Thanks for your response Ken.
I understand that economists define externalities and spillovers in particular ways. I am also beginning to understand the way Callon thinks about markets, but my explanations are still very clumsy. I never meant to suggest that Actor-Network Theory does economic analysis!
At the risk of becoming boring, I'll try to explain further.
Jurgen Faust and Filippo Salustri were discussing the framing necessary to justify the expense of finding out whether it is 'feasible' to measure the impact and value of design. Derek Miller pointed to literatures on public opinion and media effects that have already explored these challenges of 'causality and correlation'. He suggested the design of research that would empirically examine product design as a system (or, I thought, a network).
This is necessary, because, as David Sless suggests, if its impossible to represent the impact of design, then possibly design as we know it will die.
Derek's mention of media persuasion caused advertising spring to mind as a system with plenty of models for empirical analysis. So I suggested the Bagwell chapter. I made a presumption that the terms 'measuring impact' and 'value', included 'economic contribution'. Of course Jurgen will mean other forms of value as well.
However, and this is where the ANT position comes in, in order to even think about the economic contribution of design in product development, economic analyses (in highly responsible manner) have to build a model in which the actants (products, designers, techniques and tools etc) fit within necessarily limited frames. As Terry, David, Fil, & Luke Feast pointed out there are many factors about design practice that such analysis will externalize - put 'outside the frame'.
Because 'Design' is used to mean different things in different worlds of practice, I would suggest a faceted approach that would disentangle, through empirical research, the networks within which product designers do their work.
This research is beginning to be carried out in the area of fashion design, e.g. Entwistle, Joanne (2009) The aesthetic economy of fashion: markets and value in clothing and modelling. Oxford ; New York : Berg.
Best wishes,
Amanda
On 25/07/11 11:24 AM, "Ken Friedman" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
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*** This post defines and clarifies the nature of an economic
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