This winter I was lucky to be invited to present a paper at the What Price Creativity?  Conference at the ICC, University of St Andrews’ School of Management. It was fantastic and not a little intimidating to be in such impressive company and present my work in front of such leaders in the field of market studies. These authors that I have enjoyed reading and utilised greatly in my research, including Yuval Millo and Liliana Doganova were extremely kind  in providing me supportive comments and access to research that they thought would be helpful. I am very thankful to Director of Post Grad Research Dr Philip Roscoe for the invitation and opportunity.

The title of my paper and the abstract is below:

The construction of market devices in the independent film industry: cases of changing valuation practices

The film industry is a market for public experience goods that is characterised by extreme uncertainty (Vogel 2007). Negotiation of the financing and sale of a good for which there are no reliable predictors of returns is achieved without appeal to objectively rational probabilistic risk (De Vany 2004). Rather, market participants are able to make decisions and conduct economic action through reference to commonly accepted calculative frameworks (Callon et al 2007). This paper presents empirical evidence of the construction and operation of evaluative  frameworks that enable market construction and attachment. These devices mediate boundaries between market participants each operating with conceptions of value that are discreetly unaligned. The investigation charts the development of market devices for valuation that facilitate economic action according to inter-subjective rationality (Biggart and Beamish 2003). The research field of independent film is an environment radically disrupted by digital technology and ripe for examination as a state of flux supersedes the previously stable structural and conceptual model of the Film Value Chain (Finney 2010). Attention is paid to the performance and materialisation of new digitally enabled market devices (Mackenzie 2006) in a presentation of how novel evaluative tools come into being and operate in conjunction with established frameworks.

Selected References:

Biggart, N and Beamish. T. 2003. The economic sociology of conventions: Habit, custom, practice, and routine in market order. Annual Review of Sociology 29: 443–64.

Callon, M, Millo, Y and Muniesa, F. 2007. An Introduction to Market Devices in Callon, M, Millo, Y and Muniesa, F(Eds) . 2007. Market Devices, Oxford: Blackwell.

De Vany, A. 2004. Hollywood economics: how extreme uncertainty shapes the film industry. London: Routledge.

Finney, Angus (2010) The International Film Business: A Market Guide Beyond Hollywood. London: Taylor and Francis.

Mackenzie, D. 2006. An Engine Not a Camera. London: MIT Press.

Vogel, H. L. (2010). Entertainment Industry Economics: A Guide for Financial Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.