Ben Fine

Social capital versus social theory : political economy and social science at the turn of the millennium

1. Introduction and Overview 2. The Enigma and Fluidity of Capital 3. Bringing the Social Back In 4. Bourdieus Social Capital: from distinction to extinction 5. Bringing Rational Choice Back In 6. Making the Benchmark Work for Social Theory 7. The Expanding Universe of Social Capital 8. Making the Post-Washington Consensus 9. World Banking on Social Capital 10. Measuring Social Capital: How long is a missing link 11. Social Capital Versus Political Economy

The Developmental State Is Dead—Long Live Social Capital?

At the same time that the World Bank appears to be going through a process of replacing the Washington consensus with the Post-Washington consensus, the notion of social capital is coming to the fore both in development studies and social science more generally. These developments are closely connected to one another analytically: they are liable to stake out a new development agenda based on new Keynesianism and social capital in place of state versus the market; and they reflect more generally the growing influence of mainstream economics over other social sciences.

Theories of social capital : researchers behaving badly

1 Introduction 2 From Rational Choice to McDonaldisation 3 The Short History of Social Capital 4 The BBI Syndrome 5 Social Capital versus Social History 6 Social Capital is Dead: Long Live Whatever Comes Next 7 Management Studies Goes to McDonalds 8 Degradation without Limit 9 W(h)ither Social Capital? Notes Bibliography Index

Development Policy in the Twenty-first Century: Beyond the post-Washington consensus

1. Neither the Washington nor the Post-Washington Consensus: an introduction Ben Fine 2. Financial systems design and the Post-Washington Consensus Costas Lapavitsas and Sedat Aybar 3. Privatization and the Post-Washington Consensus: between the lab and the real world? Kate Bayliss and Christopher Cramer 4. From Washington to post Washington: does it matter for industrial policy? Sonali Deraniyagala 5. Consensus in Washington, upheaval in East Asia Dic Lo 6. The new political economy of corruption Mushtaq H. Khan 7. The social capital of the World Bank Ben Fine 8. Education and the Post-Washington Consensus Ben Fine and Pauline Rose 9. The Post-Washington consensus and lending operations in agriculture: new rhetoric and old operational realities Jonathan Pincus

Economics Imperialism and the New Development Economics as Kuhnian Paradigm Shift

Abstract This paper addresses the evolving relationship between economics and other social sciences. It sets the present intellectual scene as one in which economics imperialism is rampaging across other disciplines. The designs of economics upon development studies are examined in terms of the Kuhnian notion of paradigm shift. Thereby the conclusion is drawn of the potential prospect of open debate around the economy and development, not least outside economics itself. But there is danger of economics imperialism, in the form of the post-Washington Consensus, foreclosing the analytical agenda at the expense of approaches based on the political economy of capitalism.

From Economics Imperialism to Freakonomics: The Shifting Boundaries Between Economics and Other Social Sciences

1. Introduction and Overview 2. The Historical Logic of Economics Imperialism 3. The Economic Approach: Marginalism Extended 4. New Economics Imperialism: The Revolution Portrayed 5. From Economics, through Institutions to Society? 6. From Social Capital to Freakonomics 7. Economics Confronts the Social Sciences: Resistance or Smooth Progression? 8. Whither Economics? 9. Whither Social Science? 10. Whither Political Economy?

Towards a political economy of food

Abstract A political economy of food is proposed by drawing critically upon existing literature. First, food is understood in terms of a system of provision in which the connection between production and consumption is viewed as a chain of activities, vertically integrated. Different foods give rise to different systems of provision, and these are distinguished relative to other non‐food systems by their heavy dependence upon organic properties throughout the linkages from production to consumption. While emphasis is placed upon the tendencies to vertical (dis)integration along the food chain and to industrialization of food processing and agriculture, these are not interpreted as empirical trends within the confines of given structures, as is standard in the most recent food systems literature, but as potential supports to the reproduction or transformation of those structures. In particular, the structural relationships between agriculture and industry are interpreted as the historically contingent outc...

Callonistics: a disentanglement

A critical response is offered to the special issue of Economy and Society devoted to Michel Callons economics. The continuing weaknesses of his approach, as adopted and adapted from actor-network theory and the study of science and technology, are highlighted, together with the weaknesses of the economics itself. In addition, the latter is shown to conform heavily with recent developments within and around mainstream economics. The conclusion that capitalism does not exist, and so does not need a political economy, is argued both to disarm social theory in face of the current, virulent assault from economics imperialism and to waste the opportunity to offer an alternative economics of its own.

Development as Zombieconomics in the Age of Neoliberalism

Abstract Development economics is currently dominated by an orthodoxy that is totally intolerant of alternatives and depends upon seeing both economy and society as based upon the incidence of market and institutional imperfections. This is characterised as ‘zombieconomics’ as it feeds in a reductionist and parasitical fashion on more widely cast and methodologically opposed methods, especially those associated traditionally with development studies and the old or classic development economics. This paper explains how this situation came about in the light of the evolution of economics more generally, and explores how development economics has become Americanised, more influential within development studies, policy- rather than critically oriented, and subject to an agenda increasingly set by the World Bank. It concludes by pointing to the challenges and the opportunities open to development studies as neoliberalism experiences a profound crisis to which the new development economics can only offer partial and piecemeal responses.

Social Capital: The World Bank's Fungible Friend

Book reviewed in this article: Christian Grootaert and Thierry van Bastelaer (eds),The Role of Social Capital in Development: An Empirical Assessment