Narcis Tulbure has a PhD in cultural anthropology from the University of Pittsburgh and previous degrees in history and finance. His publications cover topics such as memory, identity and the social consumption of alcohol; postsocialist studies; shifting money and values in postsocialist Romania; finance and culture. His research was supported by fellowships from the National Science Foundation, the Council for European Studies, the New Europe College in Bucharest, and the University of Pittsburgh. He is currently pursuing a comparative research project on statistical data production and the knowledge infrastructures of socialist/ postsocialist societies while also teaching courses in anthropology and finance in Bucharest. Supervisors: Robert M Hayden
Studies and Materials of Contemporary History, 2020
This article focuses on the contrasting conceptualization, production, circulation, and use of ec... more This article focuses on the contrasting conceptualization, production, circulation, and use of economic data across the Iron Curtain during the socialist period. With the progressive mathematization of economic science after the Second World War, statistics became of paramount importance ‘East’ and ‘West’ of the Curtain. Data about the economy was not only an object of political intervention and a means to control the economy but became progressively an arena for political competition within and between the two ideological blocs. Presenting a few of the most significant disputes among political authorities and practitioners of disciplines as diverse as economic planning, statistics, cybernetics, and economic informatics, I will illustrate some interweaving trajectories of persons, data-based statistical objects, and forms of knowledge that shaped the socialist and post-socialist infrastructures of economic knowledge production. I claim that, while global disputes over the quality, standardization, and accessibility of data during and after the Cold War stimulated statistical research and occasioned new professional trajectories in both the socialist and capitalist worlds, forms of technical knowledge emerging in micro-communities of quantitative specialists ‘East’ and ‘West’ of the Curtain telescoped into a global competition for knowledge about the economy being magnified by an ideological lens. Such processes of knowledge constitution, contestation, and dissemination have framed our understanding of the economy and continue to shape the world we live in.
The Institutionalization of Economic Cybernetics and Informatics during the 1960s Romania and the... more The Institutionalization of Economic Cybernetics and Informatics during the 1960s Romania and their demotion when undermining the political legitimacy of the communist central planners.
This book aims to revisit the historical canon regarding the
formation of intellectual elites dur... more This book aims to revisit the historical canon regarding the formation of intellectual elites during successive projects of modernization during 19th and 20th centuries. While existing works on the topic focus either on the elimination of previous elites in times of radical social change or on the creation of new elites by each new political regime, we focus on a third mechanism: the recuperation/conversion of previous intellectual elites for new modernization projects. This mechanism of historical and social change appears at every major transition (“historical disjuncture”) but is given less importance both in history/social sciences and in public discourse. Almost without exception, the successive visions of modernity fail in their attempt to transform the deep social strata in spite of their explicit goals in that regard. Nevertheless, each one creates new, imperfect, and fragmentary ways of intervening and programming the newly instituted populations, individuals and fields of activity. New conceptual vocabularies were brought forth – by imitation or explicit distancing – out of the failed discourses and reforms and larger spaces for expert-led intervention were opened for subsequent reforms and projects of modernization. Scrutinizing the moments of discontinuity in modern and contemporary Romanian history, this book will argue that, far from a complete break with a past, each modernization projects builds on and has to incorporate pre-existing social processes/resources.
Studies and Materials of Contemporary History, 2020
This article focuses on the contrasting conceptualization, production, circulation, and use of ec... more This article focuses on the contrasting conceptualization, production, circulation, and use of economic data across the Iron Curtain during the socialist period. With the progressive mathematization of economic science after the Second World War, statistics became of paramount importance ‘East’ and ‘West’ of the Curtain. Data about the economy was not only an object of political intervention and a means to control the economy but became progressively an arena for political competition within and between the two ideological blocs. Presenting a few of the most significant disputes among political authorities and practitioners of disciplines as diverse as economic planning, statistics, cybernetics, and economic informatics, I will illustrate some interweaving trajectories of persons, data-based statistical objects, and forms of knowledge that shaped the socialist and post-socialist infrastructures of economic knowledge production. I claim that, while global disputes over the quality, standardization, and accessibility of data during and after the Cold War stimulated statistical research and occasioned new professional trajectories in both the socialist and capitalist worlds, forms of technical knowledge emerging in micro-communities of quantitative specialists ‘East’ and ‘West’ of the Curtain telescoped into a global competition for knowledge about the economy being magnified by an ideological lens. Such processes of knowledge constitution, contestation, and dissemination have framed our understanding of the economy and continue to shape the world we live in.
The Institutionalization of Economic Cybernetics and Informatics during the 1960s Romania and the... more The Institutionalization of Economic Cybernetics and Informatics during the 1960s Romania and their demotion when undermining the political legitimacy of the communist central planners.
This book aims to revisit the historical canon regarding the
formation of intellectual elites dur... more This book aims to revisit the historical canon regarding the formation of intellectual elites during successive projects of modernization during 19th and 20th centuries. While existing works on the topic focus either on the elimination of previous elites in times of radical social change or on the creation of new elites by each new political regime, we focus on a third mechanism: the recuperation/conversion of previous intellectual elites for new modernization projects. This mechanism of historical and social change appears at every major transition (“historical disjuncture”) but is given less importance both in history/social sciences and in public discourse. Almost without exception, the successive visions of modernity fail in their attempt to transform the deep social strata in spite of their explicit goals in that regard. Nevertheless, each one creates new, imperfect, and fragmentary ways of intervening and programming the newly instituted populations, individuals and fields of activity. New conceptual vocabularies were brought forth – by imitation or explicit distancing – out of the failed discourses and reforms and larger spaces for expert-led intervention were opened for subsequent reforms and projects of modernization. Scrutinizing the moments of discontinuity in modern and contemporary Romanian history, this book will argue that, far from a complete break with a past, each modernization projects builds on and has to incorporate pre-existing social processes/resources.
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Papers by Narcis Tulbure
Books by Narcis Tulbure
formation of intellectual elites during successive projects of
modernization during 19th and 20th centuries. While existing
works on the topic focus either on the elimination of previous
elites in times of radical social change or on the creation of new
elites by each new political regime, we focus on a third
mechanism: the recuperation/conversion of previous intellectual
elites for new modernization projects. This mechanism of
historical and social change appears at every major transition
(“historical disjuncture”) but is given less importance both in
history/social sciences and in public discourse.
Almost without exception, the successive visions of
modernity fail in their attempt to transform the deep social
strata in spite of their explicit goals in that regard. Nevertheless,
each one creates new, imperfect, and fragmentary ways of
intervening and programming the newly instituted populations,
individuals and fields of activity. New conceptual vocabularies
were brought forth – by imitation or explicit distancing – out of
the failed discourses and reforms and larger spaces for expert-led
intervention were opened for subsequent reforms and projects
of modernization.
Scrutinizing the moments of discontinuity in modern and
contemporary Romanian history, this book will argue that, far
from a complete break with a past, each modernization projects
builds on and has to incorporate pre-existing social
processes/resources.
formation of intellectual elites during successive projects of
modernization during 19th and 20th centuries. While existing
works on the topic focus either on the elimination of previous
elites in times of radical social change or on the creation of new
elites by each new political regime, we focus on a third
mechanism: the recuperation/conversion of previous intellectual
elites for new modernization projects. This mechanism of
historical and social change appears at every major transition
(“historical disjuncture”) but is given less importance both in
history/social sciences and in public discourse.
Almost without exception, the successive visions of
modernity fail in their attempt to transform the deep social
strata in spite of their explicit goals in that regard. Nevertheless,
each one creates new, imperfect, and fragmentary ways of
intervening and programming the newly instituted populations,
individuals and fields of activity. New conceptual vocabularies
were brought forth – by imitation or explicit distancing – out of
the failed discourses and reforms and larger spaces for expert-led
intervention were opened for subsequent reforms and projects
of modernization.
Scrutinizing the moments of discontinuity in modern and
contemporary Romanian history, this book will argue that, far
from a complete break with a past, each modernization projects
builds on and has to incorporate pre-existing social
processes/resources.