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We are calling for abstract proposals to the third Interdisciplinary Market Studies Workshop, to beheld in Saint Maximin la Sainte Baume, near Aix en Provence, France, on June 5 and 6 2014. Likeits two predecessors, this workshop aims to represent an opportunity for scholars, practitioners andactivists from any disciplinary background interested in market functioning and design, marketactors, market interactions, exchange orders, values and morals, socio-technical marketarrangements, ordering devices, objects, models, representations and tools. The workshop willprovide a space for forming connections between disciplines and for discussing possible futureavenues for an interdisciplinary market studies approach. Invited guest speakers will be Jane Guyer(Professor of Anthropology, Johns Hopkins, US) and Don Slater (Reader of Sociology, LondonSchool of Economics, UK).Where previous workshops focussed more centrally on marketization processes in variousempirical contexts (1st IMSW Sigtuna, Sweden 2010) and orders and values in markets (2nd IMSWDublin, Ireland 2012), this year we would like to foreground the actors who often ‘hide’ behindsuch processes but who form an integral part in performing markets. While papers considering anymarket phenomena empirically or conceptually are welcome, we particularly invite contributionsthat address one of the following three interrelated themes:1. The role of creativity and narratives in shaping marketsMuch of the recent work in markets has emphasised the materiality of markets, most notably, therole of market devices and metrics in enacting market forms. How these devices are actuallydeployed by market actors has received much less attention. Exploring the role of creativity and theforms of narrative construction that actors undertake to make sense of social and material reality isintegral to an examination of market behaviour and decision-making. Psychologists have longargued the centrality of narratives for understanding how humans apprehend the socio-materialworld. And scholars working in fields as diverse as sociology, anthropology, organisation, literarystudies and economic history have examined the role of fictionality, imagination and story-telling inmaking what we know as “the economic” (e.g. Beckert 2013, Czarniawska 1998, Maurer 2006,McCloskey 1998, Poovey 1998, Tuckett 2011). Further research into how (local) narratives andother interpretative tools and mechanisms are incorporated into processes of organising,qualification and exchange – e.g. the cognitive schemes, emotional frames and repertoires of actionthat provide meaning and coherence – is much needed.2. Personhood and market subjectsThe critique of economic man has been made, and repeatedly. And yet the homogenous economicagent and the corollary assumption of utility maximisation under known outcomes persist ineconomics, underpinning models of behaviour, notably incentives (e.g. principal-agent theory),which fail to adequately describe the complexity of human action. Furthermore economic theorieshave failed to explain how agents come into being, and they have not acknowledged the productionof multiple, heterogeneous, agents in markets. Elsewhere, the role of subject-making andpersonhood in markets has gained increasing traction, for instance in mundane market settings (e.g.how market actors are configured in online stores or supermarkets) and contexts where markets arestill being consciously constructed and are considered in their “infancy” (e.g. in markets intransition economies) (Guyer 2004). Possible research avenues may concern the intersection ofperformativity and subjectivity, the making of economic subjects in market agencements (Caliskanand Callon, 2010) – including consumers, producers, regulators and collective persons such as firms– and the role of cultural values and ethics in defining desired forms of personhood in markets(Entwistle and Slater 2013).3. Market empowermentThis theme focusses on how actors – economic or otherwise, always with special interests,imaginations, and personhoods – come to attain positions of power in and through markets. Poweris a classic issue in relation to markets. Some understandings of markets suggest markets aretantamount to the absence of power relations – the opposite of hierarchies (e.g. Williamson 1976) –whereas others suggest markets are arenas for political struggles (e.g. Fligstein 1996). The recentattention to the material dimension of markets has added another layer of complexity to this, wherearguably access to or control over certain market devices empowers some actors, whilstdisempowering others. A similar debate can be found in consumption studies, where marketsalternatively have been put forward as vehicles of consumer emancipation and consumergovernance/discipline (e.g. Cova and Cova 2012). We welcome proposals that explore issues ofpower, empowerment and disempowerment in markets and regarding market actors, for instance inrelation to materiality, political processes, or everyday market encounters.The workshop will be organized in collaboration with the Centre de Sociologie de l’Innovation,Ecole des Mines ParisTech. It will take place in the Couvent Royal at Saint Maximin La SainteBaume.We invite contributors to submit a 3-page abstract proposal by Jan 31st 2014. Abstracts should besent to Alexandre Mallard at the following address: imsw.2014@gmail.com. Inquiries about theworkshop can be made to any of the workshop organisers. We will notify contributors aboutacceptance by early March, and full papers will be due early May.For more informations about the workshop : http://imsw2014.sciencesconf.org/The Organising CommitteeProf. Hans Kjellberg, Stockholm School of Economics.Prof. Susi Geiger, University College DublinDr Kimberly Chong, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of LondonProf. Alexandre Mallard, Ecole des Mines ParisTech.ReferencesBeckert, J. (2013). 'Imagined Futures: Fictional Expectations in the Economy.' Theory and Society,42(3), 219-240.Caliskan, K. and Callon, M. (2010). 'Economization, part 2: a research programme for the study ofmarkets.' Economy and Society, 39(1), 1-32.Cova, B. and Cova, V. (2012). 'On the Road to Prosumption: marketing discourse and thedevelopment of consumer competencies.' Consumption Markets and Culture, 15(2), 149-168.Czarniawska, B. (1998). A narrative approach to organization studies. London: SAGE.Entwistle, J. and Slater, D. (2013). 'Reassembling the cultural: Fashion models, brands and themeaning of 'culture' after ANT', Journal of Cultural Economy, ahead-of-print, pp. 1-17.Fligstein, N. (1996). 'Markets as Politics: A Political-Cultural Approach to Market Institutions.'American Sociological Review, 61(4), 656-73.Guyer, J. (2004). Marginal Gains–Monetary Transactions in Atlantic Africa. Chicago: University ofChicago Press.Maurer, B. (2006). 'The Anthropology of Money.' Annual Review of Anthropology, 35(1), 15-36.McCloskey, D. N. (1998). The rhetoric of economics. (2nd ed.). Madison, Wis. ; London : University ofWisconsin Press.Poovey, M. (1998). A history of the modern fact: problems of knowledge in the sciences of wealth and society.Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press.Tuckett, D. (2011). Minding the markets: an emotional finance view of financial instability. Houndmills,Basingstoke, Hampshire, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Williamson, O. (1976). 'The Economics of Internal Organization: Exit and Voice in Relation toMarkets and Hierarchies.' The American Economic Review, 66(2), 369-77.