Gay Hawkins
Qualification is a productive process whereby things and human identities are enacted as value is created.
Calişkan and Callon 2009
There are two important and related propositions in Calişkan and Callon’s definition of qualification. First, that qualifying is a process that involves the production of qualities through various qualification methods and devices. And, following this, that qualifying is not a process of finding value but of provoking and shaping it. These two ideas highlight the complex relationship between qualification activities and the enactment or doing of value: the way in which ‘qualities’ do not so much refer to the fixed characteristics of something but, rather, how specific characteristics emerge and how they should be appraised, what sorts of judgement should be formed about them.
‘Qualification’ as a theoretical concept is usually found within Science and Technology Studies (STS) inflected economic sociology. It describes the multiplicity of devices and processes that actualize which particular qualities of a product will be considered valid in a market. This critical point – that qualities are actualized in particular settings for particular purposes – is very suggestive for thinking about interdisciplinary research methods; it foregrounds the way in which research could be considered as an ongoing qualification exercise. That is, a method for provoking and validating particular qualities in the objects under investigation. This might seem troubling for those who consider research an exercise in representing an unconfined raw reality or for those who assume that things have intrinsic, observable, objective characteristics. Qualification would seem to be a distortion rather than a representation of reality. But qualification does not work in this register, its intellectual lineage is the performativity paradigm and this means that it is concerned with the dynamics of making things real rather than capturing a fixed reality. This is a crucial distinction and it is at the heart of why qualification can be requalified from an economic practice to an interdisciplinary method.
What does it mean then to explore qualifying as method? How can we understand it as a technique that both produces objects of research and shapes how they should be considered and judged? And how do research objects participate in qualification strategies and suggest particular methods of valuing and validation? Finally, how might the dynamics of qualifying reveal the complexities and politics of research as an attempt to know a particular reality and also appraise it? These questions drive my argument. I explore them through some reflections on the methodological dilemmas I faced when examining the recent rise of bottled water as a new market and mundane object (Hawkins, Potter and Race 2015).
When we began this project it was apparent that the qualities of bottled water had already been determined and judged. It was a demonized object that had become the focus of much activism and opposition. This forcefield of critique was partially what attracted us to the project, what captured our interest and affect. But it rapidly became an impediment to the research process. Critique tended to frame the multiple qualities of bottled water – as product, as waste, as threat to water resources – in terms of fixed attributes that generated negative impacts. The effect of this was to render bottled water inert, to exclude it from the active realm of the social. Bottles’ modes of acting in the world, their diverse relations and shifting realities, which we observed all around us, were obscured. Yet it seemed to us that bottles were far from stable and their impacts were difficult to generalize or determine in advance. They were constantly being qualified and requalified according to different situations and practices, just as they were also engaged in various qualifying exercises themselves – especially with the water they contained. The attributes of the bottle emerged always in relation with other things and in this sense they were not so much attributes as qualities – characteristics that were made present or validated according to particular associations and realities. The question was: what was influencing the emergence of these qualities? Were the intrinsic qualities of the bottle making distinctive social realities or were the realities the bottle found itself in provoking particular qualities – intrinsic and extrinsic? We found our answer in Callon, Méadel and Rabehariosa’s (2002) account of the product as a series of reciprocal transformations: ‘The product singles out the agents and binds them together and, reciprocally, it is the agents that, by adjustment, iteration and transformation, define its characteristics’ (Callon et al. 2002: 198).
What a beautiful account of qualifying as method, of the dynamics whereby objects and methods mutually qualify and iterate each other. Callon et al. perfectly capture the way in which products are defined not by their objective characteristics but by the various metrological work or ‘qualification trials’ that seek to test, measure and singularize these characteristics in relation to other similar goods. In this way, the intrinsic features of products require work to become qualities, at the same time as these features participate in and shape the types of extrinsic devices that are used to measure and test them. The effects of these ‘qualification trials’ are to stabilize and objectify the qualities of things, albeit temporarily, so they can be fully exploited in market arrangements.
In the case of bottled water, attention to the dynamics of qualification was fundamental to making sense of how water became a market thing. We used one particular brand, Evian, to understand this. Rather than take the brand as a given we wanted to understand how it emerged historically and became a device for requalifying spring water in the town of Evian from a mundane liquid to a therapeutic liquid and product; something that was taken in doses, bottled and distributed far and wide, and capable of attracting bourgeois tourists from all over France. Explaining this significant transformation in the qualities of the water involved detailed historical research methods investigating everything from, for example: the earliest records of the ‘discovery’ of Evian water’s miraculous therapeutic effects; the development of a company to bottle the water and distribute it; the growth of analytical chemistry and the ability to identify the mineral composition of the water; the rise of a regulatory regime within the French state to classify and protect various spring waters in the public interest; the development of the brand. The list of qualifying agents and devices went on and on. In all these investigations, our focus was on how the ‘facticity of the commodity’ (Atkins 2007) was established, how the distinct qualities of this water were both enacted and validated as real. This focus on qualification made it possible to see how the therapeutic qualities of the water were not socially constructed; they were not cultural or economic impositions on a passive material. Rather, they were actualized – called into being – as the water became a participant in new relations and market arrangements. In this way, the earliest forms of market assemblage for spring water from the town of Evian were not prompted by the intrinsic therapeutic properties of the water: rather these properties emerged as the markets were configured. As DeLanda (2006: 11) argues, the properties of elements involved in an assemblage – market or otherwise – do not cause relations. Properties only become expressive and potent with reference to their interactions and relations with the properties of other entities.
We can take this argument a step further by saying that qualification does not simply stabilize qualities – it also has the capacity to provoke realities. Drawing on Lezuan, Muniesa and Vikkelsø (2013), qualification could be considered as an experimental method for provoking realistic situations. In the case of Evian, the reality that was provoked was one in which the water did not simply become a product it also acquired therapeutic agency. While doctors and scientists in the nineteenth century expended much energy and effort measuring and attempting to explain the unique biochemical qualities of the water, seeking to confirm and represent its empirical reality, those drinking it under medical advice or taking spas in it were busy enacting this therapeutic quality. They were manipulating the water in new ways because it had practical relevance to them and, in this process, they were making those therapeutic qualities real, they were provoking or doing a new social reality.
Lezuan et al.’s argument about provoking reality is primarily focused on controversial social-scientific research experiments in the 1930s and 40s. These experiments choreographed artificial situations to induce spontaneous reactions and realities that were visibly made up but also compellingly real. These ‘factitious’ events were designed to both generate and challenge existing social reality within the contained space of the experiment. This notion of provocation or ‘provocative containment’ is helpful for investigating how qualification shapes judgement and value. If we accept that to study the dynamics of qualifying is to study how the qualities of things become real, how does this method determine which qualities to examine and why they matter? In the mess of researching bottled water and its rich social life it was quite obvious that beverage companies put an immense amount of effort into ensuring that only certain qualities were made present and valued in markets. Markets were a containment space. But containers can overflow and the activism that emerged to contest these markets revealed this with force.
By looking closely at the political campaigns that developed around bottled water it was possible to see how troubling new qualities and realities for the bottle emerged. These campaigns were often framed as exposés driven by the goal of revealing an empirical truth about bottled water’s problematic effects that was hidden. However, the problem with this framing was that it fuelled the notion of reality as stable and robust. It also fuelled the idea that political critique operated at an analytical distance from this reality and was able to represent its truth to others who did not have such privileged access. In contrast to this understanding of politics, it seemed to us that what the methods and devices of activism did was provoke a political reality for bottled water. When activists documented plastic bottle waste or the depletion of water resources by beverage companies, they were not only exploring how other bottle realities were generated but also requalifying the bottle as a political object. They were identifying particular characteristics of the bottle and framing how they should be appraised.
Our method for understanding the impacts of activism on bottled water markets was to investigate the network of requalification practices that effectively enacted various controversies and political situations. Many of these practices were theatrical and playful. Standup comedy routines and confrontational images of people drinking oil situated the bottle in new relations and invited people to witness and validate the troubling qualities of the bottle that emerged. These practices could be considered as experiments in inciting public interest and their effect was to realize the externalities of bottled water markets. As Lezuan et al. say: ‘realization should be understood here in the sense of making real, of bringing into existence, of generating a phenomenon whose existence might otherwise be doubted or resisted’ (2013: 289).
To conclude: acknowledging or identifying qualities is to participate in the dynamics of qualification and the doing of value. While the intellectual development of this concept has largely occurred within economic sociology, its relevance resonates far beyond markets. Qualifying is a concept with significant traction as an interdisciplinary method. Using the example of a major study of bottled water markets, my aim has been to show how an investigation of qualifying practices was central to understanding the multiple realities bottles of water enacted: economic, social, environmental, political and more. But documenting qualification in action, framing it as the central object of research, is not the same as using it as a means to research. Perhaps this distinction is too stark? Can methods really be clearly separated from their objects as if they were mere instruments? No, they cannot: objects and methods are caught up in the dynamics of mutual qualification. The things we choose to research also choose us, also pose questions, also suggest suitable qualification devices and techniques. When we were investigating the dynamics of qualifying bottled water we were also, at the same time, engaged in myriad qualifying methods: identifying things or practices that struck us, that we wanted to consider, connecting them to other things, bringing archives and interviews and theories into play with them, selecting and appraising. In the process our research provoked a particular bottled water reality: entirely invented but entirely indebted to the multiple ontologies of bottles alive in the world.
Atkins, P. (2007). Laboratories, laws and the career of a commodity. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 25: 967–989.
Calişkan, K. and Callon, M. (2009). Economization Part I: shifting attention from the economy towards processes of economization. Economy and Society, 38(3): 369–398.
Callon, M., Méadel, C. and Rabehariosa, V. (2002). The economy of qualities. Economy and Society, 31(2): 194–218.
DeLanda, M. (2006). A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity. London: Continuum.
Hawkins, G., Potter, E. and Race, K. (2015). Plastic Water. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Lezuan, J., Muniesa, F. and Vikkelsø, S. (2013). Provocative containment and the drift of social-scientific realism. Journal of Cultural Economy, 6(3): 278–293.