--- - |2 Abstract Performativity has been one of the most dynamic research programmes in the last few decades that has sought to move beyond conventional, positivistic understandings of science. This paper interrogates the central premise of performativity – that science makes rather than describes its phenomena – through a critical analysis of the hugely influential performativity turn in economic sociology. The paper argues that while the performativity turn has importantly highlighted how economic theory shapes economic practices, its conflation of economic theory and its objects of analysis renders it unable to recognize economic processes that are not identified by economic models themselves. To address this limitation, this paper then proposes an alternative account, representation as intervention, that retains the critical impulse of exploring how economic models reshape economic life without conflating theories and their objects. - Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, EarlyView.