The construction of a global profession: The transnationalization of economics

Abstract

This article relies on an analysis of the institutionalization of economics worldwide during the twentieth century to argue that the logic of professional development in this particular field has come to be increasingly defined in global terms. Connections to (mainly) US-based standards of work and professional practice are routinely used in the local competition whereby different professional segments and groups seek to assert their authority on particular jurisdictions (scientific, corporate, or political). In this process of professional construction (or reconstruction), economies are being transformed through complex transnational mechanisms which, ultimately, feed back into the identity and jurisdictional claims of the economics profession itself, both in the “core” and in the “periphery.” In one of the most famous passages of the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels described the logic of modern capitalism in the following terms: The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations in society… All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind. The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere. (Marx and Engels [1848] 1998, p. 54)