Estudios de la Economía

Donald MacKenzie, sin duda uno de los más influyente sociólogos de las ciencias y figura clave en el reciente desarrollo de los estudios sociales de las finanzas es entrevistado especialmente para estudiosdelaeconomía por Javier Hernández. [Interview in English, Answers in audio files].

Question 1.Thanks very much for your time. Social Studies of Finance is a multi disciplinary field that is attracting increasing interest, especially after the recent financial crisis. What is, in your opinion, the main focus, but also your balance, of the 10 recent years of research and what are the strengths, weaknesses, or changes of focus or directions you see happening in this field?

A1. [4.24 mins] 

Question 2. What are in your opinion the next directions that you see emerging in this field? And, similarly, what steps do you think it would be probably good for the field to do?

A2. [3.31 mins] 

Question 3. Related to that, I would like to know a bit more about your recent experiences doing fieldwork and gaining access to the financial environment, which has been an obscure area for most of the time for researchers in the social sciences?

A3. [4.54 mins] 

Question 4. Why do you think people should pay attention to the sort of studies that are being developed in the social studies of science? What kind of knowledge can this field produce in order to better deal with future financial crises?

A4. [5.10 mins] 

Question 5. What do you think about multidisciplinarity in the social studies of finance? Has it been increasing? Is it encouraged?

¡A5. [5.11 mins] 

Question 6. What is your opinion about whether this sort of knowledge can reach a broader public? And at the same, can it be useful for more practical applications, let’s say, in regulatory bodies, or in the firms themselves, or to broader society…?

A6. [2.22 mins] 

Question 7. Last question. We still can hear two sorts of criticisms to this field… I have heard them recently. One of them is about time and, for example, that there is always a delay between things that happen and research about these things, which is reasonable of course. And another criticism I’ve heard, specially from practitioners, is related to what you just said, that sometimes we are just translating what they do in their everyday practices, or at most adding some concepts that they in their own tacit ways already know. What would you say about it?

A7. [4.54 mins] 

Javier Hernández