
Kieran Healy - The Performativity of Networks [pdf] - chrismealy
http://kieranhealy.org/files/drafts/performativity.pdf
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chrismealy
_Abstract: The "performativity thesis" is the claim that parts of contemporary
economics and finance, when carried out into the world by professionals and
popularizers, reformat and reorganize the phenomena they purport to describe,
in ways that bring the world into line with theory. Practical technologies,
calculative devices and portable algorithms give actors tools to implement
particular models of action. I argue that social network analysis is
performative in the same sense as the cases studied in this literature. Social
network analysis and finance theory are similar in key aspects of their
development and effects. For the case of economics, evidence for weaker
versions of the performativity thesis in quite good, and the strong
formulation is circumstantially supported. Network theory easily meets the
evidential threshold for the weaker versions; I offer empirical examples that
support the strong (or "Barnesian") formulation. Whether these parallels are a
mark in favor of the thesis or a strike against it is an open question. I
argue that the social network technologies and models now being "performed"
build out systems of generalized reciprocity, connectivity, and commons-based
production. This is in contrast both to an earlier network imagery that
emphasized self-interest and entrepreneurial exploitation of structural
opportunities, and to the model of action typically considered to be performed
by economic technologies._

