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It's just presentation. Yes, each presentation, each presentation.

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Okay, let me just briefly kind of introduce it. Good afternoon. My name is Aaron Pitlock and I'm basically Illinois State University. This session is called brokering novel concepts into economic sociology, relational and cultural analysis. this is the second of 3 joint sessions between our Co. 2, economy and Society, and our C, 35, conceptual and terminological analysis these sessions mark the mid stage of an ongoing book project.

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Each paper will argue in favor of one concept from another subfield or discipline that is obscured, missing, or under appreciated, in the field of economy and society. In the presentation authors will make a theoretical argument of how our knowledge of economic life would be enhanced by brokering in the concept and provide empirical research to illustrate their argument

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to the extent they can within the 15 min time span and we will be reserving 3 min at the end for discussion. So please be sure, and we'll ensure that there will be enough time for you to to make your comments and questions. And now I pass it to our chair desk installed.

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Thanks so much to Aaron, and thank you all for being here, and I just wanted to begin with the acknowledgment of country the country meet. For this world Congress is called Nnar.

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It is the home of the Koola nation, Runjeri woi-urong people.

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We acknowledge their sovereignty and pay our respects to their elders and ancestors.

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So yeah, there we go, and we are going to begin with Ketarina's Fetlova mythological relationalism. so Katarina, you can take it away, and you have 15 min. Okay, thank you very much.

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Ekaterina Svetlova: yeah, thank you very much for inviting me and giving me this opportunity to present my thoughts on methodological relationalism online 150.

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Ekaterina Svetlova: And so I think on this concept is kind of overarching or umbrella concept that has not been debated. We in economic sociology enough.

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Ekaterina Svetlova: And I just would like to introduce, and this concept to you and present to you some possible added value of this concept.

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Ekaterina Svetlova: Erez agmoni so methodological relationalism, I would take a relation as a unit of analysis, and it might take a sociological research. 250.

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Ekaterina Svetlova: so I tried to move my slide. Yeah, a sociological research beyond methodological individualism and methodological holism that have been the most debated to alternatives. but methodological relationalism has been kind of mentioned, but never been. explicitly discussed. and we are all familiar with this limitations of individualistic and holistic approaches. I will not go into details about this.

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Ekaterina Svetlova: but we'll just claim that methodological relation is might be an interesting sort of alternative to be debated here, and indeed, it might be considered as an overarching umbrella concept that includes many familiar frameworks. I'm familiar to sociologists.

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Ekaterina Svetlova: like networks, a social interactions field. But also some concepts discuss in the very first session, like transactions. I understand this conceptional pathways and also relational work. say, a kind of all, a full course. on what is going on this in relations?

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Ekaterina Svetlova: Some shifts, upheaval, sense, make, and communication. Are we seeing those relations between individuals, institutions in the med areas, and so on. And also a focus on processed shawl. Thinking.

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Ekaterina Svetlova: I would claim that this methodology on. Yeah, this.

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Ekaterina Svetlova: yeah. Methodological relationism has not been debated enough. you know, has not been applied sufficiently to analyze the economic phenomena, such as prices risk interest rates that And in my presentation I will focus on our valuation, particularly asset valuation to show some advantages of this concept

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Ekaterina Svetlova: erez agmoni. And if I talk about violation, I usually start with the observation is that valuation of many assets, basically all assets that we have in markets 101

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Ekaterina Svetlova: fails.

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Ekaterina Svetlova: So if we are talking about individualistic, purely calculative approach or calculative regimes of violation, as I don't

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Ekaterina Svetlova: really provide straightforward answers, what is the value of an asset in case of equity? It is difficult, because they are struggle to predict Future cash flows in case of bonds. It is difficult, because embalation of bones relies on unexpected, uncertain events. For example, Ecp action, inflation, and so on

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Ekaterina Svetlova: in case of contingent convertible bonds, so called call course, in which I'm a published work and call today you the South evaluation. It is our relation is difficult, because at least have difficulties to classify in this asset as bond equity or derivative and in case of complex financial instruments.

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Ekaterina Svetlova: I like a structure products. there is no knowledge of default, probabilities that also makes this validation kind of struggle.

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Ekaterina Svetlova: At the same time, despite all those difficulties to a provide straight for about valuation of assets.

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Ekaterina Svetlova: Markets continue to function. My markets for such products exist, and individualistic and purely individualistic and holistic perspectives that would not help us to answer the question, why more? And those markets continue to exist? Why market participants some call arrive at Val. You can determine value, and enable, as it enables exchange of those security

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Ekaterina Svetlova: mit ctl, and and my methodological relationism, and might provide a kind of reach of perspective and provide a ritual explanation on how also those impediments related to valation are overcome in markets, and I would say that the first step here was done by me and my colleagues, Diane law. I'm jolie on Philip Grant in the and Donald Mckenzie 2

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Ekaterina Svetlova: ere

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Ekaterina Svetlova: erez agmoni looking at various intermediaries. that shape it challenges practices by while exchanging information, entertaining our relationships. observing Kichasa channeling money, channeling our information 150,

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Ekaterina Svetlova: and also forming audiences for each other's performances. So if they perform themselves as competent on experts. And there is a really a lot of going on in

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Ekaterina Svetlova: all those links that I present here.

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Ekaterina Svetlova:  so money. Give us institutional investors and said, I influence by investment consultants, I'd say, trust money to I said managers, who are also not doing such open solid. You would also influenced by sales like on the list. And So how valuation happens here. I would present on a on next slide in taking an example of

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Ekaterina Svetlova: equity valuation.

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Ekaterina Svetlova: So so, of course. it is a very straightforward question how it which is are valued, but still We do not have a very clear answer on this question, and I think that if we apply a concept of methodological relationalism, we could understand it a much better.

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Ekaterina Svetlova: So. First of all, of course, we have companies that are equity shores and say, provide information to asset managers and security analysts, and as it managers do, valuation and send to side based on this valuation, kind of decide where the money should flow to source companies or not. 150

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Ekaterina Svetlova:  erez agmoni However, if we focus only on asset managers, and they are models using which they do violation. It would again be kind of an individualistic perspective which is not 150

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Ekaterina Svetlova: erez agmoni. Sufficient, I would say. And also, if we take a holistic approach and say, Okay, for example, institutions to which those asset managers belong, determine how asset managers do. Validation would also not be completely correct. 1 1

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Ekaterina Svetlova: so institutions, of course, can prescribe.

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Ekaterina Svetlova: So I said, managers for low, passive, or active approach but empirical work shows that each front manager would still develop, say, our own style and investment process.

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Ekaterina Svetlova: we've seen those institutions.

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Ekaterina Svetlova: And as the second the most important point is that it is not just about asset managers, and companies. Clients will play a very important role in how is it managers do validation, and for which companies

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Ekaterina Svetlova: so institutional investors, for example.

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Ekaterina Svetlova: look very detailed into

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Ekaterina Svetlova: how asset managers? so which? What is the investment process of those asset managers, institution on the desktop. Clients are also supported by consultants who help client their clients, institutional investors to formally say requirements, and also to pick up the asset managers.

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Ekaterina Svetlova: E. C.

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Ekaterina Svetlova: And also processes, I would say, would determine how asset managers formulates the final investment process, important part of which is evaluation 150

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Ekaterina Svetlova: erez agmoni, and then moving to the second example of which is contingent convertible bonds, import of importance of which we could observe quite recently, are this included, suis 101

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Ekaterina Svetlova: struggles in the requirement by Ubs bank, the Ubs group in Switzerland.

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Ekaterina Svetlova: alright. So it is very yeah.

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Ekaterina Svetlova: it is very difficult to value your caucus, as I said, because we cannot properly classify them. And so our tail They are very prone to tail-risk events

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Ekaterina Svetlova: ere

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Ekaterina Svetlova: erez agmoni and say, Do it by developing what I call consumer oriented regime of valuation. So it is not about mathematical determination of value of those products, but just selling them, as you would say, washing machine or genes. So there is 1 1

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Ekaterina Svetlova: erez agmoni. I say, present call course as bonds, which are low risks and equity or derivatives. Obviously they also argue that trigger events are also unlikely. So the cocos are high, 150

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Ekaterina Svetlova: erez agmoni yield low risk instruments, and to also say that caucus associated with important banks like Deutsche Bank, or credits with have great brand. And so our kind of certain one

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Ekaterina Svetlova: erez agmoni. So the point is that evaluation here happens again in conversation with a clients and not based on some mathematical tools, are really 150.

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Ekaterina Svetlova: So I I think that those 2 examples kind of illustrate is that we could apply methodological relevance concept to some economic, important economic

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Ekaterina Svetlova: practices. we can might more to apply some We might want to apply some to more practices, to more phenomena like I said that, or investment, or an interesting interest rate, and so on, and it might be a part of how to make this concept workable. However? I do not know the answer to the question, how to make it work.

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Ekaterina Svetlova: Indeed, is it important? Because it's kind of a more overarching, abstract concept. And I would be happy to discuss this with you in the discussion part of this session. Thank you very much.

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and you don't have a slides.

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You don't.

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Wow, is it? So?

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It's right.

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no matter.

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So I know it. Yeah.

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yep. it's okay. 1 s.

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all right. So next we have Jordi mundo, and he will discuss fiduciary relationships.

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Okay, okay, thank you.

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Thank you for the opportunity to present my research.

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I am very impressed for the past presentations. They were very rich, and my presentation is a summarized an ongoing research on future relationship.

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I start

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Although fiduciary relationships, has a long tradition in Hammurabi.

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Jewish, or Islamic codifications.

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they were especially conceived and instituted by Roman private civil law to deal normatively

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with asymmetrical inter individual relationships in which a thruster or beneficiary

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has an interest in the performance of certain action.

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but doesn't have the expertise time or means to carry it out herself.

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Therefore she needs a fiduciary to execute that action, who is supposed to have the necessary expertise time or means, but who does not necessarily have an interest in performing it to the beneficial satisfaction.

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In this sense it is a problematic and potentially dangerous relationship for the beneficiary. since it confers a height margin of discretion to the finishing.

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This is why, whether in private law or in democratic political relationships, the fiduciary or trustee must be accountable.

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The reasons for establishing fiduciary relationships have been very diverse, depending on the needs of each context.

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For example, in Low 198 of the Hammurabi code

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eighteenth century before the common area.

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It states that if an agent conducts business or transactions of behalf of another person, but fails to fulfill her obligations or mishandles and trusted property.

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she will face penalties and potentially be held liable for the losses in card.

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In the classical Roman world. The institutionalization of felicial relationships in Roman law began with the appointment of the tutor by the Pateaphamilias, in order to preserve the family's patrimonial unity, but later mutated towards the protection of the minor.

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Interestingly.

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Cicero portrays Government administration like the office of a trustee.

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which must be conducted for the benefit of those untrusted to one's care, not of those to whom it is entrusted.

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It is well known that we can find, and dissidents of fiduciary formulations transfer to the understanding of political relationships. For example.

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in the English seventeenth century republicanism. Harrington's way of putting it stands out as an estate. Interest becomes a man's own

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if he will not answer well for deed. so the power of a magistracy not accountable to the people from whom it was received becoming of private use, the Commonwealth losses her liberty.

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John Milton protes the power of kings and majesty, as derivative, transferred, and committed to them in trust from the people to the common good of them all, in whom the power yet remains fundamentally, and cannot be taken from them.

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not to pension, not to mention Luke's formulation of instituted political power, conceived as a trustee appointed for the purpose of the common good.

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In today's world we can find countless examples of fiduciary relationships both in the civil and political domains.

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We can see this in this L.

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In the last decades

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there has been extensive research of this fiduciary relations structure. Of course this has been the case in the area of legal studies, particularly those concerning private civil law and law of contract.

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but also in the area of economic theory, where the focus

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has been under difficulties of this principal agent relationship.

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regarded as a delicate asymmetrical information game, in the, in the mathematical sense of the term.

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On the other hand, researchers in the disciplines more directly directly concerned with public, low constitutional law. Administrative law have mainly focused their attention on the problems involved in the public projection of such

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principal Asian structures which were originally conceived as a way of understanding and regulating relationships between private individual citizens.

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For example. when the popular sovereign with the people

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in the United States Constitution or the resource volunteer

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is regarded as the last resort principle. Only metaphorically can it be assumed for such a sovereign crowd to act as a sort of unicum Swedenities, the only of its kind

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in a much lesser scale. The same thing can be said when the group of shareholders of a multinational corporation list under Stock Exchange is seen as the trust or beneficiary of so complex a business organization.

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In other words.

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when the notion of fiduciary relationships is transposed to the understanding of the nature of public political life

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uneven, the life of large organizations of a civil, social, economic character. Not only does it require copying with the analytical and normative problems arising from information, asymmetry

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between the parts, but also dealing with the subtle, analytical and normative problems derived from the organization of the collective action of both the principles, agents, and beneficiaries.

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I believe that this whole body of knowledge can be applied to the field of economics and society in a way that can be enlightened. I propose to take as an example the issue of property.

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For a long time an ideology of property has endured that has understood it as unlimited in the case of common law.

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or as absolute in the case of continental, European civil law. To tell it briefly, we can find 2 respective paradigmatic examples in the quotes of William Baxton from the eighteenth century

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and from the Napoleon Civil Code in the early nineteenth century.

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The quote of woollen blacks says that there is nothing which so generally affects the imagination, and engages the affections of mankind as the right of property.

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or that sole and despotic dominion which one man exercises over the external things of the world in total exclusion of any other individual in the universe.

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and the French civil code states that property is the right of enjoying and disposing of things in the most absolute moment

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in the real world, however. examples, a bound of property being subject to a myriad of limitations. but, more importantly, at least, since the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

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In various legal political contexts. Property has been constitutionally constitutionalized.

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so that it has been subject to the principles, such as social utility or the social function of property.

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For example.

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the Weimer Constitution.

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Not only a states that properties guaranteed by the Constitution load determines its content and limitations, but it also stipulates that

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property oblige

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its use shall simultaneously be in service up to the General Wood.

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and of the quote similarly, but in a very different context.

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Article 27 of the Mexican Constitution of 1970, a State that ownership of the lands and waters within the boundaries of the national territory

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is best originally in the nation which has cut and has

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the right to transmit title thereof to private persons, thereby constituting private property. Here private property is conceived fiducily, as politically constituted, not as preparitically

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absolute.

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In turn, says the Mexican constitution, the nation shall at all times have the right to impose on private property such limitations as the public interest may demand

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to ensure a more equitable distribution of public wealth, and of the quote.

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this fiduciary idea of property understood

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of us inherently public. always subject to the public good which, as such, can be entrusted privately

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or in common. or to the powers of the State. is both robust and historically embodied. It is not a mere idealization.

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Besides, it also offers.

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It also offers us a very useful tool to conceive institutional solutions to the necessary protection of natural systems today, deeply threatened by degradation, if not extinction. As we have heard these days in other communications present present presented at this Congress

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in particular, this relation and philosophy structure

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seems an appropriate mechanism to articulate the governance of the global commons that aims to harmonize the requirements of sustainability, equity, and efficiency.

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For example, through Earth through the sheep

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or earth gardenship or Earth tutorship.

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For all this it seems to me that the structure of financial relationships not only allows a more precise re conceptualization of existing socioeconomic realities.

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But it could be very fertile for the institutional design necessary to address some serious problems facing humanity.

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Thank you.

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All right. Next, we have Aaron Pitlock who will discuss conflicts of interest.

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Hi, everyone! I think you'll find.

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I think you'll find some amazing kind of resonances between my presentation. And it's it's just kind of I don't know it. Like the previous session. There's some surprising overlap between these concepts

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today. The concept I'd like to argue is that we should be brokering into economic sociology the concept of conflict of interest.

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I know that most of you will be initially skeptical that this slippery concept has anything to offer to sociology. But I'll see if I can convince you.

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Before I proceed. I should say that about half of my manuscript is devoted to using the concept of conflict of interest as social structure. To understand an exemplary case in the global financial crisis of 2,007, 8, 9, 10,

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which is the Goldman Sachs, manufacturing and marketing, collateralized debt obligations by packaging these up to toxic assets and then selling it to their customers.

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However, this case is quite challenging to understand, unless you're already familiar with securitization and investment banking, and in my 15 min of fame I I just didn't think I could do that. Moreover, listening to these previous presentations, particularly the previous panel, I'm sorry, I think, that I should rewrite the paper, and instead of having one example, I should use multiple examples. So these are the thoughts. So in short, in this presentation.

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I'm going to be focusing on the theory, not the application. And so, as you're think as you're listening to it, though, I want you to imagine a very simple example of a conflict of interest. Imagine a private medical market.

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Imagine the relationship between a doctor and a patient in which there is a potential conflict between the doctor's advice for the best treatment for the patient's health

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versus the doctor, choosing the treatment that would be either most profitable for themselves or least costly for themselves. So have that kind of

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ideal typical relationship in your mind for this paper.

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So for at least 4 decades, the concept of conflict of interest is widely used in civil society discourse to understand and diagnose dysfunctional markets, for example, corporate scandals and financial crises are popularly explained in terms of conflicts of interest.

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In a content analysis of the business press. I alone found that conflict of interest was one of the Media's principal explanatory frames of Enron's collapse in 2,001. It was also ubiquitous in understanding the global financial crisis

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given how widespread this concept is. And as an explanation, it's not surprising that the concept has been incorporated into policies and regulations in human resource, departments, procurement offices, and other legal and ethical documents.

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So why, then, do sociologists not teach this concept as a central one? In the our sociology textbooks. Why aren't there many sociological articles published examining different kinds of conflicts of interest?

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There have been very good reasons for avoiding this term.

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We should note that the concept is still in formation in the public sphere. Linguistic dictionaries do not have an established definition. So if you look at different dictionaries. They they have different definitions. There's there was no English use of the term before the 1930 S. And no use of it in Us. Court documents until 1,949,

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the Oxford English Dictionary still has only a draft definition.

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Similarly, although some fields of Academia do use the concept particularly in business ethics, which we'll return to.

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The technical definitions of conflict of interest also differ. So before we can broker the concept in it isn't even clear what a conflict of interest is. Moreover, conflicts of interest are commonly understood in an individualizing frame where individuals are in a conflict of interest, and it's up to them to exercise their ethical or moral authority, to do the right thing or the wrong thing, or to be legal or to be illegal.

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No wonder sociologists have avoided conflicts of interest. It isn't clear what they are, and the concepts often part of an individualizing blame. Discourse.

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however, I suggest that sociology can benefit by brokering in this concept. But to do so, we need to improve it and make it compatible with our our discipline's emphasis on social structure. Specifically, I'd like to broker in the concept from the business ethics. Literature

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in interdisciplinary subfield, often taught in business goals, sometimes in legal departments, sometimes in philosophy departments, the business ethics, literature has discovered 2 dead ends to common understandings of conflict, of interest that actually leads to poor empirical work.

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The first common mistake is to understand a conflict of interest merely as conflicting interests.

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But even non-viberian sociologists would probably agree with Max Weber that Kampf understood his struggle or conflict. It's endemic to every economic transaction. So to be blunt. Buyers want to buy cheap, and salaries want to sell deer. So if a conflict of interest is understood as just any conflicting interest. We're merely coining a new phrase. To describe economic transactions without adding anything.

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A second common mistake is to understand conflicts of interest as a conflict between the public interest and one's self-interest, or between the public interest and one's organization's interest.

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For example, Silvio Silvio Berlusconi and Donald Trump were both businessmen before they were politicians, and they remain businessmen while they were in office. Thus conflicts of interest are being used to describe the kinds of conflicts that politicians like Berlusconi and Trump have between their public obligations as a politician and their private interest as a businessman

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or a conflict of interest is used to describe the conflict of interest between. You know the trump organization as a business and trump as a President

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it is theoretically sound to understand conflicts of interest as a problem that many politicians and other public servants may face. And, in fact, many dictionary definitions.

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use this as their definition as a conflict between a public and a private interest.

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The problem with understanding this understanding of conflict of interest is that the concept is widely used in civil society to describe markets where there is no political office such as the conflict of interest I asked you to think about between a doctor and a patient, or in my, in my manuscript, the conflict of interest between 2 investment banks.

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one sociologist, Richard Sedberg, who attempted to use conflicts of interest as a sociological concept to find conflict of interest as a conflict between a person and a so-called public interest.

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But Fedburg quickly ran into an empirical problem, which is which he recognized in his own footnotes. It's notoriously difficult to empirically define a public interest. And so this weekend Sedberg's analysis and his theory.

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The third bullet point, I think, is a poor conception of conflict, of interest, but it's one that many academics and business ethics do use. They view it as a conflict between one's private interest

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in a professional duty or occupational role.

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This looks good. At first. Berlusconi. I had professional duties as a prime Minister, a doctor has professional duties, and in most situations they are a true professional that requires credentialing and membership, and in an association. In order to practice medicine.

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however, I think that this understanding of conflict of interest can quickly fall into semantics. This is because there are many occupations out there that are not professions, and whose so-called professional duty is ambiguous or contested.

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For example, what are the professional duties of bloggers relative to credential journalists, or what are the duties of credential journalists versus freelance journalists.

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What is the occupational role of a salesperson, anyway? Can they do anything legal to make a profit?

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Or are there normative constraints on on the occupation.

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It's very clear in my example of the investment banks where Goldman Sachs can convincingly argue that in their market they are very thin professional obligations. So if we define conflict of interest in this way, that some business ethicists admire, then our empirical work starts floundering on this unresolvable strategic representation of what professional duties in occupation has or should have.

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such ambiguity is common, and I think it saps much of the utility of conflicts of interest. So by now you're probably thinking that's what I thought. Conflicts of interest is a terrible concept to broker into sociology.

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It's just a smokescreen for obscuring capitalist power. Relations.

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You may even be thinking that you're glad to be a sociologist, not a a business ethicist who has has to use and read about such an intellectually bankrupt concept.

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Well, I ask you, before you step away to the exit door to wait a moment longer. I suggest that one merit in brokering in this concept is that other business ethicists have arrived at a stronger understanding of conflict, of interest that's actually, surprisingly sociological. Insofar is, it looks at it as a social structural position, and it avoids the mistakes on this slide.

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So I to suggest there are 2 models of conflict, of interest that are commonly used in the business ethics, literature that sociologists could potentially use and remember our ideal typical conflict of interest for the purposes of this talk is a doctor and a patient in which the doctor's advice on the best course of treatment could conflict between what's healthiest for the patient versus what's most profitable for the doctor.

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The first model is principal agent model, in which a conflict of interest is any social situation between principles and agents that's created by perverse incentives.

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So in our example, the patient is the principal who is hiring. The doctor understood as the agent, but the doctor has a perverse incentive that some of the most profitable treatments are not the most advantageous for the patient's health.

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For these business ethicists the conflict of interest becomes a moral and ethical problem that is ubiquitous in principle, age of relationships which encompass frankly almost any imaginable economic relationship.

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Some sociologists do use principal agency theory, so this could be one way to broker the theory in

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the second variant in the business ethics. Literature is to understand the conflict of interest. Situation is a social problem between a fiduciary and clients that clouds the fiduciary's judgment.

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You can see why I'm happy to receive the paper by Jordi on fiduciary relationships.

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The lance and root for fiduciary is trust so in any relationship in which one party must trust another, like between a client and a doctor, or between a client and a lawyer. A conflict is of interest, as if the doctor or lawyer is in a position where their judgment or advice might be clouded.

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Both variants might be accurate. It would be difficult to prove one variant over another, since judgment and economic incentives are are interlinked and both variants provide the same common policy advice. If you find yourself in a conflict of interest. The normative or legal or strategic advice is similar. The first is prohibition right? If you prohibit

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conflicts of interest, situations, then principles won't have perverse incentives and fiduciaries won't have anything clouding their judgment where the second best policy would be. Some kind of structural prophylactic. For example, organizations can erect ethical firewalls or cones of silence to physically and socially isolate individuals, and affirms that they don't meet one another, and a third policy advice would be disclosure

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if a principal or fiduciary is conflicted, they should disclose this to their client, and try to act as morally or ethically in the best interest of the client.

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So if anyone wants to broker in either of those understandings of conflict, of interest, you may be my guest. However, I think both of them have serious problems of scope.

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The principal agent variant is basically renaming the ethical or moral component of every principle. Agent interaction is a conflict of interest. This variant really isn't much better than thinking of conflicts of interest is conflicting interests. So we're back to comp and struggle.

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the cognitive. This variant is narrower, but it shares the same problem of looking at conflicts of interest as a private conflict with one's professional duty or occupational role. Perhaps a doctor is a true to fiduciary because of Hippocratic oath, because it's a paragon profession. The most positions in the economy are not fiduciaries, or whether they are in fiduciaries or not is highly contested right. It's a claim.

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a rhetorical claim. So my example in my paper of the relationship to investment bankers comes to mind where Goldman Sachs rather convincingly argues that it has no fiduciary obligations to its own clients.

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So this is my last slide, and it's my preferred understanding of conflicts of interest that I'd like to actually broker in. Since I've made it myself, it's probably has even more flaws than the other definitions of conflict of interest I presented. But I'll try my best to defend it in the discussion.

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So a conflict of interest, I argue, is a claim regarding an expert-dependent relationship in which a client depends on an expert for their expertise.

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and in which an expert's obligation to act in the best interest of the client conflicts with the experts. Other interests.

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So 2 critical terms I need to clarify are what I mean by an expert, dependent relationship, and what I mean by interest. An expert-dependent relationship is one in which the client must trust or rely on an expert for the purpose of advising, aiding, acting on behalf of protecting the interest of the client

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similar to fiduciary right? But it's different. Clients must trust experts whenever they are dependent on their expertise, either because they are unable to monitor in experts behavior, or they're unable to evaluate it.

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For example, patients do not have the medical knowledge to evaluate a doctor's advice.

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Even patients with medical knowledge like my mom, who is a nurse before she retired, is ultimately dependent on the superior expertise of the doctor that she is

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directly or indirectly paying

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interest. So that's easy, that these are socially constructed nontrivial goals. I'm trying to run far away from principal agency theory. in rational choice theory. Instead, let's follow board. Do.

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An interest is akin to an investment in a social game of profound interest to those in the game. So when we examine conflicts of interest, we don't only need to look at money. We can look at all kinds of social games that men and women play with one another, or games in interracial relationships, or to be blunt games between medical professionals and a wide variety of other groups.

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Lastly, Viviana Zealander convincingly argues that all durable economic transactions involves relational work between the parties where the parties are investing time and energy and strategizing to define what kind of relationship are we in? Thank you.

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in a conflict of interest situation where one party is dependent on the expertise of another. This means that patients and doctors would engage in relational work to attempt to manage the conflict of interest situation.

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For example, in order to obtain a best health advice, a patient might emphasize to a doctor their common religion, or use language to refer to the doctor, as you know, my brother, or emphasize their common ethnicity or praise. The doctor is more scrupulous, and other doctors that they've had. The bad experience with.

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In other words, one can engage in relational work to attempt to reshape the expert-dependent relationship, to try to manage this conflict

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in this social game between doctors and patients. Each party has its own interests of what a win would look like and what rules they're playing by. I'm like, maybe just half a minute more sorry. So in closing, there are 2 advantages to brokering in the concept of conflict, of interest into sociology. First, coi relationships are ubiquitous, and they're easy to identify. But how parties negotiate the conflict of

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interest? Relationship has not really been researched, certainly not by business ethicists. This creates a new research agenda for sociologists.

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secondly, by improving the concept of conflict of interest, and by creating an empirical literature of these conflict of interest situations, sociologists would have tools and research that they can use to dialogue with civil society

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by adopting the concept of conflict of interest. We sociologists can directly participate in public discussions and legal discourses about conflicts of interest. We need more sociologists on TV, right? by using and improving the concept of this concept in civil society. So sociology might become more relevant in addressing societal conflicts and problems, including corporate malefeasance and dysfunctional markets.

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thank you for your focus on my latest research project. I'm literally hungry for your feedback.

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Tom: I I will try to share my screen. Can you allow me to do that?

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How do you? How do you get back into the one moment.

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So, yeah, that's shifting this.

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Okay, nice.

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And your screen. Yes, that's great.

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Okay, well, good evening, everybody. And thank you for for organizing. Such a new testing encounter!

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Really. Thank you very much. well, I we I'm presenting with Michael Otto, Tom, Tom, the term is online in Belgium, then we are sharing all time. then I am going to present the the general proposed of the paper, and it's going to give an example is working on

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 We are fighting for the introduction of simios in the field of the sociology of economy.

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and our main question is how to explain, sociologically

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and not economically. the coordination of the market.

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The main idea we want to introduce is based on the idea that there is a medium in the relation in the relationships in the economic relationships. And this medium is very important to take into account to set up and construct a research project in sociology of economics.

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The the price is a sign, a signal. Of course it is, as.

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and the economist knows, in the very general and standardized understanding of the market. But it's only one sign we use in a market transaction. If we we look at no graphically in a trade room, for instance, we see that people use other

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sign to coordinate and to Decide. Then, just to point the the the very important point of the the point of departure of our or or research. 3 propositions.

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The first one is that to understand that the economics of convention is surely a first step. I don't know if you know economics of convention. It's an important movement in sociology, of economics coming from from France.

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We believe it's a first step, a very useful step but a bit in. We must complete it by a more general theory of science. in on on the market, and that's the reason why we introduced the

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proposition. 2. Semiotics as such, coming from Purse, the the, the the famous American philosophy of Charles Sanders. Purse can be useful, helpful to complement the economics of convention.

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And we are going to propose. Does a third proposition, an understanding of the stock market indices, like the Dol Jones in the Persian way, to show the usefulness of this of this approach.

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Thank you, Tom.

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Proposition one. The social economics of conventions and beyond.

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Well, it! It is well established at the moment that convention are Very important in the market transactions. by the work of Olivia Faux, for for instance, or Laurentive? No, and so on. well! Conventions are rules

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who coordinate representations of people, and not only behaviors.

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and there are implicit. The arbitrary! Like convention in the language! The the meaning of a word is conventional, and the meaning of economics.

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It's totally conventional. Then we we must

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take into account the existence of convention on the markets, for instance, very implicit conventions are quality, the quality of product conventions

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on the market. They are implicit, they are not discussed. There is a convention on the quality of the market. The idea of the convention is that the actors

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are rational, it's true, but in another way, then the general standardized understanding of rationality. They are interpretative. It's it's interpretative rationality. It includes some

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skills of calculation, of obviously, but not only, and we must take into account the fact that the conventions

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are cruel.

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It means that there there is a lot of conventions on the market, on the, on the quality of the product of the quality of the partner, and so on, and Well, disparity explains the priority of markets. There there are different markets. The labor market is not a a financial market which is not a market of product. Then Markets are organized.

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There is no such thing as the separation between market and organization! And what the The concept of symeosis. Add to this framework is that convention are not on the only sign we use, and that matters in market coordination. There are some much more unstable.

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The coordination devices.

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Convention is an institution, for instance, the meaning of a world is an institution. But in, for instance, in a trade-room, in the room of traders in a bank. Well, there are coordination based on signs much more.

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unstable

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they they change all the time. What this? What is this? This kind of sign is very, very important, and and that's the reason why we we found in the purse understanding of symeosis a helpful tool, and you know that the the founder of semiotics explains the the emergence of meaning as a process.

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as a semiotic, a triadic process between a representation, for for instance, a word I I don't know. Venus. Venus. And an object a star over there. But what's important is this kind of relationship must be mediated by an interpretant.

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then, This is the triadic understanding of the fabrication of the meaning we are doing all the time. All the time you are listening to me, and you are using interpretant

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you are. You are linking what I am saying with

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as an object evasive object. But you are, you are, you are engaged in very committed all the time in a semiotic process.

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And

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then.

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yes, thank you. With this idea we can start to understand the probability of science. well, there are 3 counts. very. It's very known for any philosoph, especially in America. It's very not well. There are 2 kinds of signs on an icon and index, a a symbol. The icon is linked with with this with the object, with similarity

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index with a co-occurrence, for instance, the smoke is the sign of the fire, but it's not

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at all a collational relationship.

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It's a causal relationship.

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And of course, there are conventions like in the the language, then the relation of to the object can be different. according to the different signs, and the relation to the interpretant can be different to In the case of the icon, the relation with the interpretant is just a suggestion. I think, for instance.

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that impression in impression is painting it. It can. It's like

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it's like the flowers. It's like river. It's like light light light, but it's light light in trees and so on. But just a suggestion. It's quite different from the relationship between the the and its meaning in the common language, which is conventional.

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Okay? And and then this is a way to globalize the idea of sign and to understand it, the production of meaning as dynamics as a dialectics between different

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Tom: science. And now we are, Tom, if you can take the flu. Okay, thank you very much. And and thank you, Allen, for allowing us to present this for so in about 5 min, I will just try to show the interest of mobilizing these person. Category 6 person, 2 books to analyze market coordination based on a case study. And this case today is

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Tom: is uncoord in financial market coordination. And more precisely, the Id is to study the rule of a sign in financial market coordination, and he sty this science, or is stock market index so formally, statistically, the stock market index is just awaited over a week computed from this to prices of the simple of stocks of companies. So, for example, the Do drones is computed from the stock prices of

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Tom: 30 big Us. Companies. But in the seventies stuck in DC's became much more than just this reflection. Passive reflection of stock marketing disease. They became one of the most powerful sign in financial market coordination, and especially in stock market coordination. Why, thanks to what is often called the passive management revolution

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Tom: within financial economics in the seventies. Some Some are all sorry, are you? That's given the Bronian motion of the prices that is given the random rule of the prices.

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Tom: No one can, on average systematically old per from the market, no one can reach the market, and so the best investing strategy is not to pay someone, an asset manager, to select some stock. The best investment strategy is to invest in the market as a world to get the market return. It's impossible to outperform fees, market return. And so, more concretely, what does it mean to invest in the market as a wall?

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Tom: It means to invest in companies included in the measure of stock marketing, disease. And so since then, all of that matters in the world are heavily in France. on the movement of stock marketing disease. So passive managers just delegate their decision, making power to the engineers of stock marketing disease because the portfolio they manage will just

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Tom: replicate the allocation in private. The stock Market Index, but active as it matter, are heavily dependent on stock market in DC. 2. Why? Because their performance is evaluated according to the benchmark defined by the stock market index. So they there is a strong incentive not to deviate too much from the allocation imply by the stock market index. And so we can understand that this power

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Tom: of stock market index on asset managers by defining the normal return. The know. The return to beat is a conventional power. This is by convention that the stock market index will refer to the benchmark, the normal retail. And this powers is conventional. Power has been well identified in the lead through, and the Id. Now is just to highlight that, thanks to person semiotics, we can highlight

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Tom: some other semiotic qualities of stock market in DC's true stock market in DC's are conventions, but not only conventions, and these these parts is based on a neptography in creating rules. And so person semiotics allows me, and also to put some order into this empirical material. So the idea is, okay. Traders in their everyday work of

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Tom: valuation of financial decision making are are mobilizing, stuck in DC's not only as convention, this Si icons and us in DC. So very briefly, when traders are mobilizing stock index as icons, they will not mobilize stock index as a normal return by conventions, they will mobilize it as a resemblance of something.

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Tom: they will mobilize it. Okay, it looks like some price part time. And, for example, it's the case of technical analysts, technical analytics as opposed to fundamental analytics, rise to, looks like to identify in the movement of the prices some typical pattern. So in this case, we can understand that's took in DC's are not conventionally linked to the object, but linked by resemblance to some to some typical pattern.

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Tom: And so in in one more minute, I think I that draw say that I

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Tom: as I I still have one or 2 min.

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Tom: Well, 1 min, 1 min. Okay. But but so I I think that you can understand the general id I don't have the time to develop it, but it just to highlight that person. Semitics, allow us to discover other semiotic dimension. So other semi-deck rules of stuck in DC's or any sign in there in their

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Tom: as a device of market coordination, and so to discover what is the whole of the stock market Index as an index. I I invite you to read our paper because I don't have the time to develop it further. So I already let you know. So yeah, we can see here that stuck in DC's. I'm not only conventions, but are also icons, and in DC.

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Tom: Has.

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Thank thank you, Tom. Then I have to conclude, saying that I hope you are convinced now that we must introduce the sameiosis

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in the sociology of economy.

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Thank you for your attention.

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All right. Our last speaker is shing Yuma, and is going to talk about taste.

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Okay.

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Hi, everyone. Thanks for coming and staying this afternoon. I'm a Phd. Candidate at the University of Chicago. What do I just defend it recently.

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And today I'm going to be talking about the idea of cultural taste. I'm going to go over the semantic ambiguity of taste and how we ought to go about clarifying it. And as I do so, I'm going to introduce the novel concept of complex days.

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How do I? Okay?

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So the big question I want to tackle today is, what is taste. So some people like David Hume think that taste is about how we feel sense or enjoy culture.

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Others, like Emmanuel Kant, might think that taste is more about judgment. and some others still, like people like Paul Samuelson, they think that taste is really about revealed preferences.

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So today I want to persuade you that taste is more complicated than you might give it credit for. And to begin, I want to offer you 2 little puzzles to just think over

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one. Many of us dislike the things that we consume.

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So if you're a Liberal, and you consume taco cows and clips on Youtube, or Tiktok or Twitter. Does it make sense to say that you have a taste for taco cows?

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2. So in 2,017. Netflix changed this rating system from from its old five-star rating system to this thumbs up thumbs down rating system.

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So there's an obvious change in gradually of the measure, but that anything also change in a qualitative sense.

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So I have 2 objectives in today's presentation. First, I want to answer the question what the sociologists take taste to be.

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and the answer that I'm going to end up offering is that sociologists take taste to be a person's thick subjectivity in a cultural field. More on this later. And second, I want to show how this computer can be intuitive and useful to think of taste in this way by introducing the idea of complex days.

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So taste in its most literal form, refers to goository taste, right of perceptions of the sensations in the palate, but from the sixteenth century, and on it is acquired this metaphorical meaning as cultural taste.

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So Chase holds an obvious importance within the sociological culture. But it's also pretty important to the rest of the discipline. So on the social psychological level, for example, taste has consequences for the identities that we hold.

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taste, facilitate group identification, and they also have implications for social stratification.

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So how do sociologists go about defining it? Well, I started out writing a paper on Taste, and I remember going out into the literature and reading about it, and I actually found that not many people go about actually defining it, and even the most influential studies of Chase can be pretty vague about this.

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So, for example, if you look at the work of Pierre Bourdieu, he can be all with a place when it comes to this. There are times where he cites with the Kantian conception of taste, and referring to taste as the supreme manifestation of the sermon, and there are the times where he starts with, like the economists.

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conceptual taste as a type of manifesto preference.

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So we don't have many definitions of taste. But what we do have is an enormous body of research that involves measurements of taste. So today I want to propose that we can do some abductive reasoning from these measurements of taste and use, that to clarify the semantic ambiguity around taste.

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So I went back, survey this literature. This mostly involves books over the past decade, also a lot of prominent books from errors past.

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and I find that there are, broadly speaking, 3 paradigms when it comes to the measurement of taste. First, there's the preference. Paradigm.

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Under this paradigm taste is measured as a person's like enjoyment or desire for culture, and the taste paradigm takes taste to be sensibility, a person's automatic, sensory response to a cultural object, and such a conceptualization on chase has a very long history dating, backed among others to people like David Hume, Jeremy Bantam.

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and Pico. Researchers often measure taste in this way, and this is in part because major national surveys in the United States, such as the Sbpa or the Gss. They all majest in this way.

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and for those of us here who are familiar with Richard Peterson's work on omnivorousness. That's how he measures omnivorousness of taste.

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Second, there is the consumption paradigm.

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Under this paradigm taste is taken to be the actual realized choices and practices a person actually engages in

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this way of measuring taste is probably most strongly associated with revealed preference theory in economics.

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But I want to maintain that it's not just economists that think this right. This conceptual taste is quite common within sociology as well. So if you look at distinction, for example, and you look at the ways where Pierre body actually measures taste, he often involves. It often involves

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looking at a person's actual participation in different types of activities

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and thinking back to other notable size of taste. If people were familiar with Matt Sealgan and his colleagues work on taste and the artificial music market, they look at the number of downloads a song involves, and not whether or not someone actually says they like it.

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And third, we have this competence paradigm.

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So tastes are also often measured through the judgments that we produce. So whether it be the reviews or the ratings that we leave on websites, for example.

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I call this the competence paradigm, because taste is taste, and this under this measurement paradigm is implicitly taken to be exercises of a person's competence in a culture of evaluative competence in a cultural field.

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Such an understanding of taste is often associated with the philosophy of aesthetics.

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I found that in empirical investigations this measurement paradigm is most common when the subjects of interest are cultural elites. So, for example, if if you're familiar with Johnson, embalments, study of foot critics, they look at the discourses that foot critics leave on major for magazines, and that's taken to be taste.

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So there are these 3 distinct measurement paradigms and studies of cultural taste, and each of them conceptualizes taste as this pretty distinct modality of action in a cultural field.

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And this is, I think, we refer to this in the literature very commonly as a problem of semantic ambiguity.

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So tas, this is basically semantically ambiguous, like, seen with multiple senses that overlap one another. And sociology has a number of these terms, right? So other examples that people here might be familiar with include things like culture, structure, theory, identity to name, but of view.

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semantic ambiguity isn't all negative, as Donald Levine likes to emphasize, but it can be a serious impediment to scientific progress.

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So I think we need to disambiguate, and I think we can disambiguate in a productive way. I want to take this semantic ambiguity around taste as an opportunity to be a rise about taste.

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Taste is what Herbert Bloomer refers to as a sensitizing concept. These are concepts that are grounded on our senses instead of explicit objective traits.

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And how can we go about doing this this configuration? There's a number of reasonable approaches. And today I just want to propose the one that I'm going to favor.

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and I called us the pro-list approach to this the disambiguation.

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I'm going to argue that different senses of taste are related in a complementary way, and they all address different parts of a single concept, and all 3 are crucial to our intuition of what taste really is.

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So I want to suggest that taste, caudal taste should be thought of as a person's thick subjectivity in a cultural field. And that's to say that taste is this multi-dimensional orientation that's expressed through multiple modalities of action, it is not easily reducible to a single mode of action.

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Many tastes can only be appreciated when we actually go about describing them in this thick manner.

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thinking of taste in such a way, lets us articulate what I'm going to refer to as a complex taste.

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And to begin, I'm gonna want you to consider the following cases. Okay, I think Johnny and his friends are teenagers who can all be said to have a taste in different ways for a doctor disrespect. This is a popular video game streamer on Twitch.

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First we have Johnny joining a summer who enjoys watching the doctor disrespect. He watches his streams every day, and he thinks the world of it

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second with Jesse. He's one of Johnny's friends. He watches the dog just as much. He describes the dog as a little bit cringe, even if he enjoys it. Anyway.

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3 we have. Casey. Casey is Johnny's younger sister shows you she grew up watching the dog just as much as Johnny did, but she stopped.

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even though she still finds the dog entertaining. She thinks that the dog is a bad influence.

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and finally, we have more.

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Moe is a class man of journeys. They sort of consider each other to be rivals, so mode doesn't, doesn't profess to enjoy. The dog doesn't think that dog is very good, but he nonetheless watches the dog just as much as Johnny does in order to make fun of him for it.

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and each of our teenagers here could be thinly be described as having a taste for a doctor disrespect. But they're not the same tastes, the compares I'm trying to invoke. Here is Gilbert Ryos, a comparison of different types of wings. They all, you know, different types of wings have different meanings, and these tastes are, I think, all different.

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and thinking of taste as thick subjectivity helps us to precisely identify the differences between these tastes. One of these tastes is what I call a simple taste, and the others are complex days.

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So, to start with the simple taste, these are configurations of taste where the different mode down degrees of taste are harmonized and matched to one another.

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simple tastes are easily reducible to single modes of action.

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A good example of this is Johnny Stace. So Johnny loves the dog, watches him all the time, thinks the world of him a taste. Configuration like this can be described as simple.

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The other examples from the quartet of taste that I showed earlier are harder to describe thinly, and that is because they are complex taste. A complex taste is one that cannot be simply described by recourse to a single mode of action. They are characterized by mismatches among the modalities of taste.

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The mystic omission of the antinomy between the different modalities of chase denies a complex face the nature of his being.

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This is similar to what a complex taste actually condes in the gust of Choi sense. A complex, gusitory taste is one that stimulates several sensory systems at the same time, and wine tasting is often brought up as an example of this.

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So Jesse's case was an example of such a complex taste. If we reduce Jessie's taste to simply the fact that he watches Dr. Disrespect all the time, or, conversely, that he doesn't think that the dog is very good. We seem to be mischaracter, mischaracterizing his taste a little bit. And that's because there's this mismatch that is fundamental to Jesse's taste.

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He both likes and consumes culture, that he himself does not endorse as good, and we often call his configurations like this as a guilty pleasure. I'm sure many of us have them

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and guilty pleasure. We can take it to refer to this pleasurable consumption of culture that a person considers to be bad.

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guilty pleasures I'm going to content are characterized by a particular taste. Antinomy. There's a positive orientation in the likes and the choices that we make. But there's this negative orientation in evaluations.

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And then we have Casey, just as with Jesse there's an antennae here.

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and the antinomy here is that she enjoys doctor disrespect, but has stopped. And, what is more, doesn't think of it as very good anymore. I refer to this as an example of a justified abstention.

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so a justified abstention is an abstention in the consumption of culture that a person enjoys, but evaluates to be bad. and the mismatch we have find here is between a positive orientation and liking, and a negative orientation in choices and evaluations that we make

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the best example of this might come in the field right behavioral addictions there are many times where we give up a thing that we enjoy, but we evaluate to be bad.

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And then, finally, we have more, most interesting one, because this is someone who dislikes and thinks poorly of the dog, but still consumes it.

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So mo is an example of what we colloquially refer to as a hate watcher, and I think the hate watch is a subclass of what I call ironic consumption.

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Ironic consumption involves the volitional consumption of culture. A person considers to be neither good nor pleasurable. There are many reasons why ironic consumption might exist. But I I think it's prime, is because we are not purely hedonic beings. Many of us watch on consumed culture for for reasons they have nothing to do with pleasure. It could be because we're interested in the fear and discuss reactions they're arousing us, which is why many of us might enjoy horror films.

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And it could be because we enjoy the experience of failure, which is why we do activities such as skateboarding, or, you know, playing difficult video games like Eldon ring. That's fundamentally about failure.

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So to close off, I want to, I want to provide a few reasons why complex days might matter. I think that the identification of these complex days can be quite generative, because they they they might help us to shed light on some of our long-standing obsessions in the sociology of culture.

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So one complex case of sites where the vision between public and private moves of consumption are most obvious to the size to which symbolic power is exercise. Oftentimes these days power does not efface itself through like an actual disarmament from consumption, but we can feel it through the feeling rules that that impose on us as we as we actually go about interacting with culture.

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And 3 complex tastes, are also promising in place to study endogenous changes in culture. If you, if you believe in things like balance theory or theories or cognitive dissonance, you might think that because of the inherent mismatches in these taste configurations, they might be more likely to be unstable, but empirical. What remains to be done?

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So conclude, I just want to briefly return to the puzzle Stephen. Earliest points of the presentation.

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One. What kind of taste is it is this, I would say, that this is an example of hate watching, which is one type of a complex taste.

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In this case we have, we have a situation where we consume something while we dislike and disdain it

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into what happened when Netflix changed its measure of taste. I think that there was more than just a change in the gradinarity of the measure. There was actually an interview of a Netflix executive as they when they made this change. And they basically said the same thing that I said, which is that Netflix was trying to implicitly measure a different aspect of taste. They were trying to tap on how we feel rather than how we evaluate Netflix content.

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And I think that's a wonderful way of looking at how? That these different faces to taste.

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Thanks, looking forward any questions we have.

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All right. So we have about 26 minutes for any questions. so We'll just kinda go around and collect some questions, and then we'll come back and see and and the authors can respond. So

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all right.

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Hello! I'm Anita Chakraworthy. I teach sociology in India.

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and I really enjoyed all the papers as fascinating.

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My first. I When I read this idea of conflict, of interest, I was very curious, because last few semesters, one of the key concepts in my introduction to Indian society and culture. I have used conflict of interest.

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and the context was, you know, a concept that is catching on in Indian sociology, which is patronage. Democracy

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So you have a a person from a certain cast

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coming Becoming a member of the Parliament! And then The caste. Constituency would expect that you work for the cost. It's not he has to work for the entire constituency, so there is absolutely no no idea of conflict of interest.

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So I kind of play around this kind of example. So there's a little bit of literature on patronage, democracy.

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and then I have been also following up. Cases like insider trading. There was a Raja Gupta, that famous and famous case! And Kind of there has been a sleeve of cases in India, in the banking sector, where you have given Loans to a company which is owned, or Very much influence like your husband, is a

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a CEO of that company, and the the of the bank you right now is

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undergoing a serious investigation. She was jailed, so I thought a conflict of interest in family and the professional, taking it out of probably some of the business ethic and the pyramid. It was fascinating. And in India we have a set of

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bringing back of trusts

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to manage. Economic Dealings which were very much Influenced by traditional religious. like the Muslim Walk.

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but it has been so modified by the colonial governance. And even Hindu trust, which really didn't exist. But it is what we call the Anglo-hindu law. Under that it's a different kind of physiciary. Arrangements! I would be very interested to look up more on the research. Thank you.

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Of other

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in the audience.

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Yeah. Okay. yes.

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Well, thank you for these wonderful presentations.

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I have one question for you. I guess the question of interest.

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How do you take into account the in determinacy of interest? I mean, what? What's my interest? It's not so clear. If you if I am a doctor I can construct, set up my interest as a a short term, interest or money interest, but as a long term interest to, and then the construction of interest

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is an interpretative process which must be taken into account. And in the same way, in during the relationship the the interests can change.

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Hmm, I I have an interest against you. But in the relationship, maybe a a corporation is more, much more interesting than Or do you take that into account as my, my my question? I I'm I'm I'm I'm afraid I'm

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by a to substantive understanding of interest, and I have a question for you to Yogi. I wonder if you don't use a 2 overextended

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understanding of trust?

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I mean for me, a sociologist. What trust is one way to mediate a cooperation. But it's quite different from other ways. For instance, legality is not trust is distrust

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in a certain way, because in legality there are rules. There is control. And I need information about the behavior of the order.

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If I trust you, it's precisely to avoid that kind of coordination. I I I trust you. It means I don't control anything, and I don't need any information about what what you are doing. I trust you, then. Well what is exactly the extension of your concept

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of trust and fiduciary relationship? It seems to me a very important question, because I am sure that you are right. Trust is very important, but we must determine the

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the borders of the concept.

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Really any

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any questions that came up You like to ask some questions.

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The idea is, where the meaning comes from.

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In particular, is there a background that undermines the meaning.

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the interpretation?

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If the answer is, yes, there is a background.

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This background is constituted by social structures, interest, and so on. Or this background in your conception is basically formed by existing

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cultural buttons.

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and for our own.

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We have a lot of connections in our in our works

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to adopt a sociological point of view, of conflict, of interest

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challenges some assumptions we have of conflict or conflict of interest. For an ethical or a legal point of view. for example, in the a fisherial relationship is a legal or ethical relationship, in which one party, the fiduciary, is entrust with the duty to act in the best interest to another party. The beneficial decline.

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The fiduciary is expected to exercise a high standard of care, loyalty, and good faith

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when managing the interest, or okay

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in fiduciary literature, often a conflict of interest arises when an individual or entity has competing interest or loyalties that could potentially compromise their ability to fulfill their fiduciary duty to act objectively

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in a sociological conception of conflict, of interest?

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Is there room for related concepts like care, loyalty, good faith, duty, and so on.

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thanks to my fellow panelists. Those were some really, really fascinating papers. I have a question for you to Aaron. And

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right right.

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it really had me thinking about game fury. And basically the idea of charting out the payoff structures of

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to the principle and to the agent. And I wonder if that's the thing that you've ever thought about using that as a lens to which to

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formalize these principle. What about conflicts of interest? Because when you, especially when you gave the example of the the doctor and the patient, I was thinking, you know, like, just

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if this was a repeated interaction, it's different. If you were a one one-off interaction right in a repeated interaction. If you you know, if you do a really bad job, they're not coming back.

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So if this is going to be repeated over the long run. Then there is no conflict of interest, because you want them to be happy in order to keep making money.

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I wonder if you using if there might be interesting overlap for you there.

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Thank you for your presentations.

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I'm I'm yeah. I'm calling from Tambury, and it was the Finland. And actually, this, my question is for Ziang yi, did I? Alright cool. I like your your your presentation, and that's actually why I came here. because I like your paper in politics a couple of years ago that I have myself temporal dynamics of taste. And I think, in your presentation you made it quite

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Quite nice filing of how taste has been used and and operationalized in sociological literature. One of the things that and I I'm looking forward to that as a paper as well. But

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What I was wondering is that if you, if you consider test as as

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as a team in the vibrant sense, in tasting warriors, in sense and in the module, sense, and so forth.

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It is a thing that is used to create hierarchies of esteem and hierarchies, of

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of prestige, and so forth. And

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what would what would be your

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your approach in relation to hierarchies? And and how taste it used as as in as to make hierarchies, and so

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very similar question. So I will not. I will not repeat that but sort of like you the sort of social sources of variation in complexity of taste. I mean, this is an interesting technology. But I'm kind of curious as to how you're thinking of it in terms of whether you're thinking of it in terms of how you may vary. But and then I have a very like kind of a similar question about the semiotics project, which seemed very interesting, but

443
01:31:13.810 --> 01:31:17.829
sort of what I wanted to hear a little more about is whether

444
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see, the stock market index serves as a convention, or it may serve as a you know, kind of a description, or a sort of a, you know, a symbol for action, depending on what? What, what, what, what, what explains this variation like? Are you thinking of it? If you were to expand this framework in terms of trying to think about. When is it that the index works in a certain semianic way as opposed to another? If you have thought about some potential

445
01:31:46.860 --> 01:31:50.529
patterns. And me explain these differences. Thank you.

446
01:31:55.680 --> 01:31:58.370
Oh, yeah, again. Or you you can.

447
01:31:58.790 --> 01:32:26.509
Ekaterina Svetlova: okay, so just exactly following up on what was asked before. about the taste paper. I liked it very much, and very interesting idea of the complex taste. Would like to understand better potential applications of this concept, maybe to explain some economic phenomena. I understand it might be applications. this relation to consumption. But do you think any other interesting applications here? Thank you.

448
01:32:27.990 --> 01:32:33.400
Okay. So then, okay, all right.

449
01:32:35.220 --> 01:32:40.159
yeah, I have a. I have a question for a a Katstina.

450
01:32:40.350 --> 01:32:49.280
I I got so when I was when I was, and I really admired the book that you were involved. It quite a bit. The

451
01:32:49.580 --> 01:33:12.200
So thinking about your your project reminded me how in Fedburg. He's got this book on how to theorize, and he's that kind of quipped somewhere in it something about, you know, like one heuristic of trying to create a new concept or to to create a new theory as you just, you relationalize it. And so I was thinking, I was thinking about that since.

452
01:33:12.200 --> 01:33:22.929
you know you're you're you're thinking about this idea of mythological relationalism. And but all of your examples of mythological relationalism is with this

453
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curious a example of valuation, which is a obsession that you and I share

454
01:33:29.530 --> 01:33:33.460
 And so I guess my my

455
01:33:34.290 --> 01:33:48.550
thinking through your argument, I'm a little bit confused. Whether are you arguing that the these financial workers, as they're doing this valuation in these 2 different cases that you're looking at?

456
01:33:48.550 --> 01:34:12.690
Is it that they, in fact, are aware that they're using methodological relationism and that us sociologists are not. And so we're you're actually brokering in a methodological practice that you're observing in their field? Or are you arguing that they're not aware of it, and that some of us are aware of it? And so we're we can better understand their field with mythological relationism.

457
01:34:13.230 --> 01:34:25.570
and then, I guess, and then a. A a second puzzle I have is so. If mythological relationism is A is a methodology that we want to be applying to social science research.

458
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Why is it that your examples are both on valuation? I mean, are you making a more narrow argument than I think, or

459
01:34:32.270 --> 01:34:39.840
why? Why this more narrow focus? But such a large claim, I guess, and then, with

460
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with Tom and yes, and, John.

461
01:34:48.540 --> 01:34:54.589
your your your example would be looking at the the price index itself.

462
01:34:54.660 --> 01:35:15.549
And one of the things I found kind of interesting. So I was thinking, I mean so. Yes, I mean I I I'm fully on board that We should be thinking of the price index as a as a sign, and I and I can am also on board the idea that we should be thinking about more economic objects as signs and trying to learn all of this, Pierce so that we can do so in a more sophisticated way.

463
01:35:16.100 --> 01:35:46.090
But I'm puzzled. And why you're focusing on the stock market index. I mean you you. You gave the example about how important the index is because of all these passive investors out there, right? But on their hand the index itself is just made up of stock market prices, and it's the stock market prices going up and down. That's shaping where the money is going by these passive investors. So actually, it seems to me that your real target is not the index. Your real target is the price, the stock market price which

464
01:35:46.120 --> 01:35:57.209
here's a there's already a but a few articles out there about stock market indexes fair enough, and and they're interesting. But there's an even larger, larger sociological literature looking at price, and my own

465
01:35:57.260 --> 01:36:09.630
opinion is that prices are even more important than stock market prices are more important than stock market indexes. So shouldn't you be looking at prices in general, and if or or is that

466
01:36:09.660 --> 01:36:16.420
that seems to be a sufficient claim? Or should we not do that so that this might to comment your questions

467
01:36:17.080 --> 01:36:40.460
all right. Well, we have about 9 min so we don't have enough time. But How about we? We'll we'll start with a Katarina, because then she can't talk afterwards. So if you'd like to to respond, and then we'll kind of move. Yeah. So thank you for your questions. So my point was to to not to say that as a manager, also security analysts or people in financial markets.

468
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I assets, are using methodological relationism. For me it is a pure theoretical concept instrument that

469
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Ekaterina Svetlova: economic sociologists might use or might be using already, without any.

470
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Ekaterina Svetlova: Erez Agmoni being aware of this, because, as I said, this, a concept kind of includes many concepts that have been discussed and used in the economic sociology. Like, as I mentioned, relation of work, or 150

471
01:37:10.300 --> 01:37:30.899
Ekaterina Svetlova: this course. they are all relational. So I tried to broke on this concept, but I just wanted to have maybe more discussion later on with it makes sense because it seems to be such a overarching concept. That's more abstract concept.

472
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Ekaterina Svetlova: So it includes a lot, but maybe it doesn't have that value because we might use more detailed concepts. So here I am unsure, and by valuation I just use valuation as an example of economic phenomenon that could be better explained using this relational thinking. So this is why I chose this example.

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Ekaterina Svetlova: Thank you.

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All right.

475
01:37:56.810 --> 01:37:58.500
you want to?

476
01:37:58.760 --> 01:38:02.810
Oh, yeah, I love to. Thank you so much for the

477
01:38:02.880 --> 01:38:04.970
really interesting feedback.

478
01:38:05.140 --> 01:38:24.440
I guess. First, I I like to tack up a question about how taste relates to status. I think, as I was writing this particular paper, I was thinking of taste from a very individualistic point of view just coming from the definition, what does it mean on the individual level like, what is this concept that when we use the zoom, what do what exactly do we mean?

479
01:38:24.660 --> 01:38:48.149
But you're definitely right that, you know, taste has a lot of relationship status, right? Like, I would say, like 90% of the work on taste over the past few decades has been about. Well, precisely this right. But how tastes involving sales, distinctions? And this is something that I think, as far as how this relates to my paper is, I think that comes when people interact with each other. That's really when

480
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we we insert in individuals with status, group memberships. And then we see the inaction of these different type of ways of drawing status distinctions.

481
01:38:56.700 --> 01:39:07.080
One concept that I was thinking of as I was doing. This was the idea of a Methodase like we don't just have taste, but we have like taste over our days. So, for example, you think about?

482
01:39:07.100 --> 01:39:24.560
Why is it that we we speak of things as as as people, as having good taste or bad taste? Right? If taste was really just taste that we wouldn't have terms like that. But those are the terms that are meaningful to us right? There's good taste, as bad taste as. And these are basic a status hierarchy of tastes.

483
01:39:24.620 --> 01:39:27.650
And this is still something I'm trying to think through. And

484
01:39:27.740 --> 01:39:30.819
hopefully, there's going to be a paper in the future about this

485
01:39:31.290 --> 01:39:45.620
and about complex taste and ends application. I think this is the thing that I've been trying to elaborate. more on, too. I think the most obvious example of this I can think of is to look at

486
01:39:45.890 --> 01:39:59.969
the differences between public and private modes of consumption. So one thing that I've I've noticed is, for example, you've look at Steven Davidovits work on Google searches, for example, like so much of the of the consumption culture.

487
01:40:00.190 --> 01:40:16.420
It's stuff that we don't study in the sociology culture. It'll be stuff like pornography sports, video games, and these are tastes that we don't often even try to measure in our surveys, because I don't particularly know why.

488
01:40:16.480 --> 01:40:34.179
but I think, as we grow to embrace the fact that complex states are just a very natural configuration of taste. Maybe we might try try to measure them and to accept that. It is very normal for taste, for that big configurations where, you know, we do something, even though we don't particularly like it.

489
01:40:34.220 --> 01:40:50.099
or that we do something, and we like it. But even though we don't think it's good, and there are a lot of these configurations that I think are very natural, and that if we didn't have a this conception, we might like not even try to measure it, or just write it off as a

490
01:40:50.410 --> 01:40:54.259
some kind of statistical error. You want to pass it down.

491
01:40:54.970 --> 01:41:07.579
Ok, thank you. Well, I am co-author. I am looking at the screen, Tom, the one to answer, maybe the last question I am going to start with

492
01:41:08.300 --> 01:41:18.439
questions. Well, the question, Where is the mean coming from? Where is it coming from? From structure? Not at all.

493
01:41:19.070 --> 01:41:23.429
In our framework there is no such thing as a structure.

494
01:41:23.440 --> 01:41:44.819
but cultural patterns is ambiguous expression. Because what's important in our framework is the ongoing process of construction. Well, cultural patterns are not predeven. Of course they are habits.

495
01:41:44.980 --> 01:42:13.729
Their Abbott's conventions are crystallized with habits, repetitions, and varieties, and so on. But in situation there is a lot of other things, and well, it's a way, it's true that it's a way to to contest a Bulgian approach which is not enough attentive to the pragmatic situation

496
01:42:14.240 --> 01:42:24.509
and in the formation of meaning in in situation. What? What? Finally, the the aim of this analysis was to give a more realist

497
01:42:24.670 --> 01:42:38.360
account of what we are doing. Morales done the economist's understanding of Market Garden Asia, which is so schematic, actually

498
01:42:38.670 --> 01:42:47.570
a mobilization by the rational choice theorists is really well to

499
01:42:47.570 --> 01:43:09.960
simple, and if you look very well with what people are doing. They are doing a lot of things, uncertainty without pre given knowledge, rationality, calculation. They are interpreting what it is.

500
01:43:10.110 --> 01:43:15.159
We are looking for realistic description of the market coordination.

501
01:43:15.160 --> 01:43:40.160
Tom: yes. But, Tom, do they want to to let something? Yes, thank you very, very briefly. on the on the last question, I think, from our own. I, I fully agree that it's interesting and important to the stock prices, and not only stuck in Dcs. As for beyond India, for example, did. But I I still think that it's it's important to study the stimuli quality of stuck in DC.

502
01:43:40.160 --> 01:43:55.459
Tom: For themselves, at least for 2 very brief reason. The first one is that they are consider as such, that is, as autonomous, significant entity by financial markets, participants like traders, and the second one is that

503
01:43:55.670 --> 01:44:06.270
Tom: selling stuck in DC. For themselves allows us to highlight the power, the infrastructure to all of stock market engineers.

504
01:44:06.270 --> 01:44:29.689
Tom: because, contrary to what you suggested. I think when we open the black block of stock market in this is, we can discover that it's much more and more complicated that just an aggregation, a basic aggregation of the prices so very technical, but with far reaching good sequences. So it is that are made about the on the rich and the criterion, the criterion of selection

505
01:44:29.690 --> 01:44:49.120
Tom: that are made by big companies like some are in pools of Ms. Or Ms. Ci. And so and so we can highlight this, for only by studying stuck in, this is for them self. And so to the other question about the varied. So the the variation about the semantic quality of indices.

506
01:44:49.120 --> 01:44:59.349
Tom: And I'm the Co. A, a, so it it's very interesting. Your question about okay. But what is the determination of one meaning rather than another another?

507
01:44:59.350 --> 01:45:23.759
Tom: And so in in one world I would say that person a semiotics answer that this is, of course, context dependent to this institutional issue that we cannot answer a priori. And so we need to question actors themselves to understand why they will mobilize in a stuck in this as icon rather than in DC's in such a case and not in under.

508
01:45:23.760 --> 01:45:26.969
Tom: Okay. But thank you for for this.

509
01:45:28.730 --> 01:45:40.600
okay, that's That's all the time we have. So obviously, you can stay behind and and discuss as well. But thank you so much to those who join us on zoom, and thank you for the people in the audience, and

510
01:45:40.940 --> 01:45:44.740
congratulations to our panel for being done