Economics is often described as the most politically influential social science and yet economic advice is often largely irrelevant to prominent policy debates. We draw on literatures in political science, sociology and science and technology studies to explain this apparent contradiction. Existing research suggests that the influence of economics is mediated by local circumstances and meso-level social structures, and that much of it flows through indirect channels. We elaborate three sites of analysis useful for unpacking these influences: the broad professional authority of economics, the institutional position of economists in government, and the role of economics in the cognitive infrastructure of policymaking, including the diffusion of economic styles of reasoning and the establishment of economic policy devices for seeing and deciding.
When does student loan borrowing prompt relational work between borrowers and their family members? Research on student loans has focused on quantitative estimation of the effects of borrowing on educational attainment, economic well-being, health, and life course milestones. Drawing on sixty interviews with respondents working as lawyers in the northeastern U.S., we argue that student loans also have underappreciated relational effects, even for relatively privileged borrowers. Relational work around student loans is particularly visible during three important moments: the decision to borrow, the decision to partner, and when planning children’s futures. While scholars have examined the effects of borrowing on marriage and childbearing decisions, they have implicitly assumed that it is difficulty repaying that causes such effects. Attention to relational work, however, shows how debt can create additional burdens even when borrowers have the ability to repay, and may help explain why similar debt levels affect different groups differently.
A decade ago, Wendy Espeland and Mitchell Stevens published an essay titled “The Sociology of Quantification.” In it, they wrote that “sociologists have generally been reluctant to investigate [quantification] as a sociological phenomenon in its own right.” While accountants, anthropologists, and historians had begun the reflexive study of numbers, “sociologists have paid relatively little attention to the spread of quantification or the significance of new regimes of measurement” (Espeland and Stevens 2008:402).That has clearly changed. While Google Scholar shows only nine results for the phrase “sociology of quantification” through 2007, the last decade returns 448. This proliferation of scholarship on numbers goes hand in hand with a proliferation of numbers themselves. New technologies have created a “quantified self,” and the explosion of the internet has produced “big data”. As a senior sociologist recently quipped to one of us, sociology has become quantitative researchers, and qualitative researchers studying quantification. Thus the moment seems ripe for revisiting the sociology of quantification, looking at emerging themes, and seeking signs that a new subfield might be starting to consolidate.Alas, the news is mixed. Lots of good work is being done. The intellectual space is full of ferment. Yet—and perhaps the fact that we were reviewing books by authors from at least four different disciplines should have clued us in earlier—so far, we seem to be looking at a genre, not a subfield....
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