A market for weather risk ? Worlds in conflict and compromising.

In this paper we study the development of the market for weather derivatives in Europe. We show that weather derivatives conceived as financial products by their promoters have difficulties finding end-users. We describe the attempts of market promoters using a framework drawn from economic sociology, namely the theory provided by Boltanski and Thevenot's Economy of Worth. We derive some conclusions about the potential future of the market.Social studies of finance; Weather risk; OTC market;

Legitimacy in financial markets: credit default swaps in the current crisis

The current financial crisis appears to be a moment of epochal change, an archetypal ‘legitimation crisis’. This paper examines the impact of this collapse on one particular section of the financial markets that concerned with credit default swaps. This paper shows how and why the markets for these products expanded and why they were integral to the financial crash. The consequence of the crash was a huge loss of legitimacy for these markets. This paper examines the processes whereby this legitimacy is being reconstructed. In particular, it distinguishes between the re-establishment of pragmatic legitimacy, which is the primary concern of the market participants, and the re-establishment of broader political legitimacy, which concerns governments and regulators. It argues that these two forms of re-establishing legitimacy work in different ways and proceed at different rates. It explores the tensions to which this leads in terms of reconstructing the financial system

Critical Management Education as a Vehicle for Emancipation: Exploring the Philosophy of Jacques Rancière

This paper aims to contribute to the literature on Critical Management Education (CME) by drawing on the work of philosopher, Jacques Rancière, whose thinking provides a means of resolving the dilemma underlying CME. It raises fundamental questions regarding the position of authority and the expertise of the critical educator, while at the same time dispelling the illusion of collaboration and consensus with students and managers. By presenting equality as an assumption to be actualised, Rancière invites us to reject the appropriation harboured by expert knowledge and the assignation of positions that this implies. On this basis, we can restructure the place of management and management education as a fertile ground for the emergence of dissensus in order to politicise what was neutralised and to give voice to those who have no voice.Critical Management Education - Critical Management Studies - Emancipation - Rancière

Market shaping as an answer to ambiguities. The case of credit derivatives.

Building on Smith (1989), we describe the social processes surrounding a new financial OTC derivatives market, the market for credit derivatives. We show that in contradiction to more traditional derivatives, credit derivatives generate ambiguities of a cognitive and political nature. By conducting an in-depth longitudinal qualitative study from 1996 to 2004, we document the efforts made by the promoters of the market to alleviate these ambiguities and show how the size of resources needed results in the leadership of the most powerful. We thus provide a socially based explanation for the concentration and lack of transparency of the market. Our research exemplifies the contradictions between the rhetorical justification of financial innovations provided by financial theory and the empirical realities of a modern derivative market. It suggests that the actual structure of the market might best be understood by paying attention to the way different cognitive and political communities react to these contradictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]Credit derivatives; Social processes; Derivative securities; Over-the-counter markets; Construction sociale d'un marché financier;

The connexionnist nature of modern financial markets. Challenges and possible outcomes

The recent financial crisis has triggered radical criticism against financial markets. In this paper, we propose to analyse this criticism in the perspective drawn by Boltanski and Thevenot (1991/2006) around the notion of justification. We see the main debate as opposing the critics and the defenders of what can be identified as a Market order (Boltanski and Thevenot, 1991/2006). While the former regret the consequences of deregulation in financial markets, the latter insist on the preservation of regulatory options favouring market activity as much as possible. This debate however relies on the hypothesis that financial markets in general fit the ideal-type of the Walrasian market model. While this hypothesis might make sense as regards the description of stock markets (this refers to the so called market efficiency issue), it appears unrealistic when applied to the majority of modern financial markets. At least 80% of those are OTC markets where bilateral contracts are exchanged between counterparties in the absence of any centralized structure. Our thesis is that to be useful, a critical perspective on financial markets should take full account of the nature of OTC markets, which guarantees neither the transparency of prices nor the efficiency of competition mechanisms. We propose to characterize this nature using Boltanski and Chiapello's concept (1999/2008) of the Connexionnist World. We then emphasize the difficulty of the connexionnist grammar of worth to develop principles of justice in OTC markets, which are characterized by their despatialization and the infinity of potential members. We suggest potential tracks to struggle more efficiently against the drifts of the connexionnist logic as they arise on financial markets and their spillover effects on societies. The contribution of the paper is thus to provide a more precisely targeted critique of modern financial markets.connexionism, social studies of finance, critical theory

Laser-driven proton acceleration and detection at high repetition rate

[ES]Durante más de dos décadas, la aceleración de protones impulsada por láser ha sido un campo importante de investigación con un interés potencial para varias aplicaciones en diferentes campos de la física, la química y la ciencia de los materiales, así como en el área biomédica y el patrimonio cultural. Sin embargo, la interacción láser-materia es un proceso complejo que todavía no está totalmente controlado y la interacción resultante depende principalmente de los parámetros del láser y del plasma. Se están desarrollando diversas actuaciones para comprender el proceso detrás de este mecanismo a través de la caracterización de las propiedades espectrales y espaciales del haz de protones. Con la llegada de los láseres de alta potencia que funcionan con alta repetición, por lo tanto, es esencial un desarrollo cuidadoso de diagnósticos de partículas adecuados para el análisis en tiempo real de disparo a disparo. La tesis doctoral se centra en la generación, transporte y detección de una fuente de protones generada por láser. En la primera parte de la tesis se explorará la teoría de los protones y los electrones rápidos generados por la interacción de un pulso láser ultra intenso en un plasma sobredenso. En la segunda parte, se presenta el desarrollo de un detector de protones basado en centelleo, capaz de medir tanto la energía del haz de protones como su distribución espacial y capaz de operar en un modo de alta repetición. El detector ha sido diseñado y construido en el Centro de Láseres Pulsados (CLPU) y probado en colaboración con instalaciones europeas. El trabajo relacionado con el desarrollo de este nuevo diagnóstico, incluidas las investigaciones tanto teóricas como experimentales, se describe en la tesis. La parte final de la tesis está dedicada a los experimentos de puesta en marcha del sistema láser de petavatio VEGA-3. Se presentan la implementación de nuestro detector de centelleo y los resultados preliminares del experimento.[EN]For more than two decades, laser-driven proton acceleration has been an important eld of research with a potential interest for several applications in di erent elds of physics, chemistry and material science as well as biomedical and cultural heritage. However, the laser-matter interaction is a complex process which is still not totally controlled and the resulting interaction depends mainly on laser and plasma parameters. Still many studies are carried out to understand the process behind this mechanism through the characterization of the spectral and spatial properties of the proton beam. With the advent of high power lasers working at high repetition rate, a careful development of particle diagnostics suitable for online shot-to shot analysis is therefore essential. The PhD thesis focuses on the generation, transport and detection of laser-driven proton source. The theory of protons and fast electrons driven by the interaction of ultra-intense laser pulse in overdense plasma will be explored in the rst part of the thesis. In a second part, the development of a scintillator-based proton detector, able to measure both the proton beam energy and its spatial distribution and capable of being set in a high repetition mode is presented. The detector has been designed and built at the Spanish Center for Pulsed Lasers (CLPU) and tested in collaboration with facilities across the EU. The work related to the development of this new diagnostic, including both theoretical and experimental investigations, is described in the thesis. The nal part of the thesis is dedicated to the commissioning experiments of the petawatt laser system VEGA 3, which has recently started the operation phase. Implementation of our scintillator detector and preliminary results of the experiment are presente

Market Shaping as an Answer to Ambiguities.

Building on Smith (1989), we describe the social processes surrounding a new financial OTC derivatives market, the market for credit derivatives. We show that in contradiction with more traditional derivatives, credit derivatives generate ambiguities of a cognitive and political nature. By conducting an in-depth longitudinal qualitative study from 1996 to 2004, we document the efforts made by the promoters of the market to alleviate these ambiguities and show how the amount of resources needed results in the leadership of the most powerful. We thus provide a socially based explanation for the concentration and lack of transparency of the market. Our research exemplifies the contradictions between the rhetorical justification of financial innovations provided by financial theory and the empirical realities of a modern derivative market. It suggests that the actual structure of the market might best be understood by paying attention to the way different cognitive and political communities react to these contradictions.Social studies of finance, social construction of value, financial innovation, OTC markets, cognitive and political ambiguities

Rethinking Emancipation in Organization Studies. In the light of Jacques Rancière's Philosophy

The demand for emancipation was once something we only associated with oppressed social groups such as Women, Workers or the colonized who were seeking to escape from various forms of domination which they had long been subjected to. Today, some of the most privileged groups in our society such as middle managers and professions talk about their thirst for emancipation. They seek this precious and awe inspiring goal through participating in management courses (Gosling, 2000), reading various forms of management literature which promises to turn them into revolutionaries (Jacques, 1996), and engaging with various journeys to free themselves from the shackles of thought control and simply 'be themselves' at work (Fleming, 2009). Corporations routinely sell themselves as a route to emancipation for their consumers and employees. One only needs to think about the recent advertisement for Virgin which replaced the famous images of the revolutionary Ché Guevara with Richard Branson. The message seems to be clear - it is not just radical political movements that can provide emancipation, corporations can too! The fact that emancipation has lost its anchor in radical political movements and shocks and scandalizes some. For others, it is a kind of an indication of how endlessly flexible and omnivorous capitalism is insofar as it is able to adopt nearly anything - include forms of virulent anti-capitalism - to further itself. While these two explanations are certainly appealing, we think that the widespread adoption of this culture of emancipation actually underlines the increasing uncertainty and fragmentation that has taken place around the term. For us this is due to a shift in focus of understanding of emancipation. Previously, emancipation was understood as a form of wide-scale transformational change in society achieved through intellectuals enlightening people who find themselves dominated. This notion informed studies of emancipation for many years. The result was that research on emancipation tended to focus on either documenting large scale challenges to capitalism and management or agitating for emancipation through a progressive enlightenment of the audience. This approach to emancipation began to fall out of favour as it was accused of being too grandiose - subjects were positioned as victims of managerial knowledge which they could only escape from through the progressive enlightenment under the tutelage of critical intellectuals. Such disenchantment led researchers to turn their focus towards more minor forms of micro-emancipation whereby people momentarily escape from domination in their everyday life through minor activities (eg. Alvesson and Willmott, 1992). This focus produced a deep body of literature that documented the various ways individuals seek out micro-emancipation in the workplace (eg. Zanoni and Jensens, 2007). However, recently we have witnessed some important questions being asked around this research agenda. In particular, some are concerned that it has begun to fundamentally constrain how we think about forms of emancipation, creating a myopic focus on small-scale struggles and fundamentally ignoring many of the broader social struggles that challenge management. In this paper we seek to overcome these problems associated with macro as well as micro-emancipation by positing a new conception of emancipation offered in the recent thought of Jacques Rancière. For Rancière, emancipation should not be seen as an ideal to be reached, but as a postulate to be acualised in day-to-day practice. He points out that equality can be actualized by interrupting the order of sensibility (rather than through quotidian everyday acts), through creating a sense of dissensus (rather than collaboration and attempts to create consensus), and attempts to singularize the universal (rather than through fragmentary struggles). By focusing on these three processes, Rancière enables us to see a range of emancipatory struggles that we were blinded to by both accounts of marco-emancipation (which went looking for grand revolts) as well as micro-emancipation (which focused on everyday transgression). In particular it enables us to register the kinds of emancipation movements that have frequently been left out of accounts of emancipation in organization studies. These include the self-education movements, proliterian intellectual movements, as well as forms art. Rancière's account of emancipation allows us to extend how we think about processes of emancipation in and around organizations in three ways. First, it allows us to register activities in our theoretical gaze that we had previously ignored or discounted. Macro-emancipation focuses our attention on collective movements which are organised and micro-emancipation focuses our attention on often individual every-day activities which are not organised. In contrast, Rancière draws our attention to various emancipatory movements that are often collective, but are not formally organised. This broadens the range of forms of emancipation we can study. Second, Rancière allows us to rethink how exactly emancipation works. Instead of focusing on creation of new states of freedom (as studies of macro emancipation do) or attempts to seize fleeting forms of freedom (as studies of micro emanciption do), Rancière's work allows us to see how emancipation involves the transformation of the sensible. This re-orients our studies to how emancipation movements seek to change what and how we actually see the world. Finally, Rancière allows us to move beyond the assumption that contemporary resistance is fragmented and disorganised by registering how individual forms of resistance are experienced as an embodiment or singularization of universal struggles. Doing this allows us to recognise the link between the specific demands of many resistance movements and more universal claims such as dignity, recognition, and justice. By making these three contributions, we hope to move beyond either an elitist account found in studies of macro-emancipation and the banal account found in studies of micro-emancaiption. In order to make this argument, we proceed as follows. We begin by reviewing the two dominant conceptions of emancipation. First we look at three different modes of emancipation that have been successively pursued - political emancipation, economic emancipation and ideological emancipation. We then look at the ways in which organization studies has suggested these struggles take place - through 'macro-emancipation' or 'micro-emancipation'. In this review we highlight the shortcomings of these two existing conceptions of emancipation. We then introduce a third conception of emancipation inspired by the work of Jacques Rancière. After we have outlined this, we then draw out the implications of this for the study of emancipation in organization studies. We conclude by sketching out what new areas of emancipation this allows us to understand and perhaps engage with.Rancière ; emancipation ; critical theory ; critical management studies ; micro emancipation

Changing nature and sustainability of the industrial district model : the case of Technic Valley in France

This paper examines the impact of contemporary pressures on industrial districts and analyses the changes that are taking place in an industrial district confronted with disembedding and globalization. We discuss the following questions: what are the processes and consequences of disembedding for the changing shape and form of inter-firm trust, contract and network forms? Is there an evolution in subcontracting and trade interdependency? What is the role of institutional infrastructures? We performed a longitudinal qualitative study using a number of different data sources to analyse the evolution of one French industrial district, particularly how new pressures of internationalization and disembedding work to reconfigure inter-firm relations in this district. While the recent literature is dominated by notions about industrial districts that concern only the trend towards increased competition or disembeddedness, this article shows that there is no unilinear trend. In contrast with the findings of certain recent studies, we argue that economic logic does not fully account for recent developments since the adjustment that are being made by the district are characterized rather by re-embeddedness, increased cooperation and institutionalization.industrial district, globalization, economic sociology