Price and prediction in the crude oil market

Crude oil is arguably the most important commodity in the world, yet it remains vastly understudied by economic sociologists and sociologists of markets. This paper addresses this lacuna by reframing extant economic literature on oil markets within sociological theories on price and the role of expectations in markets. The paper begins by describing how actors in and adjacent to oil markets—including banks and hedge funds, state statistical agencies, policymakers, price reporting agencies, and oil companies— coordinate their sense- and decision-making through the construction of a web of inter-dependent predictions about the energy future. It then uses concepts from the sociological study of price—prosthesis, semiosis, and materiality—to examine how speculative prices on oil futures markets act as boundary objects, constraining or enabling action and prediction among different actors. In making this analysis, the paper argues that price is a critical mechanism producing the distinction between who gets to define the energy future and who must live with the future that has been defined for them