Second market group seminar

Second market group seminar

November 5th will be the second 2013-2014 meeting of the Copenhagen Markets and Valuations Group*. We will be visited by Mariana Heredia, Universidad de San Martin – Argentinian National Scientific Council, who will present and discuss her paper: ‘The Convertibility puzzle: The intervention of local economists in Argentina’s path to neoliberalism’.

Time & Place:

November 5th 10:00-12:00, Department of Organization (IOA), Copenhagen Business School, Kilen, Kilevej 14A, 4, 2000 Frederiksberg. Room: Kilen, K4.74. The seminar is free and open for participation, but it is expected that participants have read the circulated material. To attend, please register with seminar.ioa@cbs.dk (please mention the name of this seminar in the subject of your email) and you will receive the readings.

Visiting Presenter:

Mariana Heredia is Researcher at the Argentinian National Scientific Council and Professor of Sociology at Universidad de San Martin. In her doctorate at the Ecole des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris, she became deeply influenced by French Pragmatism and its potential for the study of power and its critics. Her recent work questions Bourdieu’s influential notion of social field in understanding the practice and influence of economists, focusing, instead in economics as the result of a collective construction of social and technical boundaries connected to global assemblages.

Abstract 

Based on sixty interviews with economists and a corpus of press articles and printed data, this article argues that even if the alignment of a new global order resides in the work of boundary maintenance between economy and politics, local economists are fundamental mediators in the global assemblage of opportunities and constraints. By focusing on the construction of macroeconomic problems and solutions in Argentina from 1976 to 2001 and in particular in its last and most successful anti-inflationist plan, I demonstrate that there was not a coherent group of neoliberal promoters nor a coherent program among them from the beginning of this process. Argentina’s resulting neoliberal order was not an expression of a successful transfer. Convertibility was neither internal nor external. It is not externally imposed because local economists formulated it against the prevailing opinion at the IMF, but nor is it internal because its very essence was to erase the boundary between inside and outside and strengthening the ties of the Argentinian economy to global markets. Moreover, after its adoption, Convertibility was picked up by the global network of policy makers and exported elsewhere with Argentina touted as the experiment that proved its efficacy.

* The group is more formally called “Thought in progress group: organizing and valuing markets” and its meetings have had the more or less consistent participation of Christian Frankel, Susse Georg, Peter Karnøe, José Ossandón, Trine Pallesen, Ann-Christina Petersen Lange, Dean Pierides, Rasmus Ploug Jenle, and Satu Reijonen. Our third meeting will be December 3rd 15-17 and we will be discussing Trine Pallesen’s recent work.