Events
Notes
- Free and open to the public
- First come, first seated
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?
Program
time9:15am - 9:30am EDT
Welcome and Introductory Remarks: William Deringer, Society of Fellows in the Humanities
time9:30am - 11:30am EDT
Panel I: "Reasons"
Chair
Timothy Alborn
Professor of History
Unfolding Rationality: Visual Memory, Performative Accounting and Order
Paolo Quattrone
Chair in Accounting Governance & Social Innovation
University of Edinburgh Business School
Calculating Characters in Victorian Fiction
Nancy Henry
Professor
University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Excavating Data Tombs: Business Data Mining and the Critique of Artificial Reason
Matthew L. Jones
James R. Barker Professor of Contemporary Civilization
Columbia University
time12:00pm - 1:30pm EDT
Break I
time1:30pm - 3:30pm EDT
Panel II: "Values"
Chair
Elizabeth Blackmar
Professor of History
Columbia University
The Economic Trinity of Excess, Prudence and Surplus in the Classical Oikos, the Christian Ecclesia and the Liberal Market: A Sketch
Dotan Leshem
Visiting Scholar
Institute for Comparative Literature and Society
Calculating Consequences: Bentham, George Eliot and Models of Expected Value
Dermot Coleman
Founder and Director
Sisu Capital Limited
A Calculating Atlantic: Distance, Management, and Moral Reckoning
Caitlin Rosenthal
Assistant Professor
University of California, Berkeley
time3:30pm - 4:00pm EDT
Break II
time4:00pm - 5:30pm EDT
Keynote Talk
Introduction
William Deringer
Assistant Professor of Science, Technology, and Society
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
A Sociology of Algorithms: Practices, Boundaries, and Linked Ecologies in High-Frequency Trading
Donald MacKenzie
Professor
University of Edinburgh
time8:45am - 9:00am EDT
Welcome and arrival
time9:00am - 11:00am EDT
Panel III: "Futures"
Chair
Rebecca Woods
Assistant Professor
University of Toronto
Calculating the Value of the Future in the Early Modern Past
William Deringer
Assistant Professor of Science, Technology, and Society
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Weather Prophets and Cotton Profits: Forecasts, Markets, and the State in the Gilded Age
Jamie Pietruska
Assistant Professor
Rutgers University
Calculations and the Futures of Student Debt
time11:00am - 11:15am EDT
Break III
time11:15am - 1:15pm EDT
Panel IV: "Data"`
Chair
Christopher Phillips
Assistant Professor and Faculty Fellow
New York University
The Politics of Data: Eugenics, Race, and Life Insurance in Interwar America
Dan Bouk
Assistant Professor of History
Colgate University
Automating Away the Intermediary: The Techno-Politics of Market Shaping
Yuval Millo
Professor of Social Studies of Finance and Management Accounting
University of Leicester
The Gaming of Chance: Online Poker Software and the Potentialization of Uncertainty
Natasha Schull
Associate Professor
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
time1:15pm - 2:30pm EDT
Break IV
time2:30pm - 4:30pm EDT
Panel V: "Measurements"
Chair
Gustav Peebles
Associate Dean of Faculty Affairs
The New School
The Pricing of Progressivism: Irving Fisher and the Spirit of Capitalism
Eli Cook
Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow
Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis, Rutgers University
Visualizing Uncertainties vs. Cost-Benefit Analysis: Albert Hirschman and Project Evaluation
Michele Alacevich
Assistant Professor of History and Director of Global Studies
Loyola University, Maryland
Capital Calculated: Thomas Piketty in Historical Context
Timothy Shenk
Jacob K. Javits Fellow in History
Columbia University
time4:30pm - 4:45pm EDT
Break V
time4:45pm - 5:15pm EDT
Concluding Discussion
Participants
- Michele Alacevich Assistant Professor of History and Director of Global Studies Loyola University, Maryland
- Timothy Alborn Professor of History
- Elizabeth Blackmar Professor of History Columbia University
- Dan Bouk Assistant Professor of History Colgate University
- Dermot Coleman Founder and Director Sisu Capital Limited
- Eli Cook Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis, Rutgers University
- William Deringer Assistant Professor of Science, Technology, and Society Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Nancy Henry Professor University of Tennessee, Knoxville
- Matthew L. Jones James R. Barker Professor of Contemporary Civilization Columbia University
- Dotan Leshem Visiting Scholar Institute for Comparative Literature and Society
- Donald MacKenzie Professor University of Edinburgh
- Yuval Millo Professor of Social Studies of Finance and Management Accounting University of Leicester
- Gustav Peebles Associate Dean of Faculty Affairs The New School
- Christopher Phillips Assistant Professor and Faculty Fellow New York University
- Jamie Pietruska Assistant Professor Rutgers University
- Paolo Quattrone Chair in Accounting Governance & Social Innovation University of Edinburgh Business School
- Caitlin Rosenthal Assistant Professor University of California, Berkeley
- Natasha Schull Associate Professor Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Timothy Shenk Jacob K. Javits Fellow in History Columbia University
- Jacob Soll Professor of History and Accounting University of Southern California
- Rebecca Woods Assistant Professor University of Toronto
- Caitlin Zaloom Associate Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis, Director of Metropolitan Studies New York University