*Historicizing “The Economy”*
*September 23–24*, Harvard University
Abstract submissions due *May 1st*

This two day workshop aims to bring together scholars working on the
emergence and the history of different conceptions of the “economic” and
the “economy” as objects of economic thought and political practice. Both
academics and the lay public have tended to project present day economic
concepts back into history. But the now unavoidable intuition of there
being a special sphere, realm, or aspect of social reality that could be
characterized as “economic” or an object called “the economy” is a
historically recent one. Over the past two decades, interest in the
genealogies of these concepts and their imbrication in modes of government
has grown, yet scholars working on this issue have not gathered to discuss
the different chronologies and competing narratives that have been
proposed. The planned two-day workshop will provide a venue for this
discussion, with the aim of continuing collaboration and eventual group
publication.

The origins of the economic are receiving heightened interdisciplinary
attention right now due to the position of this problem at the confluence
of three literatures. First, the 1990s saw a wave of new histories of
statistics, accounting, and econometrics – knowledges inseparable from the
conceptualization of the economy. Second, there is a burgeoning new
literature from the sociology of finance on “the performativity of
economics.” Third, there is growing interdisciplinary recognition of the
importance of Michel Foucault’s recently published lectures at the Collège
de France on governmentality, which include readings of physiocracy, Adam
Smith, Ordoliberalism, and the Chicago School. Finally, Timothy Mitchell
and others have begun to examine the construction of the economy as a part
material, part conceptual assemblage, paying particular attention to vital
infrastructure systems such as energy and money. For all of these reasons,
the time is ripe to concentrate attention on this thematic, consolidate it,
and establish a landmark body of work about it.

Existing research has tentatively and contentiously established two
historical semantic thresholds: one at the end of the eighteenth and
beginning of the nineteenth centuries, and a second at the beginning of the
twentieth century. But papers are welcome that treat the theme in any time
period, earlier or later. Submissions are especially encouraged from early
career scholars, and those working in non-North Atlantic contexts.

The workshop is being organized by Daniel Hirschman (University of
Michigan/Brown University), Adam Leeds (Harvard University/Columbia
University) and Onur Özgöde (Harvard University). Please submit abstracts
of a maximum of 500 words are to all three organizers ([log in to unmask],
[log in to unmask], [log in to unmask]) by May 1st.
This project is supported by the New Horizons Initiative of the History of
Economics Society and the Harvard Institute for Global Law and Policy.
Limited funding will be available to offset travel and lodging costs.
Further information will be posted on the workshop website:
https://economyworkshop.wordpress.com/