How does business knowledge (e.g. financial ideas, educational visions) affect business reality (e.g. valuation practices, consultancy work)? “New Perspectives in the Sociology and Anthropology of Business”, a PERFORMABUSINESS research symposium organized in association with East China Normal University, 18 April 2014 at ECNU Zhongbei Campus in Shanghai, will be an occasion to share views and discuss responses to this question. Program and details available here.

PERFORMABUSINESS is proud and happy to announce the publication of the first installment of “L’agence financière”(“Financial agency”), a special issue of Sociétés Contemporaines edited by Horacio Ortiz and Sabine Montagne. From their introduction:

“This is about deconstructing the notion of “the investor” […]. Rather than just considering that there are “investors”, fully invested within their investing mission, we explore, through a set of empirical studies, how investment decisions are taken as the outcome of a wide array of relations established between different types of actors. This division of financial labor is grounded in a compound of devices (juristic, technical and representational) which constitute what we call “financial agency” — a notion quite divergent from the liberal, economic view that reduces the subject matter to a bilateral exchange between an seller and a purchaser.” (from S. Montagne & H. Ortiz, 2013, “Sociologie de l’agence financière: enjeux et perspectives”, Sociétés Contemporaines, 93, p. 7).