Performing The Economy: Markets, Measurement, and Expertise

The economy may be "strong" or "weak," but what actually is the economy? Can you point to it? This course will examine the infrastructures that enable economic exchange. In tandem, will also analyze the very forms of measuring and representing that allow us to conceptualize scattered and diverse activities as a unified object called the "economy." We will locate the origins of "the economy" in outmoded and gendered forms of social organization, asking why factory work contributes to GDP but not housework. We will look at how theories from physics got transported into early economics. And we'll examine contemporary questions around, for example, subprime debt as a racialized instrument. This course will draw on popular writing as well as theoretical and historical scholarship in STS. Overall, it aims to deconstruct the authority of the experts (like economists) who wield so much power in our societies.