This introductory essay to the HSR Special Issue “Economists, Politics, and Society” argues for a strong field-theoretical programme inspired by Pierre Bourdieu to research economic life as an integral part of different social forms. Its... more
This introductory essay to the HSR Special Issue “Economists, Politics, and Society” argues for a strong field-theoretical programme inspired by Pierre Bourdieu to research economic life as an integral part of different social forms. Its main aim is threefold. First, we spell out the very distinct Durkheimian legacy in Bourdieu’s thinking and the way he applies it in researching economic phenomena. Without this background, much of what is actually part of how Bourdieu analysed economic aspects of social life would be overlooked or reduced to mere economic sociology. Second, we sketch the main theoretical concepts and heuristics used to analyse economic life from a field perspective. Third, the focus on practical methodological issues of field-analytical research into economic phenomena. We conclude with a short summary of the basic characteristics of this approach and discuss the main insights provided by the contributions to this special issue.
Eine Umfrage bei Pflegefachpersonen in der Romandie lässt erstmals ein differenziertes Bild der Berufsangehörigen zu. Das Wissen darüber gibt wertvolle Hinweise für die weitere Entwicklung der Profession, aber auch berufspolitische... more
Eine Umfrage bei Pflegefachpersonen in der Romandie lässt erstmals ein differenziertes Bild der Berufsangehörigen zu. Das Wissen darüber gibt wertvolle Hinweise für die weitere Entwicklung der Profession, aber auch berufspolitische Strategien.
This article aims to specify the careers and profiles of the actors working for the political Europe at the local-national level. The study relies on survey data obtained from a sample of former students of a specialized Master in France.... more
This article aims to specify the careers and profiles of the actors working for the political Europe at the local-national level. The study relies on survey data obtained from a sample of former students of a specialized Master in France. The data analysis allows to draw up a mapping of careers on the periphery of the field of Eurocracy and to situate career in the local national compared to those in Brussels. Results show a trend toward the specialization of careers and the favorable dispositions to the various professional trajectories. Results underline the absence of European vocation of these specialists of European affairs at the local-national level.
Cet article vise à spécifier les carrières et les profils des acteurs des métiers de l’Europe politique au local-national. Il repose sur une enquête auprès d’anciens élèves d’une formation spécialisée en France. Elle permet de dresser une cartographie de carrières à la périphérie du champ de l’Eurocratie, et d’y situer ceux qui font carrière au local-national par rapport à ceux de Bruxelles. Elle rend compte de la spécialisation des carrières et de dispositions favorables aux diverses trajectoires professionnelles. Elle souligne enfin la distance des auxiliaires de l’Europe au local-national aux jeux et enjeux du champ.
If you put two economists in a room, you get two opinions, unless one of them is Lord Keynes, in which case you get three opinions.” Following the premise of this quotation attributed to Winston Churchill, varying perceptions of the... more
If you put two economists in a room, you get two opinions, unless one of them is Lord Keynes, in which case you get three opinions.” Following the premise of this quotation attributed to Winston Churchill, varying perceptions of the European crisis by academic economists and their structural homology to economists’ positions in the field of economics are examined. The dataset analysed using specific multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) and hierarchical agglomerative clustering (HAC) comprises information on the careers of 480 German-speaking economists and on statements they made concerning crisis-related issues. It can be shown that the main structural differences in the composition and amount of scientific and academic capital held by economists as well as their age and degree of transnationalisation are linked to how they see the crisis: as a national sovereign debt crisis, as a European banking crisis, or as a crisis of European integration and institutions.
Im Rahmen des Workshops diskutieren Vertreterinnen und Vertreter aus verschiedenen theoretischen Perspektiven – darunter die Frame-Selektions-, Feld-, Netzwerk-, Diskurs-, System-, Prozesstheorie, dem Neoinstitutionalismus, der Ökonomie... more
Im Rahmen des Workshops diskutieren Vertreterinnen und Vertreter aus verschiedenen theoretischen Perspektiven – darunter die Frame-Selektions-, Feld-, Netzwerk-, Diskurs-, System-, Prozesstheorie, dem Neoinstitutionalismus, der Ökonomie der Konventionen und dem Kommunikativen Konstruktivismus – die Wechsel- und Passungsverhältnisse zwischen den jeweiligen sozial- bzw. wissenschaftstheoretischen Grundannahmen und ihren quantitativen empirischen Forschungspraktiken. Auf dieser Grundlage soll auch der Austausch über Anknüpfungspunkte zwischen den verschiedenen Weisen des quantitativen Forschens ermöglicht werden. Interessierte Zuhörerinnen und Zuhörer sind herzlich eingeladen.
Empirical studies have shown that the collection of handwritten digits when acquired under a uniform condition forms a differentiable manifold which can be well approximated with linear structures. That is, each point on the manifold is... more
Empirical studies have shown that the collection of handwritten digits when acquired under a uniform condition forms a differentiable manifold which can be well approximated with linear structures. That is, each point on the manifold is associated with a geometry that parameterizes linear structures. Because of this, the problem of comparing a pair of digits can be turned into the problem of calculating the distance between two linear structures in their respective geometric space. In this paper, we present a new classification paradigm that builds upon the linear structure that arises from the Grassmann manifold and benchmark our empirical results on the publicly available MNIST database with two other geometrically sound methods. Without any further preprocessing, the classification performed on the Grassmann manifold achieves the best result among these three approaches.
