Marion Fourcade

The Construction of a Global Profession: The Transnationalization of Economics1

This article relies on an analysis of the institutionalization of economics worldwide during the 20th century to argue that the logic of professional development in this particular field has come to be increasingly defined in global terms. Connections to (mainly) U.S.‐based standards of work and professional practice are routinely used in the local competition whereby different professional segments and groups seek to assert their authority on particular jurisdictions (scientific, corporate, or political). In this process of professional construction (or reconstruction), economies are being transformed through complex transnational mechanisms which, ultimately, feed back into the identity and jurisdictional claims of the economics profession itself, both in the “core” and in the “periphery.”

Cents and Sensibility: Economic Valuation and the Nature of “Nature”1

How do we attribute a monetary value to intangible things? This article offers a general sociological approach to this question, using the economic value of nature as a paradigmatic case, and oil spills litigations in France and the United States as real world empirical illustrations. It suggests that a full-blown sociology of economic valuation must solve three problems: the “why,” which refers to the general place of money as a metric for worth; the “how,” which refers to the specific techniques and arguments laymen and experts deploy to elicit monetary translations; and the “then what” or the feedback loop from monetary values to social practices and representations.

Theories of Markets and Theories of Society

Starting from the objectively dominant position of the sociology of markets in economic sociology, this article suggests that markets have served as a privileged terrain for the development and application of general theoretical arguments about the shape of the social order. I offer a critical overview of the sociology of markets as it relates to our concepts of society, focusing on four main representations of what is sociologically important about markets: the social networks that sustain them, the systems of social positions that organize them, the institutionalization processes that stabilize them, and the performative techniques that bring them into existence. I then speculate about the possible future directions that such theorizing might take, calling in particular for a stronger contribution of the sociology of markets to the analysis of societies as moral orders.

The Vile and the Noble: On the Relation between Natural and Social Classifications in the French Wine World

This article examines the concept of terroir—a French word that captures the correspondence between the physical and human features of a place and the character of its agricultural products. Tied to the protection of economic rents threatened by competition and fraud, the practice of classifying certain lands, grapes, and properties both substantively and qualitatively has become the organizing principle of the entire French wine industry. Often derided as snobbish monopolistic practices by New World producers, the notion terroir in France and its rejection in America both exemplify how the “principles of vision and division” of the natural world are always intertwined with the “principles of vision and division” of the social world. The present article discusses these affinities through an analysis of wine classifications in the French regions of Bordeaux and Burgundy, and some of the critiques they have given rise to, in the United States especially.

Ordinalization: Lewis A. Coser Memorial Award for Theoretical Agenda Setting 2014

We can think of three basic principles of classificatory judgment for comparing things and people. I call these judgments nominal (oriented to essence), cardinal (oriented to quantities), and ordinal (oriented to relative positions). Most social orders throughout history are organized around the intersection of these different types. In line with the ideals of political liberalism, however, democratic societies have developed an arsenal of institutions to untangle nominal and ordinal judgments in various domains of social life. In doing so, I suggest, they have contributed to the parallel amplification of both. In this article, I specifically discuss the socio-technical channels through which ordinal judgments are now elaborated, a process I call ordinalization. I conclude by exploring the political and economic possibilities of a society in which ordinal processes are ubiquitous.We can think of three basic principles of classificatory judgment for comparing things and people. I call these judgments nominal (oriented to essence), cardinal (oriented to quantities), and ordinal (oriented to relative positions). Most social orders throughout history are organized around the intersection of these different types. In line with the ideals of political liberalism, however, democratic societies have developed an arsenal of institutions to untangle nominal and ordinal judgments in various domains of social life. In doing so, I suggest, they have contributed to the parallel amplification of both. In this article, I specifically discuss the socio-technical channels through which ordinal judgments are now elaborated, a process I call ordinalization. I conclude by exploring the political and economic possibilities of a society in which ordinal processes are ubiquitous.

Price and Prejudice

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The Politics of Method and Its Agentic, Performative, and Ontological Others

The Politics of Method in the Human Sciences is an extraordinary book. It is extraordinary for the sheer amount of intellectual ground covered in the individual chapters and for its significance. By historicizing and provincializing each human science in turn, The Politics of Method opens the door to a true reflexivity, which is the necessary condition for what Michael Burawoy (2005: 511) calls ‘‘critical’’ consciousness in his conclusion to the volume. But The Politics of Method is also extraordinary for the theoretical ambition of its editor, who seeks to subsume the entire epistemological trajectory of the postwar American human sciences under a single interpretation. This was no small task: the book is over 600 pages long, and, like many edited volumes, it is also very eclectic—full of tensions, divergent perspectives, and (sometimes) somewhat contradictory substantive claims.1 Like the pieces of a kaleidoscope, each chapter has a unique character yet combines with the other chapters in multiple and intersecting ways to form different images and configurations, all of which offer a particular perspective on what is sociologically important about the epistemology of the human sciences. Ultimately, what we may call the ‘‘Steinmetz thesis’’—the argument that positivism has found a fertile ground in the postwar American social sciences (with the notable exception of anthropology) for reasons that have to do with the particular mode of regulation of the American economy—is just one plausible way, among many, to articulate a very disparate set of case studies. The strength of George Steinmetz’s thesis is to offer a unitary perspective for this volume. Its weakness, however, is to gloss over the real differ-

Wirtschaftssoziologie und Gesellschaftstheorie

Wie Pierre Bourdieu einst bemerkte, muss jedes Verstandnis sowohl der Form, in der sich ein bestimmtes Feld darstellt, als auch der hinter seiner Dynamik liegenden Krafte und der Bedingungen, die seine Zukunft formen, mit einer Hinwendung auf die Geschichte dieses Felds beginnen – im Spezielleren muss man die Entstehungsbedingungen (die Genesis) des Feldes untersuchen (siehe etwa Bourdieu/ Wacquant 1992: 94ff.).

Introduction to the Symposium on the Contributions of Business to Economics

Historians of economics have largely overlooked the role of businesses in the formation of economic ideas. Indeed, this is true even of historians who are most attuned to the crucial role non-economists have played in shaping the ideas and practices of economics. For example, in his (1999) essay: “How should we write the history of twentieth-century economics?” Roy Weintraub omits any mention of the role of businesspersons. In keeping with his own work, Weintraub urges historians to examine not only the theoretical ideas, but also how these ideas have been translated across the economics profession into communities comprising administrators and policymakers. He emphasizes: “Discussing economic thought in the twentieth century from this perspective would encourage writing histories of eleemosynary foundations, government agencies, political organizations, private political advocacy groups, and a whole range of journalistic practices and news-reporting strategies” (148). We suggest that businesses should be added to Weintraub’s list. This is not to suggest that historians have not examined the business-economics nexus because they certainly have, primarily in two ways.

The social trajectory of a finance professor and the common sense of capital

Author(s): Fourcade, M; Khurana, R | Abstract: