Abstract
Taking its starting point in theories about the sociology of culture, knowledge and professions, Economists and Societies by Marion Fourcade sets out to study three ‘orders’ of economics in Britain, France and the United States: the modes of incorporation of economic knowledge into higher education and scientific research; the modes of construction and incorporation of economic knowledge through policy making and policy advice; and finally the place of economic technologies in the broader system of economic relations (p. 21).
Through comprehensive historical analysis of the role of economics in the three countries, Fourcade identifies three institutional logics of economic knowledge production: American scientific and commercial professionalism which produces ‘market-oriented’ economic knowledge; British ‘public-minded elitism’ where the identity of economists has been shaped by a political culture centred on small, tightly knit societies of economic knowledge organised around the authority of elite Oxbridge institutions and personalities; and a ‘statist’ French economics profession which derives its characteristics from a national political culture and institutional make-up centred on the administrative exercise of public power. Although filled with perceptive and engaging theoretical discussions, the main contribution of the volume is the empirical rigour and depth exhibited throughout the three case studies. Taken together, the book forcefully brings home the point that national institutional logics structure in important ways the very idea of what economics is and thus which political role it should be assigned in the economies of Britain, France and the United States.
In the ambition to cover fully the different national trajectories of the three cases, however, it remains somewhat unclear which generalisable implications might be drawn from the study. That is, the strong focus on the distinctiveness of different national systems seems to come at the expense of generalisation. The analysis could also have benefited from a different selection of cases. Using a most-different case design, the author unsurprisingly finds that the differences in national cultures lead to differences in the role of economics in Britain, France and the United States. One can appreciate the author's methodologically-based refusal to employ the language of ‘variables’ or ‘causality’ (p. 16) – or more traditional forms of comparative method (p. 13) – while simultaneously wishing for an alternative case selection which might have enabled greater analytical and empirical leverage, in turn leading to more surprising conclusions. To sum up, this thoroughly researched and well-written book would probably have been even better had the author developed a more tightly structured comparative approach and a clearer, perhaps more generalisable, argument.