Building size among economists: how academic career trajectories pave the way to symbolic visibility

ABSTRACT

Economists receive high social recognition in media, politics and business discourses where they often obtain a status as ‘star economists’ and ‘financial prophets’. This paper investigates the social conditions that make the formation of size in the economic sciences possible. It analyses the institutional constraints, professional networks, forms of academic knowledge and publication strategies of early career economists as part of an academic dispositif. A position of ‘size’ is achieved when academics take a privileged scientific discourse position via publications, presentations and various evaluation reports for journals, funds and other academic institutions. To understand the formation of privileged academic discourse positions, we need to investigate the entire construction processes that start already at the earlier phases of the professional biography. Based on narrative-biographical interviews with economists in UK and Germany, this paper will focus on four sorts of resources that are analysed as ‘biographical discourse capital’. Biographical resources as ‘discourse capital’ are mobilised by early career researchers to solve practical problems in their daily life. The paper shows how specific tacit and conceptual knowledge interact with access to professional networks in order to find a ‘proper topic’ that help young economists to finally publish an A+ or ‘Four* ’ paper.

KEYWORDS:

• Economic expert discourse
• social studies of economics
• dispositif analysis
• symbolic visibility in academia

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jens Maesse

Jens Maesse is senior research fellow (PD Dr habil.) at the Department of Sociology, University of Giessen (Germany). His research fields include discourse analysis, sociology of science and education, economic sociology and political economy. His publications include: “Globalization Strategies and the Economics Dispositif. Insights from Germany and the UK”, Historical Social Research 43(3), 120–146 (2018). (together with Gerardo Costabile Nicoletta): “Translating Austerity: The Formation and Transformation of the EU Economic Constitution as Discourse”, Interdisciplinary Political Studies, 7(1): 61–94 (2021).