Estudios de la Economía

Se abrió el call for papers del “Second ISA Forum of Sociology Social justice and democratization”. Buenos Aires, Argentina. August 1-4, 2012, que incluye varias mesas organizadas por contribuidores de este blog! Abajo va el detalle de estas y de las mesas donde se discuten otros de los temas que han sido discutidas acá.

Joint Sessions:

RC02RC17
Organizing global and domestic finances

Joint session of RC02 Economy and Society [host committee] and RC17 Sociology of Organizations 

Session in English
Organisers
Jose OSSANDON, Universidad Diego Portales, Chile, jose.ossandon@udp.cl­
Liz MCFALL, Open University, United Kingdom, e.r.mcfall@open.ac.uk, RC17

Recent fluctuations in finance have important implications for contemporary sociology. The impressive technological transformation of financial markets since the 70s attracted the attention of Science and Technology (STS) scholars who have made a very convincing case for introducing non human agents (such as: screens, formulae, trading rooms, and economics itself) as essential characters of economic lives. Related work has drawn attention to the processes through which an apparently ever increasing array of objects are measured, calculated, valued, qualified, financialised or in some other sense `economized`.

More recently, the sub-prime crisis has dramatically exposed how finance is not just a dis-embedded game played by a global elite, but is intricately tied to domestic economies. In this context, increasing sociological attention is given to the analysis of retail finance (such as mortgage and consumer credit) and insurance, and the complex socio-technical chains that connect these services (through risk ratings, securitization, and even public guaranteed credit) and global markets.

Finally, the crisis has become a compulsory impulse to rethink classical concerns in economic and organisational sociology, such as the relationship between the economic and the `social`, between regulations and the management of technological uncertainty and the balance between market, quasi-market and non-market players in the organization of global finance. What all these developments point to is the significance of the techniques, technologies, processes and practices which combine to organize global and domestic finance. Papers responding to or extending these issues are welcome.

RC02RC17/2
Organizing markets

Joint session of RC02 Economy and Society and RC17 Sociology of Organizations [host committee]

Session in English and Spanish (English preferred)

Organisers and Chairs
Daniel FRIDMAN, University of Victoria, Canada, dfridman@uvic.ca, RC02
Jose OSSANDON, Universidad Diego Portales, Chile, jose.ossandon@udp.cl
Dean PIERIDES, University of Melbourne, Australia, d.pierides@unimelb.edu.au, RC17

“Organizing a market” is normally associated with central planning. However in neo-liberal contexts markets are also organized. In this latter case organization has to do with both the already classical sociological suggestion that exchange is embedded in institutions and regulations, as well as the consequences of a particular form of government that has proliferated since the late seventies, namely producing markets. In this context, markets have been created in areas as diverse as education, health, transport, housing and even pollution. To describe and to understand these processes has become one of the central concerns of contemporary sociology.

Some of the issues that have gathered more attention are: the consolidation of economics as a global advisory profession and the performative character of this type of knowledge; the costly processes of enacting the subjects and objects of exchange (firms, consumers, goods, price making mechanisms); and the continuous surprises and conflicts produced when the outcomes of the markets are not what were expected (failures, crises, crashes).

In this session, we welcome articles that both describe the process of producing and organizing markets as policies and that use their evidence not only to criticize marketization but also to reflect on how sociological knowledge could be useful to find better and alternative forms of managing these complex organizations..

RC2 ECONOMY AND SOCIETY:

Session B
The ethnography of economic life

Session in Spanish, Portuguese and English

Organiser
Daniel FRIDMAN, University of Victoria, Canada, dfridman@uvic.ca

In the last few years, there has been a renewed interest in the close-up examination of economic life. Ethnographic methods have been crucial for recent research that sheds light on the workings of trade-floors and the financial world in general, the intersections between economy and culture, the conflictive relations between market and non-market exchanges, the relations between commodities and gifts, the uses of money and credit, the world of economic policy-making and expertise, the complexity of currencies, the configuration of markets and economic subjects, and the nature of calculation in the economy, among other topics. This session invites innovative work based on substantial participant observation of economic life, broadly considered. Papers in English, Spanish or Portuguese are welcome.

Session C
Economic sociology: New approaches from Latin America

Session in Spanish, Portuguese and English

Organiser
Gaston J. BELTRAN, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, gjbeltran@gmail.com

This session invites scholars producing innovative research in the area of economic sociology in or about Latin American countries. Possible topics include: organizations, cultural economy, economic performativity, work and professions, the social production of markets, money and finance, network analysis, and business-state relationships studies, among others. The session invites to discuss the way economic sociology (as an innovative approach to the so-called “economic objects”) has contributed to the understanding of issues and processes relevant to the region. Also, it invites scholars who, thinking from Latin America, are making contributions to the development and innovation of new perspectives on Economic Sociology. The session also looks to creating networks among scholars who share an interest for the study of this topic in the region.

Session D
Economy, economists & public decision making

Session in Spanish, Portuguese and English

Organiser
Mariana HEREDIA, Universidad Nacional de San Martín, Argentina, heredia.mar@gmail.com

Since the sixties, the ways to develop, discuss and implement economic policy unveiled a new form of articulation between science and politics. Economic experts interact with the state and society, promoting or resisting certain reforms. At the intersection between academia, political parties, governmental agencies, mass media, business corporations and international agencies, these experts, frequently grouped in private think tanks, established themselves as a “passage point” in policy orientation on economic matters.

This panel welcomes empirical (qualitative and quantitative) papers, from economists as well as from historians, sociologists and political scientists, on the following topics:

1. What have been the areas of interest and influence of economic knowledge and expertise? What events introduced turning points on these subjects and challenges?
2. How do national scientific communities relate to international institutions and trends on economic matters? How are external alliances and support used locally in different periods by researchers, consultants and decision makers?
3. What was the influence of professional economists’ on public decision making and/or on decision legitimation? (circumstances, issues, carriers, outcomes).
4. Given the significance of economists’ influence recently in many Latin-American countries, what ideological, political and institutional dimensions would allow to establish differences and similarities across these cases?
5. What are the consequences of the strong engagement of economic scientific communities with specific reforms? How do economic and political crises impact on scientific communities and their relations to political parties and elites? Can we identify changes in national economic scientific communities and public decision making on the economy since the left-turn in Latin American politics.

Session G
Neoliberalism and recomposition of Latin American elites

Session in Spanish, Portuguese and English

Organiser
Alejandra SALAS-PORRAS, National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico, asalasporras@hotmail.com

This session focuses on the changes undergone by Latin American elites in the past three decades due to several factors, but three in particular stand out: first, the shift in the political paradigm from Keynesianism and import substitution industrialization strategies to Neoliberalism and the ensuing retreat of the state from the economy. Although not all the countries in the region embraced Neoliberalism to the same extent, the paradigm shift entailed privatization of state enterprises and, consequently, massive reallocation of assets from the public to the private spheres; second, the debt crisis in the eighties and the financial crises in the nineties both of which put many firms under stress forcing a long lasting wave of acquisitions and reshufflings in the property structure of national and foreign corporations. Some economic groups emerge almost from scratch, while others lose weight or disappear altogether. Third, an international context in which transnational corporations reorganize their spaces of action, leaving room for the international projection of corporations from developing countries, particularly in less attractive areas.

How do all of these trends transform the relationship between, on the one hand, national and foreign elites and, on the other, private and state elites? Why and to what extent these trends further regionalization or internationalization of Latin American corporations? What are the characteristics of these new Latin American transnational corporations, in terms of their property structure and patterns of corporate interlocking?

RC17- SOCIOLOGY OF ORGANIZATION

Session D
What makes consumer market organizations?

Chairs
Liz MCFALL, Open University, United Kingdom, e.r.mcfall@open.ac.uk Liz MOOR, Goldsmiths University, United Kingdom, l.moor@gold.ac.uk Zsuzsannah VARGHA, London School of Economics, United Kingdom, z.vargha@lse.ac.uk

This session focuses on the ways in which management and marketing knowledges, techniques and technologies have helped make consumer market organizations in both historical and contemporary settings. In the contemporary context, attention has focused on developments in the use of digital transactional data; that is data produced as a by-product of transactions in both online and traditional retailing, within what has been called ‘commercial sociology’. Such developments seem, through the combination of relationship marketing, Web 2.0 applications and relational management software to promise profound changes in the way organisations ‘know’ and manage their relationships with their consumers. Customer Relationship Management techniques together with the proliferation of transactional data have implications which stretch far beyond consumer marketing.

In offering new ways of aggregating and disaggregating populations and individuals these developments appear to disrupt divisions between quantitative and qualitative ways of knowing offering new forms of measurement and valuation. These new hybrid forms of measurement and valuation are set to work not only in the context of consumer market organisations but in a wide range of organizational settings including government, education and healthcare. Yet the role of subjective, qualitative judgements in quantitative measurement has a long and complicated intellectual history as theorists like Ian Hacking, Theodore Porter have explained.

Early twentieth century marketing techniques from informal product testing, coupon return analysis, research interviews and questionnaires suggest a practical and pragmatic acknowledgment of the ‘dirty’ interdependence of qualitative and quantitative means of knowing. Papers that explore the role of marketing and management theory and practice in making consumer market organisations whether from the vantage point of consumers, markets or organisations in contemporary or historical settings are welcome.

Session E
Organizing climate change

Session in English and Spanish

Chairs
Stewart CLEGG, UTS Business School, Australia, stewart.clegg@uts.edu.au
Suzanne BENN, Melisa EDWARDS and Ian MCGREGOR, UTS Business School, Australia

The issues surrounding the politics and organization of responses to climate change should be at the heart of the sociology of organizations because it is organizations that are both the major sources of emissions that are causally related to climate change and the policies that may engender some solutions. In the context of these organizational challenges, this proposal aims to enhance theoretical and empirical understanding through theoretical and empirical papers that address the following topics:

• Organizational governance: The emergence of new spheres and forms of governance with respect to individual, organizational and sectorial rights and responsibilities; corporate sustainability, civil society and democratic struggles for the future; the design of the institutions of global climate governance processes and organizations; the effectiveness or lack of effective of current organizational arrangements and governance process
• Institutional theories: The institutional embeddedness of carbon markets, state policies, and corporate practices; emergence of new institutions, rules, norms; institutional entrepreneurship by NGOs and firms to create low-carbon institutions; ‘institutional defence’ by fossil fuel-related firms and industry associations; transitions in socio-technical fields and the evolution of new technologies and practices as social and institutional processes
• International and interorganizational relations applied to climate change: Local actors/global challenges; how democratic are NGOs and Civil Society organizations? North-South conflicts in climate change governance; climate change, uneven development and new regimes of accumulation; spatial dimensions of multinational corporations and transnational NGOs; issues of legitimacy, accountability, democracy and participation in the governance of climate change

Abstract submission

25 August 2011 – 15 December 2011

• Anyone interested in presenting a paper should submit an abstract on-line to a centralised website which will be operational from August 25 through December 15, 2011.
• The author is required to state the Research Committee, Working or Thematic Group session in which s/he wishes the abstract to be included.
• Only abstracts submitted on-line can be incorporated in the sessions.
• Authors will be notified if their paper has been accepted or not in the programme (for presentation or as distributed paper) by January 31, 2012.