Papers by Christian Schmidt-Wellenburg
Historical Social Research, 2025
»Über die relationale Macht der Wirtschaftswissenschaften: Ökonom*innen zwischen Wissenschaft, Re... more »Über die relationale Macht der Wirtschaftswissenschaften: Ökonom*innen zwischen Wissenschaft, Regierung und Wirtschaft«.The place of economics is as much with academia as it is with government and business. This seems to be a widely shared position in the transdisciplinary field of social studies of economics. But what does such a relational approach really encompass-and what does it offer for researching economic practices and agents? To answer this question, we start by retracing recent developments in this area of research. This leads us to identify five core issues: (1) the need to adopt more longue durée perspectives, (2) the need to address complexity and plurality of economic practices, (3) the need to pay attention to economics as a boundary object, (4) the need to assess the role of economics in the field of power, and (5) the need to explore the potential of a pluralistic social studies of economics. We then outline a general methodological framework drawing on Bourdieusian field theory, Foucauldian discourse analysis, and histoire croisée. This framework proposes a socio-historical analysis of genesis, structure, and dynamic of economic practices from a theory of society perspective. Finally, we demonstrate the empirical validity of such a sociological approach by drawing on insights from contributions to this forum and by discussing these in light of the aforementioned issues.
Poetics, 2025
This paper presents an iterative procedure for reconstructing a scientific field by relating two ... more This paper presents an iterative procedure for reconstructing a scientific field by relating two relational methods. The procedure involves using geometric data analysis and network analysis in several steps. Blocks from block model analysis are projected into a space constructed by MCA, considered as subspaces using CSA, and subsequently inspected with regard to their manifest interaction structures. The findings allow us to examine the overall structure of a scientific field vis-`a-vis the relative autonomies and eigenstructures of its subspaces and the homologyheterology relations they show to each other and the main space, thus providing a more differentiated view of the interplay of social spaces and networks.
Eureopean politics and society, 2024
European expertise is an effect of the field of European politics that opens up access to sources... more European expertise is an effect of the field of European politics that opens up access to sources of knowledge and authority beyond the political context and varies depending on the state of European integration. This can be exemplified by a prosopography of members of political-economic European Expert Groups (1966–2018). A multiple correspondence analysis of 261 professional careers allows us to reconstruct the structure of European expertise in this policy area to determine six types of experts by clustering and, in the light of the observed diversity, to trace the decline in scientific and the increase in financial expertise. This development can be interpreted as a strengthening of the economic-heteronomous pole in the field, which goes hand in hand with the rise of neoliberal forms of government, the autonomisation of the field and the professionalisation of expert consultations.
Serendipities, 2024
The paper argues that economists' position-taking in discourses of crises should be understood in... more The paper argues that economists' position-taking in discourses of crises should be understood in the light of economists' positions in the academic field of economics. This hypothesis is investigated by performing a multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) on a prosopographical data set of 144 French economists who positioned themselves between 2008 and 2021 in controversies over the euro crisis, the French political economic model, and French economics. In these disciplinary controversies, different forms of (post-)national academic capital are used by economists to either initiate change or defend the status quo. These strategies are then interpreted as part of more general power struggles over the basic national or post-national constitution and legitimate governance of economy and society.
Konventionen, Felder, Organisationen
Organisationen und Konventionen, 2015
Aus der Sicht der Soziologie der Konventionen sind Unternehmen produzierende Organisationen, in d... more Aus der Sicht der Soziologie der Konventionen sind Unternehmen produzierende Organisationen, in denen nicht nur laufend materielle sondern immerzu auch immaterielle Investitionen getatigt werden mussen, die Komplexitat von Handlungssituationen soweit reduzieren, dass bestimmtes Handeln erwartbar und kollektives Handeln moglich wird. Die immateriellen Investitionen sind Forminvestitionen (Thevenot 1984, 2001a), die Unternehmen zu dauerhaften, berechen- und steuerbaren Ordnungen machen.
Divorce à l’allemande
Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales
Avec la création de l’Académie de sociologie (AS), le champ sociologique allemand compte désormai... more Avec la création de l’Académie de sociologie (AS), le champ sociologique allemand compte désormais une nouvelle association professionnelle qui s’ajoute à la Société allemande de sociologie (DGS), établie de longue date. Cet article passe en revue les principales positions discursives, les sujets de controverse majeurs ainsi que les grandes lignes de fracture qui ont conduit à ce schisme. Les conflits contemporains sont interprétés au travers d’une représentation empirique du champ de la sociologie allemande. De manière générale, la sociologie allemande contemporaine apparaît une fois de plus dominée par deux camps opposés, arbitrairement définis mais puissants, qui se partagent la domination d’une discipline, pourtant réellement pluraliste.
Akademisches Wissen, professionelle Expertise und alltägliche Unternehmenspraxis
Die Innenwelt der Ökonomie, 2016
Betritt man an einem beliebigen Tag des Semesters das Vorlesungsgebaude einer deutschen Hochschul... more Betritt man an einem beliebigen Tag des Semesters das Vorlesungsgebaude einer deutschen Hochschule, hat man gute Chancen, entweder Flyer in die Hand gedruckt zu bekommen, die auf eine Opportunity Lounge hinweisen, in einen Career Day zu geraten oder zumindest einen Aufsteller zu finden, auf dem fur ein Assessment Center geworben wird. Ein Grosteil der Firmen, die hier den Kontakt zu kunftigen Mitarbeitern suchen, sind Professional Service Firms (PSF), die Beratungs-, Buchfuhrungs-, Buchprufungs- und Rechtsdienstleistungen anbieten.
Divorce à l'allemande. Luttes symboliques et tensions institutionnelles dans la sociologie allemande contemporaine. In: Actes de la recheche en sciences sociales 243-244: 110-123. 2022
Actes de la recherches en sciences sociales, 2022
With the spin-off of the Academy of Sociology (AS), a new professional association has recently b... more With the spin-off of the Academy of Sociology (AS), a new professional association has recently been established in the German field of sociology alongside the long-established German Sociological Association (DGS). We outline the main discursive positions, the central points of contention, and the major lines of conflict that have led to this fundamental schism. To interpret these current struggles, we draw on an empirically constructed field of German sociology. Overall, contemporary German sociology appears to be once again dominated by two arbitrary but powerful extreme poles, which effectively share the work of dominating the real-existing plurality of the discipline.
Rainer Diaz-Bone & Gertraude Krell (Hrsg.) (2009). Diskurs und Ökonomie. Diskursanalytische Perspektiven auf Märkte und Organisationen. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften; 339 Seiten; ISBN 978-3-531-156622-4; 49,90€
How consulting became a transnational form of governance in the field of management
Economists are involved in how the European crisis is perceived, in the way problems are diagnose... more Economists are involved in how the European crisis is perceived, in the way problems are diagnosed and solutions envisioned. The difference stances that can be taken in the politicoeconomic discourse on the crisis are all backed through academic authority mobilised by economists. Hence, in order to understand the differences between varying position-takings, it is necessary to take a closer look at these different forms of academic economist’s authority. Albeit economics has been internationalized in recent decades, academic trajectories and scientific practices are still highly structured by state-bureaucratic and state-academic institutions, as Marion Fourcade (2009) has shown. At the same time, state-bureaucratic institutions have also been transnationalized – especially in Europe (Georgakakis and Rowell 2013) – creating new linkages between transnational political institutions as well as political agents and economists. As a result, economists and their linkages to state-bureauc...
Die Regierung des Unternehmens
»'Die Ökonomie' gibt es nicht! Zur Analyse ökonomischer Phänomene aus feldtheoretischer Perspekti... more »'Die Ökonomie' gibt es nicht! Zur Analyse ökonomischer Phänomene aus feldtheoretischer Perspektive«. This introductory essay to the HSR Special Issue "Economists, Politics, and Society" argues for a strong field-theoretical programme inspired by Pierre Bourdieu to research economic life as an integral part of different social forms. Its main aim is threefold. First, we spell out the very distinct Durkheimian legacy in Bourdieu's thinking and the way he applies it in researching economic phenomena. Without this background, much of what is actually part of how Bourdieu analysed economic aspects of social life would be overlooked or reduced to mere economic sociology. Second, we sketch the main theoretical concepts and heuristics used to analyse economic life from a field perspective. Third, we focus on practical methodological issues of field-analytical research into economic phenomena. We conclude with a short summary of the basic characteristics of this approach and discuss the main insights provided by the contributions to this special issue.
Review: Rainer Diaz-Bone & Gertraude Krell (Hrsg.) (2009). Diskurs und Ökonomie. diskursanalytische Perspektiven auf Märkte und Organisationen
For or Against the European Banking Union: How Internationalisation Affects the Position-Takings of ‘German-Speaking Economists’ on Crisis Issues
Empirical Investigations of Social Space, 2019
In today’s world, economists are not only academic specialists of economic behaviour but have tur... more In today’s world, economists are not only academic specialists of economic behaviour but have turned into public and media mediated authorities that shape what political and other social agents know about the world (Maese 2015a). The ivory tower may still function as their home and powerbase, but their scope of action is global and their expertise has performative effects on the whole of society (MacKenzie 2007). Economic ideas and concepts structure how we see human behaviour and social life, how we think we could and should influence it and to what purpose (Vogl 2010).
Democratization or politicization?
The Condition of Democracy
Charting Transnational Fields
The volume provides a field-analytical methodology for researching knowledgebased sociopolitical ... more The volume provides a field-analytical methodology for researching knowledgebased sociopolitical processes of transnationalization. Drawing on seminal work by Pierre Bourdieu, we apply concepts of practice, habitus, and field to phenomena such as cross-national social trajectories, international procedures of evaluation, standardization, and certification, or supranational political structures. These transnational phenomena form part of general political struggles that legitimate social relationships in and beyond the nation-state. Part 1 on methodological foundations discusses the consequences of Bourdieu’s epistemology and methodology for theorizing and investigating transnational phenomena. The contributions show the importance of field-theoretical concepts for post-national insights. Part 2 on investigating political fields presents exemplary case studies in diverse research areas such as colonial imperialism, international academic rankings, European policy fields, and local school policy. While focusing on their research objects, the contributions also give an insight into the mechanisms involved in processes of transnationalization. The volume is an invitation for sociologists, political scientists, and scholars in adjacent research areas to engage with reflexive and relational research practice and to further develop field-theoretical thought.
How to chart transnational fields
Charting Transnational Fields
European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology
The article explores Europeanisation as an effect of European political integration, a process dr... more The article explores Europeanisation as an effect of European political integration, a process driven by struggles over the legitimate political and social order that is to prevail in Europe. Firstly, an analytic framework is constructed, drawing on insights from Pierre Bourdieu's work on similar struggles over nation-stateness. Secondly, the mechanisms identified are used to assess the role played by economic experts and expertise in the process of European political integration. It is argued that concepts arising from economic disciplines, agents educated in economics, and practising economic professionals influence European political integration and have benefited from Europeanisation initiated by this process. Special emphasis is placed on strategies of integrating Europe by law or by market, on governing Europe using economic expertise, on the role played by economic academia in researching and objectifying Europe, and on staffing European institutions with economists.
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Papers by Christian Schmidt-Wellenburg