The infrastructure of markets

From electric power to electronic data

Bibliographic Data

ID2048874
AuthorsCanay Özden‐schilling (0000-0002-3440-309X, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, corresponding author)
Year2016
Volume3
Issue1
Pages68-80
Publication date2016-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEconomic Anthropology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2330-4847 • E-ISSN: 2330-4847
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1002/sea2.12045
OpenAlexW2308129357
LanguageEN
Citations received18
References cited50

Following the partial deregulation of the electricity industry in the 1990s, a number of electricity markets were instituted in the United States. As relatively new experiments, electricity markets open up possibilities for anthropologists to see markets as infrastructures of information. I argue that making markets in electricity has been a project in reorganizing information relationships, transferring the burden to organize information onto market actors, making them into data processors and the markets themselves into infrastructures of information. This article is part of a yearlong multilocale ethnographic project that seeks to understand how traders, analysts, engineers, and economists make markets in electricity in the United States. It draws on 5 months of participant observation at a market intelligence company that produces data and databases and sells price forecasts to traders in the deregulated markets of electricity. It maps the work practices of data cleaning and maintenance-a kind of labor I call "database work

Business · Commerce · Deregulation · Economics · Electric power industry · Electrical engineering · Electricity · Electricity market · Electricity retailing · Industrial organization · Market economy · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Engineering · Water Governance and Infrastructure

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub