Agencing the Circulation of Goods, Accounts and Money: Economic Circuits in Madagascar
Résumé
The conceptualization of markets as sociotechnical agencements (STA's) (Caliskan & Callon, 2010; Hardie & MacKenzie, 2007) has been first and foremost interested in market arenas built on complex technologies and rational "agencies" like financial markets. This paper proposes to move to a long way off this area, in focusing on the (micro) economic circuits in the informal economy of emerging countries, where technologies are much less proliferate and sophisticated. The inquiry traces the socio-technical agencements of small production and trading micro-networks on the East Coast of Madagascar; it focuses on the examples of the second-hand car battery (sale, reparation, recharge); and the fish (game and sea fish) circuit. Focusing on the everyday workings of these markets, the analysis follows the process of agencing that supports their fluidity, which is performed by a multitude of agencies: kinship networks, key intermediaries, material artefacts (notebooks and baskets). It highlights the many re-framing actions called for by the everyday disruptions to economic life, bringing us closer to an understanding of how market reliability is established and how people deal with the risk of indeterminate economic exchanges.