Inquiring into Barnesian performativity thus involves more than an examination of the extent, the manner, and the general effects of the use of economics in economic practice. In investigating market conditions and prices and in judging whether they have moved toward (or away from) conformity to an aspect of economics, one is not just examining economics and those who develop and use it; inevitably one is also studying the "objects" that economics analyzes. That is something that the field to which much of my work has belonged the sociology of scientific knowledge has sometimes been reluctant to do.

Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, loc. 101