what sociologists have learned about economists

Fabio

For me, one of the more exciting recent topics in the sociology of science is the attention given to the economics profession. Here are three recent highlights:

• Michael Reay at Reed College interviewed 30 economists for his dissertation and has two forthcoming articles. One article is in History of Political Economy, which shows that economists’ image of what they do is quite different in industry and government, than in elite academic settings. The fancy math associated with elite academia is a world apart from the “tool kit” used to justify their presence in other settings. A second article in Sociological Perspectives is a cutting exploration of how economists establish their authority in various professional settings. Key quote from the abstract: “…most of their knowledge is too abstract to be of much substantive use, and their standards of academic rigor may play only a minor role in legitimizing their day to day authority.”
• Monica Prasad at Northwestern has a different take. She sees the rise of economics, and more specifically neo-liberal economics, as a failure of the left. It ain’t the math, it’s the weakness of the opposition. Check out the book, The Politics of Free Markets.
• Over at Berkeley, they also got someone with a beef with economists, Marion Fourcade-Gourinchas. Her work is about how the standards of the US economics discipline have become tools for asserting professional authority around the world. In a very Abbotesque turn, it’s all about the power to define professional standards, but with a global neo-liberal twist. Check out the AJS article here.

Also, our very own orghead, Kieran Healy, has co-authored a forthcoming article with Forucade-Gourinchas on the moral order of markets. Highly recommended.