Economising failure and assembling a failure regime

Sociologists have largely neglected the topic of failure, and particularly the economising of failure, notwithstanding notable exceptions. This is puzzling, given the many adjacent literatures that have addressed the practices and processes of economising. Four features define our approach. First, it is argued that failure has none of the objectivity or inevitability often attributed to it. Second, it is suggested that failure be viewed as a variable ontology object. Third, attention is directed to the calculative infrastructures that operationalise the ideas of failing and failure, and enable them to be acted upon. Fourth, emphasis is placed on the importance of distinguishing between fail…