Economists and Societies: Discipline and Profession in the United States, Britain, and France, 1890s to 1990s

by Marion Fourcade

Economists and Societies is the first book to systematically compare the profession of economics in the United States, Britain, and France, and to explain why economics, far from being a uniform science, differs in important ways among these three countries. Drawing on in-depth interviews with economists, institutional analysis, and a wealth of scholarly evidence, Marion Fourcade traces the history of economics in each country from the late nineteenth century to the present, demonstrating how each political, cultural, and institutional context gave rise to a distinct professional and disciplinary configuration. She argues that because the substance of political life varied from country to country, people's experience and understanding of the economy, and their political and intellectual battles over it, crystallized in different ways--through scientific and mercantile professionalism in the United States, public-minded elitism in Britain, and statist divisions in France. Fourcade moves past old debates about the relationship between culture and institutions in the production of expert knowledge to show that scientific and practical claims over the economy in these three societies arose from different elites with different intellectual orientations, institutional entanglements, and social purposes.


Much more than a history of the economics profession, Economists and Societies is a revealing exploration of American, French, and British society and culture as seen through the lens of their respective economic institutions and the distinctive character of their economic experts.

Genres: Economics, Sociology, Politics, France

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Economics,” Fourcade observes, “is everywhere.” It is a subject of research and teaching in universities, but it is much more than this. Economic concepts have become part of the basic language of political life, while socio-technical tools like economic forecasting and cost-benefit analysis constitute some of the most widely used tools of the modern state and corporation. In writing a history of modern economics, one is faced with a paradox of identity and demarcation. Perhaps because of its ubiquity, economics and the term economist mean many things to many people, yet these terms are not reducible to any of those particular manifestations. In the United States, generally only those who possess a Masters degree – and increasingly, a PhD – in economics identify themselves as economists. There, economics is largely seen by its practitioners as a set of research tools and methods for producing knowledge about the social world; as such, economics is not specifically tied to the study of the economy. In the United Kingdom, by contrast, the demarcation between economist and non-economist is much more informal. There, some of the most important “economists” in modern British history have been journalists with little or no postgraduate training. In France, the term lacks a singular meaning, reflecting the bifurcated nature of the French higher education establishment. As Marion Fourcade demonstrates in Economists and Societies, these differences, both in professional identity and the boundaries and roles of the economics discipline, are deeply intwined with the distinct social and political cultures within which the economics discipline emerged and became institutionalised during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Using an approach she calls “critical organised comparison,” which seems to be a hybrid of comparative institutional analysis and ethnomethodology, Fourcade compares the development and institutionalisation of economics in the United States, United Kingdom, and France in academia, government, and the private sector. To clarify, Fourcade’s book is not about the emergence of economic ideas, per say, but about how the discipline became institutionalised within the academic, public and private sectors of the three countries examined. Fourcade’s book is ambitious. It focuses not only on objective differences between the contemporary and historical practice of economics in these countries, but also on subjective differences of identity: for example: what social roles economists see themselves as performing, the source of their intellectual authority, and so on. In Chapter 1, Fourcade provides a broad brush comparison of the academic and political cultures of the three countries. In the remaining chapters (2, 3 and 4), she skilfully combines careful historical analysis of the growth and establishment of economics in each country together with interviews with economists to explore how cross-national differences have affected their intellectual identities. As a historical work, the strength of Economists and Societies does not primarily lie in its presentation of previously unknown history, except perhaps in the cases on Britain and France. Others have written extensively on the social and intellectual history of modern economics, particularly in the United States. What this book brilliantly does, though, is exploit comparative institutional differences to provide new explanations for classic questions in the history of economic thought. Why, for instance, did American economics departments become the premier centres for academic economics research throughout the world, despite the fact that nearly all major contributions to economics prior to the mid-twentieth century came from Europe and Great Britain? A common and intuitive explanation for this question is the great migration of economists like Simon Kuznets and Wassily Leontief to the United States during the War. While this was probably a necessary condition for the establishment of the American economics enterprise, war-time migration does not explain why the discipline professionalized itself into a coherent discipline to a much greater extent than in the UK and France. She convincingly argues that the unique political economy of the American state and university system played a critical role in institutionalising the economics into its modern form. Following the Progressive Era (1890s-1920s), and its emphasis on objective, evidence-driven policy, American academics with a scientific orientation were routinely engaged in producing research for policy. Moreover, due to the strong bias against the centralisation of power in American political culture, government departments were more comfortable funding and drawing upon university research rather than doing such research themselves. The book explores, at once, how the unique institutional and culture environment of a country shapes an intellectual discipline, and how such a discipline, in turn, shapes the environment in which it emerged. Economists and Societies thus provides a nice counterbalance to the recent literature on the “performativity of economics,” which tends to focus on the role of economic tools and theories in shaping institutions and society. The book will appear not only to sociologists interested in the intellectual history of the social sciences and comparative institutional analysis, but also those interested in higher education policy.

[Oliver Kim]

The sooner more economists realize that early-21st century economics as practiced in American universities is far from a universal scientific approach, but instead rooted in a specific culture and a set of (often outwardly strange) institutions, the sooner we will hopefully lose some of our characteristic smugness and start listening to other disciplines.

By showing how the "economics profession" in the US, Britain, and France co-evolved along parallel tracks -- in the US, as a professional credential like law that qualifies one to work in government and industry; in Britain, as the intellectual province of gentlemen-advisors; and in France, as a technocratic state-led tradition born almost out of engineering -- then suggesting how these societal practices in turn influenced economic thinking, this book provides a helpful corrective.

[Matthew S · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant work which brings many economic understandings properly into question

[Mike Thicke]

This is a very illuminating study of the contrasting institutional development of economics in the United States, Britain, and France. It does a great job of demonstrating how government, society, and professional economics mutually affect each other's history. It is dry and sometimes descends into sociological minutiae, but is nevertheless a worthwhile read for those interested in the history of economics in the twentieth century.

[Mikhail Dubov]

A bit too difficult, but probably the best srudy of economists as a social group. Good background and history etc.

[W.T. Anderson]

Mathematics of economics

[Theodore Kinni · Rating 3 out of 5]

A sociologist shows that the development and current state of economics is as much a matter of political context as scientific method.