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This paper is about disposability as a technological concern and about how to trace the related issues through the analysis of patents. It examines how moral and social concerns happened to be embedded (or not) in technology, based on the case of disposable feminine hygiene products. The focus is placed on what "disposable" means and on exploring relative notions as well as their dynamic and consequences. To conduct such analysis, the paper proposes to perform a classic and computer-assisted analysis of the patents published by Johnson & Johnson over almost a century (1925–2012). Tracing social and moral concerns in patents challenges the existing literature in law, which tends to envision patents as legal assets deprived of moral considerations. The paper shows how hygiene products addressed women, how these products were made disposable, and how what disposability means evolved, both in the heart of technology and in the wider space of "concerned" markets.

Le masque est devenu un accessoire incontournable. Quelles sont ses conséquences sur les interactions sociales ?

This paper aims to describe marketization processes in terms of 'market agencing'. The agencing framework is presented through the study of the Progressive Grocer, a trade magazine that presented new ideas about the grocery business and proposed novel 'agencements' for American grocery stores in the early 1920s. The case shows that agencing consists of combining the agency of grocers and market devices to shape a different retail environment; that is, a new 'agencement' as a situated and flexible combination of market equipment and managerial logics. The paper shows how the introduction of 'open display' – that is, providing a better visual access to the goods while preserving service – introduced new furniture and ideas, and thus eased the transition from counter service to self-service. The first section presents the agencing framework, the empirical source, The Progressive Grocer, and the method used to analyse it. This method is labelled 'pico-geography'. The idea is to conduct analysis on an even smaller scale than micro-geography by focusing on spatial reconfigurations that occur at the indoor and store level. The second section presents the concept of the open display and describes how it contributed to 're-agence' the grocery equipment, workforce and even consumers. The third section puts this journey into perspective, revealing that, though promoted by The Progressive Grocer, it was also part of a larger reconfiguration involving several other actors. The conclusion stresses the empirical, methodological and theoretical contribution of the paper.

As Cova and colleagues recently noted (Cova and Dalli, 2009; Cova et al., 2011), there is a growing body of literature showing that consumers are solicited not only as partners but also as active workers or "partial employees," enrolled for their intellectual but also physical competencies, so that the vague and symmetrical scheme of "coproduction" ends up into a clear and asymmetrical model of "working consumer" (Dujarier, 2014). This article stresses the paradoxical character of this literature; on one hand, it presents coproduction as a consequence of the emergence of the gifted, competent, skilled active consumers. But, on the other hand, the same literature tends to show that consumers' inputs are called for without them being fully aware of it, as if they were acting naively and passively. This article proposes to reflect on this paradox from the empirical case of the use of bidimensional bar codes. Based on a series of experiments in focus groups, the article shows that consumers' work must be put "in its right place"; one should acknowledge its existence but also reassess its meaning, role, and place.

Résumé Étudier la consommation, est-ce étudier le consommateur ? Alors que la sociologie de la consommation et la consumer research ont jusqu'ici répondu implicitement par l'affirmative à cette question, en faisant toutes deux du consommateur le point focal de leurs analyses de la consommation, cet article propose plutôt de répondre par la négative, en vertu d'un double argument. D'une part il entend montrer que paradoxalement, pour bien comprendre la consommation, il est parfois préférable de se détourner du consommateur, pour s'intéresser plutôt aux objets qu'il mobilise et désigne, ainsi qu'aux médiations techniques et humaines qui définissent et rapprochent les objets et les sujets de consommation, par exemple un simple chariot de supermarché. Ce chariot, en favorisant l'agrégation autour de lui d'un petit collectif non réductible à la seule personne qui le pousse, transforme le consommateur en consommateur collectif, et donc la conversion du calcul en « calqul ». En conservant la phonétique du « calcul » tout en lui associant le radical du verbe « calquer », ce néologisme entend prendre en compte la part sociale de l'arithmétique des consommateurs. De même que calquer un dessin consiste à ajuster son trait aux contours du modèle, « calquler » consiste, pour les membres d'une unité de choix collective, à ajuster leur choix aux expressions de leur(s) partenaires, sans préjuger bien sûr de la réussite ou de la convergence de cet ajustement.