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From Performativity to Representation as Intervention: Rethinking the 2008 Financial Crisis and the Recent History of Social Science
Author(s) -
Curran Dean
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
journal for the theory of social behaviour
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.615
H-Index - 51
eISSN - 1468-5914
pISSN - 0021-8308
DOI - 10.1111/jtsb.12186
Subject(s) - performativity , sociology , premise , conflation , positivism , economic sociology , representation (politics) , epistemology , intervention (counseling) , positive economics , social science , economics , political science , politics , psychology , gender studies , law , philosophy , psychiatry
Performativity has been one of the most dynamic research programmes in the last few decades that has sought to move beyond conventional, positivistic understandings of science. This paper interrogates the central premise of performativity – that science makes rather than describes its phenomena – through a critical analysis of the hugely influential performativity turn in economic sociology. The paper argues that while the performativity turn has importantly highlighted how economic theory shapes economic practices, its conflation of economic theory and its objects of analysis renders it unable to recognize economic processes that are not identified by economic models themselves. To address this limitation, this paper then proposes an alternative account, representation as intervention , that retains the critical impulse of exploring how economic models reshape economic life without conflating theories and their objects.