au début des années 2000, l’émergence de marques spécialisées contribue à recadrer le vêtement équitable en article de mode éthique. Enfin, à partir de la fin des années 2000, des marques de mode conventionnelle suscitent des controverses en se lançant, à leur tour, dans la mode éthique. Plus précisément, cette thèse analyse le travail d’un professionnel chargé d’organiser le marché, l’Ethical Fashion Show, le salon de la mode éthique. Cette recherche vise trois contributions. D’abord, elle propose la notion d’entreprise de marché pour décrire l’activité consistant à faire tenir dans un même cadre le marché et la critique. Ensuite, elle éclaire la notion de performativité de l’économie en soulignant les multiples manières par lesquelles la critique ré-agence les marchés. Enfin, elle met en lumière les dimensions matérielles et spatiales de la construction sociale des marchés au travers de l’étude de dispositifs de qualification, de disqualification et d’emprise. / This dissertation studies the role of criticism in the social construction of markets. Fair Trade, and especially ethical fashion, are analyzed as extreme cases of moral uncertainty related to the organization of markets. The qualitative analysis of secondary data, observations, interviews, and artefacts enables us to follow the actors through perfomative controversies. Inspired by French pragmatic sociology (Boltanski, Callon, Latour), this research highlights the process of framing, reframing and overframing that makes the compromises on values and market rules more or less stable. Historically, the frame of fair clothes values the production process of goods. Then, in the 2000’s, the emergence of pure players contributes to reframe fair clothes to fashion goods. Finally, at the end of the 2000’s, conventional brands of the fashion market raise controversies by involving in the ethical fashion markets. More precisely, this research studies the endeavour of the Ethical Fashion Show to organize the market. It aims at making three contributions. First, it proposes the notion of market entre-preneurship to describe the activity consisting in making compromises between market and its criticisms. Second, it highlights the notion of economic performativity by clarifying the multiple ways that criticisms shape market agencements. Third, it sheds light on the material and spatial dimensions of the social construction of markets by analyzing devices of qualification, disqualification and control.

La gastronomie peut être considérée comme une attention portée à la dimension esthétique de l’alimentation. Les biens gastronomiques sont donc des biens symboliques dont l’échange sur le marché passe par l’existence de dispositifs de valorisation particuliers. En tant qu’il contribue à orienter les consommateurs sur un marché opaque et à leur indiquer le « bon » produit ou la « bonne » manière de cuisiner, le journalisme gastronomique constitue un dispositif de médiation marchande. À partir notamment d’entretiens, d’observations, d’une enquête quantitative et de statistiques textuelles, cette thèse s’attache à rendre compte de la manière dont se construit un tel dispositif. Dans une perspective diachronique, les premiers chapitres sont consacrés à l’émergence du dispositif au XIXe siècle et à sa construction à l’articulation de différents espaces sociaux (gastronomique, amateur et journalistique). Il apparaît qu’à la fin du XXe siècle, un marché de la presse gastronomique se met en place qui rend le point de vue des titres dépendant de leur positionnement dans la concurrence et de leur modèle économique. Ce sont ensuite les acteurs individuels de la fabrication de l’information journalistique qui sont étudiés. L’analyse des parcours et des compétences des journalistes ainsi que de leurs concurrents potentiels que sont les blogueurs culinaires met en évidence différentes formes d’écriture gastronomique et les types de confiance qui en découlent. Enfin, l’étude du travail concret des journalistes permet de rendre compte de la similitude des contenus médiatiques et l’analyse du parcours de journalistes renommés autorise à saisir leurs modes de différenciation professionnelle. / Gastronomy can be regarded as a particular attention paid to the aesthetic dimension of food. Gastronomic goods are thus symbolic goods and their market exchange needs the existence of specific valuation devices. As a tool that directs consumers in an opaque market and that indicates the “right” product, or the “right” way to cook, food journalism can be considered as a market device. This thesis is based upon a fieldwork including in-depth interviews, observations, statistics and text analysis. It focuses on the way such a device is built. In a diachronic approach, the first chapters deal with the emergence of this device during the 19th century and with its construction at the crossroads of different social spaces (food world, connoisseurs’ world and journalistic world). It appears that at the end of the 20th century, with the setting up of a food magazines’ market, the vision carried by magazines becomes dependent on their position in competition and on their business model. Then, the individual actors and the making of news are studied. The analysis of the trajectories and the skills of journalists and food bloggers who may compete with them put the light on different forms of food writing and different kinds of trust associated with them. Finally, the study of the actual work of food journalists allows to account for the similarity of media content. The analysis of the career paths of renowned food journalists helps to understand the way they manage to differentiate themselves from the others.