Gil Eyal

Eastern Europe as a Laboratory for Economic Knowledge: The Transnational Roots of Neoliberalism

Using Latours concepts of “actor‐network�” and “translation,” the authors show that neoliberalisms success in Eastern Europe is best analyzed not as an institutional form diffused along the nodes of a network, but as itself an actor‐network based on a particular �translation strategy� that construes socialism as a laboratory of economic knowledge. They argue that socialism was made into a laboratory of economic knowledge during the socialist calculation debate of the 1920s and 1930s. An extensive debate during the Cold War is also documented and shows that a transnational network continued to be organized around attempts to connect the results obtained in the socialist laboratory with debates and struggles in Western economics. Finally, the drafting of transition blueprints in postcommunist Eastern Europe after 1989, with the participation of American economists, is shown to be a continuation of this transnational network.

Making Capitalism without Capitalists: The New Ruling Elites in Eastern Europe

I do not know what is like elsewhere, but in Poland sociologists look at social policy writers with a bit of superiority, as the former deal mainly with ‘pure’ science, and social policy analysts represent rather mundane, practical perspectives. And indeed, after reading Making Capitalism Without Capitalists, written by three sociologists based in the USA, I have become much more aware of how close to practice I am as a policy analyst, even if I am interested primarily in social policy strategies and not so much in their implementation. The main purpose of the book is to set a new research agenda for a neo-classical sociology, an agenda concerned with the origins and character of capitalist systems emerging in post-communist Central Europe. In my opinion the authors have succeeded in this. The book is very helpful in explaining how capitalism is developing on the basis of ‘real’ socialism, what actors are building postcommunist capitalism, how social structures are being shaped and the origins and ideology of the new power-elite. From this point of view the most important achievement of the authors seems to be a refutation of a ‘political capitalism’ thesis; in the countries of Central Europe (i.e. Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland) there is little evidence that the nomenclatura (i.e. members of the power-elite under socialism) was successful in acquiring private property. In this respect Central Europe differs substantially from Russia and other East European countries, where conversion of political power into private wealth is evident. Readers interested in theoretical problems of shaping a new socio-economic system and in capturing the dynamics of transformation from a ‘real’ socialism into a market-oriented economy will certainly enrich their knowledge about how these processes are unfolding in the countries of Central Europe. They will learn how capitalism is being created from above and in which ways the formation of private property and class relations affect the nature of capitalism that is being built in the region. All these theoretical issues are obviously of great interest for social policy analysts, but while reading this book I constantly wondered what were the practical implications of ‘capitalism from above’ for dealing with old and newly emerging social problems. The authors admit that they are not fully prepared to answer this question yet. In my opinion, theoretical considerations on ‘making capitalism without capitalists’ are not very helpful in pointing to solutions to the socio-political dilemmas of the transformation process. The book, however, also makes several casual remarks of direct importance for social policy analysts. First of all, the authors identify winners and losers of the transformation. According to them, the main winners are highly educated middle-aged men; major losers are less educated people in their fifties, employed in highly subsidized sectors of the socialist economy. The authors also stress the significance of cultural capital as the most important form of capital in post-communist societies. The Polish experiences also confirm the authors’ belief that the development of the ‘right’ institutions is not sufficient to generate ‘appropriate’ behaviour, and it is certainly not enough to change post-communist mentality. Summing up, it seems to me that the book might be especially interesting to readers from ‘mature’ capitalist countries, providing them with a multifaceted picture of an emerging post-communist capitalist system. One has to remember, however, that the post-communist system in Central Europe is constantly changing, and that the nature of the system will certainly be different in the years to come. The authors are perfectly aware of the ‘transitory’ character of the present conditions, but BOOK REVIEWS

For a sociology of expertise: The social origins of the autism epidemic.

This article endeavors to replace the sociology of professions with the more comprehensive and timely sociology of expertise. It suggests that we need to distinguish between experts and expertise as requiring two distinct modes of analysis that are not reducible to one another. It analyzes expertise as a network linking together agents, devices, concepts, and institutional and spatial arrangements. It also suggests rethinking how abstraction and power were analyzed in the sociology of professions. The utility of this approach is demonstrated by using it to explain the recent precipitous rise in autism diagnoses. This article shows that autism remained a rare disorder until the deinstitutionalization of mental retardation created a new institutional matrix within which a new set of actors—the parents of children with autism in alliance with psychologists and therapists—were able to forge an alternative network of expertise.

The Utopia of Postsocialist Theory and the Ironic View of History in Neoclassical Sociology1

Michael Burawoy offers three thought-provoking criticisms of our book: (1) that we abandon class analysis, (2) that we do not suggest an alternative to the present capitalist order, and, therefore, (3) that our “neoclassical sociology” abandons the critical vision of classical sociology. At this abstract level, we plead not guilty to all three charges. First, instead of abandoning class analysis, our book offers a comprehensive theory of class structure in state socialism and postcommunism. True, we pay far less attention to the working class than Burawoy finds acceptable, but this is because we analyze a situation in which the working class is far from fully formed: we do not assume that classes, like Pallas Athena, issue forth fully armed from Zeus’s head. Second, rather than joining the chorus heralding the end of the history, we think our book injects historical openness into the analysis of postcommunism. We do not assume one single capitalism as the last station of history. Instead, we argue for a research agenda framed in terms of “comparative capitalisms.” Such an agenda addresses the diversity of market economies without ordering these forms into a single hierarchy from “advanced” to “backward” or from “central” to “peripheral.” Finally, we do not contrast different capitalisms with a utopia, “concrete” or otherwise, but we do approach them “critically,” with a measure of Socratic irony. Moving beyond these abstractions, we reformulate Burawoy’s criticisms empirically, and ask the following questions:

Dangerous liaisons between military intelligence and Middle Eastern studies in Israel

Il est avere quen Israel, les universitaires specialises dans le Moyen-Orient collaborent avec les services de renseignements de larmee. Le but de cet article est de chercher a connaitre les circonstances dans lesquelles cette collaboration a ete amenee a se developper et avec quelles consequences en ce qui concerne les relations des intellectuels avec le pouvoir

On Irony: An Invitation to Neoclassical Sociology

This article proffers an invitation to neoclassical sociology. This is understood as a Habermasian reconstruction of the fundamental vision of the discipline as conceptualized by classical theorists, particularly Weber. Taking the cases of Eastern and Central Europe as a laboratory, we argue against the idea of a single, homogenizing globalizing logic. Currently and historically what we see instead is a remarkable diversity of capitalist forms and destinations. Neither sociological theories of networks and embeddedness nor economic models of rational action adequately comprehend this diversity. A neoclassical approach enjoins an empirical research agenda comparing capitalisms, and an ironic, historical approach to analysis to inform an immanent critique of capitalist possibilities.

Looping Genomes: Diagnostic Change and the Genetic Makeup of the Autism Population.

This article builds on Hacking’s framework of “dynamic nominalism” to show how knowledge about biological etiology can interact with the “kinds of people” delineated by diagnostic categories in ways that “loop” or modify both over time. The authors use historical materials to show how “geneticization” played a crucial role in binding together autism as a biosocial community and how evidence from genetics research later made an important contribution to the diagnostic expansion of autism. In the second part of the article, the authors draw on quantitative and qualitative analyses of autism rates over time in several rare conditions that are delineated strictly according to genomic mutations in order to demonstrate that these changes in diagnostic practice helped to both increase autism’s prevalence and create its enormous genetic heterogeneity. Thus, a looping process that began with geneticization and involved the social effects of genetics research itself transformed the autism population and its genetic makeup.

Two Opposite Ends of the World: The Management of Uncertainty in an Autism-Only School

How do individuals maintain a sense of efficacy and purpose in the face of high levels of ambiguity and uncertainty? In research on medical uncertainty, sociologists often discuss the strategies health practitioners employ to control uncertainties relating to diagnosis and treatment. Over six months of ethnographic field work at an autism-only therapy school, we observed seventy-five students and forty-seven instructors and formally interviewed ten instructors and four parents. While other studies on medical uncertainty have focused on controls over external circumstances, we demonstrate that another management strategy is for individuals to perform ethical work on themselves in order to adjust how they conduct themselves in uncertain situations. Despite the ambiguity of both the autism diagnosis and the therapeutic method employed at the school, instructors are able to maintain a sense of efficacy and to recognize themselves as “doing floortime” by transforming themselves to become “child directed.”

Ironie als Methode

Dieser Artikel stellt theoretische und methodische Ansätze einer neoklassischen Soziologie vor. Die neoklassische Soziologie versteht sich als eine Habermas’sche Rekonstruktion der von ihren klassischen Theoretikern, hier vor allem Max Weber, konzeptualisierten, grundlegenden Idee der Disziplin. Mit Blick auf die Entwicklungen in Ost- und Mitteleuropa widersprechen wir der dominanten Vorstellung einer einzigen, homogenisierenden Globalisierungslogik. Sowohl in der Geschichte als auch in der Gegenwart lässt sich nämlich eine bemerkenswerte Vielfalt kapitalistischer Formen und Ausprägungen feststellen. Weder soziologische Netzwerktheorien oder Theorien der „Einbettung“ noch ökonomische Modelle rationalen Handelns vermögen diese Vielfalt angemessen zu erfassen. Der hier vorgestellte neoklassische Ansatz verknüpft empirische, vergleichende Ansätze der Untersuchung des Kapitalismus mit einem ironischen historischen Analyseansatz und ermöglicht so erst eine differenzierte und kritische soziologische Analyse der verschiedenen Formen des Kapitalismus.SummaryThis article proffers an invitation to neo-classical sociology. This is understood as a Habermasian reconstruction of the fundamental vision of the discipline as conceptualized by classical theorists, particularly Weber. Taking the cases of Eastern and Central Europe as a laboratory, we argue against the idea of a single, homogenizing globalizing logic. Currently and historically what we see instead is a remarkable diversity of capitalist forms and destinations. Neither sociological theories of networks and embeddedness nor economic models of rational action adequately comprehend this diversity. A neo-classical approach enjoins an empirical research agenda comparing capitalisms, and an ironic, historical approach to analysis to inform an immanent critique of capitalist possibilities.RésuméCet article présente les énoncés théoriques et méthodologiques d’une sociologie néo-classique. La sociologie néo-classique est une reconstruction d’après Habermas de l’idée fondamentale de discipline, idée originellement conceptualisée par les théoriciens classiques, surtout par Max Weber. Considérant l’Europe centrale et Orientale, nous réfutons l’idée dominante d’une seule et unique logique homogénéisante de mondialisation. Que ce soit dans le passé ou dans le présent, on peut constater une remarquable diversité de formes capitalistes. Ni les théories sociologiques des réseaux, ni les modèles économiques de l’agissement rationnel ne parviennent à saisir convenablement cette diversité. Le présent énoncé néo-classique joint des énoncés empiriques et comparatifs relatifs à l’étude du capitalisme à un énoncé historique et ironique et permet ainsi une analyse sociologique différenciée et critique des différentes formes du capitalisme.

The physician–patient relationship in the age of precision medicine

The completion of the Human Genome Project was heralded as a step towards “personalized medicine,” offering patients individualized treatments based on genomic profiling. More recently, this vision has been eclipsed by the promise of “precision medicine” (PM), emphasizing benefits to patients from more precise diagnosis and treatment based on a range of biomarkers, along with data about patients’ environment, lifestyle, and behaviors. Cynics may object that PM is mostly hype and exists primarily in documents whose very titles—e.g., “Toward Precision Medicine”—indicate their promissory nature. We disagree. PM is part of a longstanding attempt to reorient medical diagnosis and treatment to take advantage of genomics research and other approaches leveraging big data, such as electronic medical record research and crowd-sourced health tracking. These efforts are progressively elaborating an increasingly coherent vision of a different kind of medicine. As the prospects and challenges of PM loom before us, there ais urgent need to consider its implications for the social organization of medicine, particularly for the physician–patient relationship.