The Limits of Metrological Performativity: Valuing Equities in the London Stock Exchange

This article critically engages with metrological performativity as an approach to conceptualising and investigating the social aspects of markets. In its simplest form, it conceives economics (and related professions) as a set of practices that go beyond the measurement of economies and economic agents to also shape, format and discipline them. The approach has a number of implications for the way actors and social relations in markets are researched. It has found many advocates especially from within the emerging field of cultural economy. This piece finds that such an approach has a number of limitations that hinder and restrict empirical investigation. Objections are illustrated by case study material focusing on the way company shares are promoted and valued in the London Stock Exchange (LSE). Here, the evidence suggests that metrological performativity can only be applied in a limited way