ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the idea that economics as academic discipline and profession has enhanced influence and power during recent decades in many countries and in several social spheres. It explores a particular view on the multiple dimensions of power, action and impact. The chapter analyses economic discourses from different methodological viewpoints. It describes the idea that academic macroeconomics and monetary policy in central banks share a strong connection. The book explores the particular role of early neoclassical economics between the 1870s and the 1920s, and public choice theory throughout the second half of the 20th century in the constitution of neoliberal governmentality. It examines how classical political economy and neoliberal economics developed two versions of liberalism. The book focuses on Foucauldian market theory. It problematises the “negative” hypothesis of emotional exclusion and critically approaches the emotional and affective strategies of a specific form of culturally neoliberal governmentality.
