Among the most striking trends charted in the humanities in recent years has been the remarkable investment made in trying to understand modern capitalism. This conference seeks to profit from that boom by bringing together a range of scholars from the various disciplines that have developed novel methods for studying economic life: history, sociology, anthropology, science and technology studies, literary studies, as well as economics, accounting, and business studies. Organizing the conference will be the theme of calculation. Participants are invited to present papers that examine the place of computations, computational technologies, and the individuals who carry them out within the activities of capitalism. “Calculation” is understood expansively, encompassing a wide range of technicality, from the rudiments of commercial accounting to the most intricate algorithms of current quantitative finance. Economic calculation might be found in many places: the budgeting practices of the family, the capital expenditure decisions of the corporate manager, the investment theses of the financier, the theoretical models of the academic economist, the public accounts of the state. It is hoped that examples will be drawn from a wide range of geographies and time periods, from the early-modern period to the present day.
Participants are particularly encouraged to reflect on how calculations encode the values—economic but also moral, political, and epistemological—of capitalism. How have particular calculations shaped (and continue to shape) market activities, as well as the regulations that govern them and the ethical expectations to which they are held? What cultural, social, and historical factors have been most important in shaping capitalism’s essential calculations? What calculations have come to define what qualifies as rational economic behavior, for individuals, firms, or governments? How have calculations come to measure political-economic success, whether for a credit-seeking individual, a corporate CEO, or a “developing” nation? What role have calculations served in reconciling or exacerbating the political tensions produced by capitalism? Have calculations promoted economic accessibility, both in the sense of facilitating commercial and governmental transparency and in making business activities open to a greater number of people? What role do scholars, particularly those adopting humanistic and qualitative methods, have to play in shaping our economy’s quantitative future?
April 25, 2014 Friday
9:15am - 9:30am EDT
9:30am - 11:30am EDT
Timothy Alborn
Professor of History
Paolo Quattrone
Chair in Accounting Governance & Social Innovation
University of Edinburgh Business School
Nancy Henry
Professor
University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Matthew L. Jones
James R. Barker Professor of Contemporary Civilization
Columbia University
12:00pm - 1:30pm EDT
1:30pm - 3:30pm EDT
Elizabeth Blackmar
Professor of History
Columbia University
Dotan Leshem
Visiting Scholar
Institute for Comparative Literature and Society
Dermot Coleman
Founder and Director
Sisu Capital Limited
Caitlin Rosenthal
Assistant Professor
University of California, Berkeley
3:30pm - 4:00pm EDT
4:00pm - 5:30pm EDT
William Deringer
Assistant Professor of Science, Technology, and Society
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Donald MacKenzie
Professor
University of Edinburgh
April 26, 2014 Saturday
8:45am - 9:00am EDT
9:00am - 11:00am EDT
Rebecca Woods
Assistant Professor
University of Toronto
William Deringer
Assistant Professor of Science, Technology, and Society
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Jamie Pietruska
Assistant Professor
Rutgers University
11:00am - 11:15am EDT
11:15am - 1:15pm EDT
Christopher Phillips
Assistant Professor and Faculty Fellow
New York University
Dan Bouk
Assistant Professor of History
Colgate University
Yuval Millo
Professor of Social Studies of Finance and Management Accounting
University of Leicester
Natasha Schull
Associate Professor
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1:15pm - 2:30pm EDT
2:30pm - 4:30pm EDT
Gustav Peebles
Associate Dean of Faculty Affairs
The New School
Eli Cook
Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow
Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis, Rutgers University
Michele Alacevich
Assistant Professor of History and Director of Global Studies
Loyola University, Maryland
Timothy Shenk
Jacob K. Javits Fellow in History
Columbia University
4:30pm - 4:45pm EDT
4:45pm - 5:15pm EDT