The social logics of economics.
Power, knowledge and practices between academia, the economy and society
By Jens Maesse and Hanno Pahl
26th Annual EAEPE Conference, University of Cyprus, Nicosia, 6-8 November 2014 (http://eaepe.org)
Economic knowledge, practices and actors play a central role in the current economic, financial and fiscal crisis. Economics either as academic or as applied knowledge is a resource for the interpretation of the social world as an “economy”. Through this hegemonic position on the definition of “problems”, economics is in a privileged position to deliver “proper solutions”. Thus, how can we explain that the economics profession reached such an exceptional position? What are the social rules that govern economics?
In our workshop on the “social logics of economics”, we will discuss and consider the question how economics knowledge is produced, particular academic and scientific practices are institutionalized and discourses circulate. Within the last decades an interdisciplinary research area came up which has studied economics from the viewpoint of the history of economic ideas, sociological field theory, new institutionalism, psychoanalysis, global political economy, sociology of knowledge, ANT as well as from discourse analysis. Taking these debates on the “social logic of economics” as a point of departure, we invite presentations to consider and discuss empirical research, theoretical considerations and critical reflections on 1, 2 or 3 panels on the following topics:
-What is the relationship between academic and applied economics?
-How to compare economics with other academic disciplines (i.e. physics, history, politics, sociology and so forth)?
-Is economics “performative”?
-In what way have economic paradigms undergone a transformation process?
-What is the role of elite and excellence discourses in economics?
-How are discourses, social structures and knowledge in economics related to each other?
Please send your exposé (200-300 words) to j.maesse@warwick.ac.uk
Deadline: 15.09.2014