Call for Papers

A workshop on Competition(s) 

As part of a broader project – Performances of Value: Competition and Competitions Inside and Outside Markets – we call for papers for a workshop on Competition(s) that will take place on June 10-11, 2016 at the Copenhagen Business School. Costs for travel, lodging, and meals for workshop participants will be covered by a grant from The Leverhulme Trust.

Organizers: David Stark (PI), Elena Esposito, Kristian Kreiner, Celia Lury, Fabian Muniesa, and Christine Musselin.

For more information about the project, see: http://blogs.cim.warwick.ac.uk/valueperformances/

What’s valuable? This question – whether at the personal, organizational, or societal level – is increasingly being answered through various forms of competition. These can be through the prices of market competition but they can also be through the prizes of contests, ratings, rankings, and other forms of organized competitions.

The Competitions workshop will explore the relationship between market competition and organized competitions. The phrase, “they are competing,” might refer, for example, to banks competing on the credit card market. But, in addition to such market competition, it could also refer to organized competitions and games such as the World Cup, architectural competitions, book prizes, Twitter scores, university rankings and other types of contests. Thus, alongside market competition as a coordinating mechanism of valuation in the economy we also find organized competitions. In the first type we find actors competing on markets. In the second type, we find contests with entry rules, judges, and prizes granted to the announced winners. On one side, competition is an ongoing, seamless, and seemingly endless process; on the other, competitions are discrete, bounded in time and location.

While market competition has been the subject of sustained attention, studies of organized competitions are more scarce and are rarely brought together. For the Copenhagen workshop, we are particularly interested in studies of organized competitions, addressing questions such as (but not limited to) the following:

– How are competitions (whether in sports, arts, business, politics, or science) staged and
structured?
– How do scoring systems evolve? How do new performance metrics emerge?
– How do judges and juries go about reaching judgements?
– What are the roles of audiences and experts?
– What happens when forms of competition move from one domain to another?
– How are social agents equipped with competitive dispositions? What devices, tools and
settings enable forms of competitive agency?
– Should we assume that everyone wants to win or that everyone accepts to play the games
of competition? What are the consequences of not joining in?

Abstracts of no longer than 500 words should be submitted by February 15, 2016. If the abstract is accepted, a full paper will be required by May 15, 2016. All submissions should be made to Ana.Gross@warwick.ac.uk.

Performances of Value is an International Research Network based at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies, University of Warwick,
supported by a grant from The Leverhulme Trust.