Facts and figures

The globalization of deregulated markets and the devolution of states range very high on the agenda of public debates. Instead of adding further narratives to these burning mega-issues the contributors to this volume analyze concrete economic practices in various fields. Inspired by new approaches from the sociology and anthropology of scientific knowledge the authors envisage a Social Study of Economics. Their focus on the performance of economic representations marks the main difference to the established fields of economic anthropology and sociology.

All contributions deal with the relation between specific economic practices (e.g. of decision-making) and their representations in the form of figures, lists and diagrams. Transgressing the old dichotomy between objectivist and anti-objectivist positions they analyze the performative effect of seemingly neutral economic representations. The authors thus conceive economic representations as practices sui generis and demonstrate how they frame the field for economic action.