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This is a post-peer-review pre-copyedit version of an article published in BioSocieties. The denitive publisher-authenticated version Rabeharisoa, V., Moreira, T. and Akrich, M. (2014) 'Evidence-based activism : patients' organisations, users' and activist's groups in knowledge.', BioSocieties., 9 (2). pp. 111-128 is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/biosoc.2014.2Additional information: Use policyThe full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. supported by the European Commission FP7. We warmly thank all patients' organisations which participated to our surveys. We owe a lot to our partners in this project, who took an active part in providing empirical data and analysis.3 Evidence-based activism: Patients' organisations, users' and activist's groups in knowledge society AbstractThis article proposes the notion of 'evidence-based activism' to capture patients' and health activists' groups' focus on knowledge production and knowledge mobilisation in the governance of health issues. It introduces empirical data and analysis on groups active in four countries (France, Ireland, Portugal, and the UK), and in four condition areas (rare diseases, Alzheimer's disease, ADHD -Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and childbirth). It shows how these groups engage with, and articulate a variety of credentialed knowledge and 'experiential knowledge' with a view to explore concerned people's situations, to make themselves part and parcel of the networks of expertise on their conditions in their national contexts, and to elaborate evidence on the issues they deem important to address both at an individual and a collective level.This article argues that in contrast to health movements which contest institutions from the outside, patients' and activists' groups which embrace 'evidence-based activism' work 'from within' to imagine new epistemic and political appraisal of their causes and conditions. 'Evidence-based activism' entails a collective inquiry associating patients/activists and specialists/professionals in the conjoint fabrics of scientific statements and political claims.From a conceptual standpoint, 'evidence-based activism' sheds light on the on-going coproduction of matters of fact and matters of concern in contemporary technological democracies.

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The aim of this paper is to highlight the main characteristics of what the authors call 'the economy of qualities'. The authors show that qualifying products and positioning goods are major concerns for agents evolving within the 'economy of qualities'. Competition in such an economy is structured through two basic mechanisms. The rst is what the authors propose to call the process of singularization of products. The second is the mechanism whereby consumers are attached to, and detached from, goods that are proposed to them. At the heart of these logics, one can nd multiple socio-technical devices that are designed by economic agents, which ensure the distribution of cognitive competencies, and which constantly and nely tune supply and demand. Relying upon Jean Gadrey's work, the authors claim that the economy of qualities is nowhere more effective than in services providing activities, and especially in those sectors that invest heavily in New Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). Finally, the authors suggest that, in the economy of qualities, the functioning and the organization of markets are issues that are shared by scholars and actors. In these highly re exive markets, a collaboration between them is needed.