CRIS Scientific Seminar 2022-2023

Friday, February 24th 2023, 11:30 am
Sciences Po (1, place Saint-Thomas-d'Aquin) - Room K008

Can Markets be Morally Performative?
Henry Ford and the U.S. Quest for Standard Hospital Prices

Roi Livne

Associate Professor, University of Michigan

Scholars of economic performativity have largely focused on the constitutive effect of economic designs, models, formulae, and tools of calculation on markets (Callon, 1998). Yet the theoretical notion of capitalist markets provides far more than material designs for market exchange. Since Adam Smith, markets have also been moral constructs that generate categorizations of social and moral worth.

In this talk, I draw on the sociology of critical capacity (Boltanski and Thevenot, 1999; Boltanski, 2011) to interrogate critiques that have been directed toward how U.S. hospitals price care. Principle among those critiques is the fact that, unlike in the perfect market model, U.S. hospitals exercise radical price discrimination, charging virtually arbitrary amounts to different people for similar treatments. I analyze the case of the historic Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Michigan as a paradigmatic case in which a hospital attempted to institute standard prices, arguing that this attempt illustrates moral performativity, as it was tightly linked to a moralistic view of the capitalist society, which Ford sought to promote through his hospital.

Registration is mandatory. Thank you.

To find out more: https://lsa.umich.edu/soc/people/faculty/roi-livne.html