ABSTRACT

Economists occupy leading positions in many different sectors including central and private banks, multinational corporations, the state and the media, as well as serving as policy consultants on everything from health to the environment and security. Power and Influence of Economists explores the interconnected relationship between power, knowledge and influence which has led economics to be both a source and beneficiary of widespread power and influence.

The contributors to this book explore the complex and diverse methods and channels that economists have used to exert and expand their influence from different disciplinary and national perspectives. Four different analytical views on the role of power and economics are taken: first, the role of economic expert discourses as power devices for the formation of influential expertise; second, the logics and modalities of governmentality that produce power/knowledge apparatuses between science and society; third, economists as involved in networks between academia, politics and the media; and forth, economics considered as a social field, including questions of legitimacy and unequal relations between economists based on the detention of various capitals. The volume includes case studies on a variety of national configurations of economics, such as the US, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Greece, Mexico and Brazil, as well as international spaces and organisations such as the IMF.

This book provides innovative research perspectives for students and scholars of heterodox economics, cultural political economy, sociology of professions, network studies, and the social studies of power, discourse and knowledge.

“The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9780367817084, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.”

Size: 0.22 MB

part 1|53 pages

Economic knowledge and discursive power

chapter 2|17 pages

Performative, imaginary and symbolic power

How economic expert discourses influence society
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chapter 3|17 pages

Macroeconomics and monetary policy as autonomous domains of knowledge and power

Rational expectations, monetarism and the Federal Reserve
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chapter 4|17 pages

The power of economics textbooks

Shaping meaning and identity
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part 2|73 pages

Economic governmentalities

chapter 6|19 pages

Competitive power

Elements of Foucauldian economics
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chapter 7|17 pages

Feelings in crisis

The emotional and affective dimension of neoliberal economics in Greek crisis prone society
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chapter 8|18 pages

Laboratories for economic expertise

Lay perspectives on Italian disciplinary economics
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part 3|62 pages

Economists in networks

chapter 9|23 pages

Who are the economists Germany listens to? 1

The social structure of influential German economists
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chapter 10|18 pages

Global production and circulation of dominant ideologies

Mexico from the default debt crisis to the Brady Plan (1982–1989)
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chapter 11|19 pages

Economists in public discourses

The case of wealth and inheritance taxation in the German press
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part 4|59 pages

Economics as a scientific field

chapter 13|21 pages

Forms of social capital in economics

The importance of heteronomous networks in the Swiss field of economists (1980–2000)
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chapter 14|18 pages

Paths of international circulation

How do economists and economic knowledge flow? 1
Size: 0.37 MB