The economy of qualities Michel Callon, Cécile Méadel and Vololona Rabeharisoa Abstract The aim of this paper is to highlight the main characteristics of what the authors call ‘the economy of qualities’. The authors show that qualifying products and positioning goods are major concerns for agents evolving within the ‘economy of qualities’. Competition in such an economy is structured through two basic mechan- isms. The rst is what the authors propose to call the process of singularization of products. The second is the mechanism whereby consumers are attached to, and detached from, goods that are proposed to them. At the heart of these logics, one can nd multiple socio-technical devices that are designed by economic agents, which ensure the distribution of cognitive competencies, and which constantly and nely tune supply and demand. Relying upon Jean Gadrey’s work, the authors claim that the economy of qualities is nowhere more effective than in services providing activities, and especially in those sectors that invest heavily in New Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). Finally, the authors suggest that, in the economy of qualities, the functioning and the organization of markets are issues that are shared by scholars and actors. In these highly reexive markets, a collaboration between them is needed. Keywords: markets; quality; services; economy. As Charles Smith, one of the pioneers of ‘new’ economic sociology, so rightly pointed out, forms of organization of economic markets and their modes of functioning are becoming an explicit issue for multiple actors and especially for economic agents themselves (Smith 2000). Markets evolve and, like species, become differentiated and diversied. But this evolution is grounded in no pre-established logic. Nor is it simply the consequence of a natural tendency to adapt. Economic markets are caught in a reexive activity: the actors concerned explicitly question their organization and, based on an analysis of their func- tioning, try to conceive and establish new rules for the game. Copyright © 2002 Taylor & Francis Ltd ISSN 0308-5147 print/1469-5766 online DOI: 10.1080/03085140220123126 Economy and Society Volume 31 Number 2 May 2002: 194–217 Michel Callon, Centre de sociologie de l’innovation, École des Mines de Paris, 60 boulevard Saint Michel, 75272 Paris cedex 06.