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Abstract:
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This article investigates a segmentation model used by the Danish Tax and Customs
Administration to classify businesses’ motivational postures. The article uses two different
conceptualizations of performativity to analyze what the model’s segmentations do; Hacking’s
idea of making up people and MacKenzie’s idea of performativity. Based on these two approaches
I demonstrate that the segmentation model represents and performs the businesses as it ‘makes up’
certain new ways to be a business and as the businesses can be seen as ‘moving targets’. With
inspiration from MacKenzie my following argument is that the segmentation model posits a
remarkable cleverness in that it simultaneously alters what it represents and represents this
altered reality to confirm the accuracy of its own model of the businesses’ postures. However,
despite this cleverness the model bears a blind spot as it assumes a world wherein everything
around the model is in motion and can be shaped, whereas it believes itself to be stable. As
indicated in the article, this assumption turns out problematic as the tax administration questions
the model’s ability to produce valid comparisons. All in all, the article provides a detailed
description and analysis of the model’s performativity and provides an example of a
performativity study which in its methodology differs from the methodological criteria set up by
MacKenzie. |
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