The Economization of the Social since the 1970s

The Economization of the Social since the 1970s

Veranstalter
Julia Ott (The New School for Social Research); Ariane Leendertz (Max Plank Institute for the Study of Societies); Wolfgang Streeck (Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies) Sponsored by The German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) The Robert L. Heilbroner Center for Capitalism Studies, New School for Social Research
Veranstaltungsort
The New School for Social Research
Ort
New York (NY)
Land
United States
Vom - Bis
05.06.2015 - 06.06.2015
Website
Von
Ariane Leendertz & Julia Ott

For some time, historians, sociologists, and political scientists alike have identified the 1970s as a turning point in advanced capitalist societies, marking the beginning of the neoliberal revolution in contemporary political economies and of the rational choice revolution in the social sciences. The conference is to explore the historical process by which “the social” came to be redefined – in public discourse as well as in social science – as fundamentally economic in nature.

Generally we can observe that under the changed economic and social conditions of the 1970s, the institutional arrangements of postwar “embedded liberalism” seemed to have become progressively less convincing. A deep transformation of the political economies and popular cultures in the industrialized countries of Western Europe and North America involved the end of the postwar-boom and the “New Deal order” of organized capitalism and Keynesian economic policy. Historians and social scientists stress the wide-reaching changes in the global economy after 1970: a “return of the market” as a guiding principle of U.S. policy, more frequent economic crises, rising social inequality, and increased uncertainty related to the ascent of finance and the fraying of the social safety net.

Neoliberal, supply-side and market-oriented policy concepts, originating mostly from the United States and the United Kingdom, gained traction across much of the political spectrum. Privatization and deregulation accompanied the marketization of what used to be public services and government functions. Alongside these developments we find a “marketization” of public and political speech – a spread of the semantics and rhetorics of the market, and an increasingly economistic slant in the language of social theory. Political-economic marketization came together with moral appeals to individuals to assume more “responsibility” for their lives as individuals, rather than turning to collective solutions. Here, interestingly, economic neoliberalism, as propagated by the right, converged with left-libertarian hopes for individual freedom and individualistic independence, as promoted also by social movements and “alternative” cultures. Economic combined with cultural liberalization produced new “governmentalities” in the form of self-regulation, self-cultivation, self-management and self-marketing, all of which encouraged and were encouraged by the expansion of retail finance and flexible labor markets.

Exploring these and related subjects requires an interdisciplinary perspective, enabling us to integrate cultural, political, theoretical and economic developments that are often dealt with separately and by different professional communities. Taken together, conference papers are expected to address changing political practices and paradigms as well as recent conceptual developments in the social sciences. The conference will bring together historians and social scientists with an interest in empirical political economy and a commitment to interrogate the evolution of their disciplines since the 1970s.

Programm

Friday, June 5
(Wolff Conference Room 1103 @ 6 East 16th Street)

9:15am: Julia Ott, Ariane Leendertz, Wolfgang Streeck:
Welcome and Introductory Remarks

9:30am: Uwe Schimank, Ute Volkmann (Sociology, University of Bremen)
“Economizing the Non-Economic: Practices and Consequences”

10:30am: Gerald Davis (Management and Sociology, University of Michigan)
“How American Households Turned into Enron”

Noon: Stefan Lessenich (Sociology, University of Munich)
“The End of Retirement: The Economization of Old Age”

2:30pm: Kim Phillips-Fein (History, New York University)
“Resistance to Retrenchment: Working-Class Attitudes Towards Austerity in 1970s New York”

3:30pm: Andrea Mennicken (Accounting and Sociology, London School of Economics)
“Privatization = Economization? Privatization in the British Prison Service since the 1990s”

5:00pm: Margaret Somers (Sociology and History, University of Michigan)
"Inequality or Social Exclusion: The Economization of the Poverty Industry"

Saturday, June 6
(Orozco Room 712 @ 66 West 12th Street)

9:30am: Howard Brick (History, University of Michigan)
“The Decline of Post-Capitalist Social Theory and the Rise of Economism since the 1970s”

10:30am: Nancy MacLean (History, Duke University)
“Forget Chicago, It’s Coming from Virginia: The 1970s Genesis of Today’s Attack on Democracy”

Noon: Greta Krippner (Sociology, University of Michigan)
“Economies of Difference: Risk Classification and Gender Discrimination in Insurance Markets”

1:00pm: Lunch break

2:30pm: Eduardo Canedo (History, University of Connecticut)
“Neoliberal Environmentalism: The Environmental Defense Fund, Market Technologies, and the Public Interest”

4:00pm: S. M. Amadae (Political Science, Ohio State University)
“Does the Social Fit on a Single Scale? The Violence of Commensurability”

Kontakt

The New School for Social Research
80 Fifth Ave
New York, NY 10011


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