A Prophet in his Hometown? the Academic Reception of Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the Twenty-First Century” Across Disciplines in France and in the United States

Guest Editor’s Introduction: French Sociology, French Sociologies

“…But differences between US and French sociologies should not be readily assumed. The reception of Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century constitutes a noticeable example where supra-national disciplinary interests are more adequate to understand scientific processes than nationalist frames of reference (Raoult et al 2017). This, I think, is one of the main contributions of this special issue: we see no clear pattern emerging.…”

“…Another category of contributions, comprising three papers, focuses on the scientific reception of, and controversies surrounding, prominent French social scientists: Pierre Bourdieu (Faber 2017), Thomas Piketty (Raoult et al 2017), and Emmanuel Todd (Verjus 2017; see also my brief biographical notice on Todd: Larregue 2017).…”

“…Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century is yet another example of controversy involving a prominent French social scientist (Raoult et al 2017). In their article, Sacha Raoult, Brendan Leonard and Arnaud Derbey adopt a sociology of science perspective to provide a comparative analysis of the reception of Piketty's bestseller in France and the United States.…”

Novels and newspapers in Piketty's Capital and Ideology

“…One recent article (Grisold & Theine, 2017, p. 4265) noted that "the problem of how economic inequality is mediated to the public is not discussed in economics at all, and hardly mentioned in communication studies." Others (Raoult et al, 2017), meanwhile, have analyzed the academic reception of Piketty through reviews in France and the United States, finding that disciplinary affiliation better explains the reception of Capital than nationality. Such methodologies might have helped Piketty himself in exploring the ideologies portrayed in newspapers.…”

Reciprocity in Book Reviewing among American, British and Canadian Academics

“…It is thus no surprise that books related to strong societal concerns such as race and identity may be subjected to close scrutiny and sometimes criticized on non-scientific grounds, as evidenced by the intense controversies that have surrounded the publication of books such as Martin Bernal's Black Athena (Lajeunesse, 2014) or Alice Goffman's On the Run (Portilla, 2016). Conversely, controversies that mainly focus on technical and quantified problems, such as Piketty's analysis of the evolution of the repartition of capital in the 21 st century, tend to preserve the autonomy of social scientific research as debates seem to be primarily shaped by the internal structure of the scientific field, including the division of labor between disciplines, rather than by the surrounding social context (Raoult et al, 2017).…”