The Baldy Center invites all faculty and graduate
students to attend a workshop on Monday, October 31, 2005 on
Historicizing
Capitalism: Historical Political Economy as Critique of Neo-Classical
Economics organized
by by Rob Steinfeld, UB Law; Pierre Gervais, University of Paris,
VIII; and Christine Desan, Harvard University.
Description
This will be the first in a series of workshops and conferences,
to be held over the next two years at American and French universities,
which will explore the uses of historical political economy as
a methodology for describing the origins and operation of free market
capitalism. Historical political economy will be deployed
as a substitute for accounts that depict capitalism as a system
based on timeless economic laws.
These workshops will bring together American, French, and British
scholars to exchange ideas, share work, and begin discussions to
explore common views and differences with the goal of producing a
collection of essays for publication. French historians of
the economy of the Old Regime and of the Industrial Revolution have
produced important synthetic works in recent years that are not well
known outside of France. And Americans have developed a number of
different approaches to issues regarding the interpenetration of
the political, legal, institutional and economic that are not well
known in France. Bringing a group of international scholars
together for extended face-to-face discussions holds out the promise
of significant cross-fertilization across disciplines and national
borders. All the participants have, in their distinctive ways, begun
to develop historically based political economy accounts of various
aspects of the emergence, development, and operation of free market
capitalism.
At the workshop, participants will present for discussion short
papers that summarize their particular historical reappraisal of
subjects such as currency regimes, corporate governance, pre-industrial
profit, property rights, and economic concepts. These papers
will also address the larger theoretical question of substituting
for the idea of free market capitalism as a system constituted by
timeless economic laws, political economy analyses that capture the
fully conventional nature of the system. Political economy
analysis views free market capitalism not as a purely economic phenomenon,
but as a political-economic system that has been structured and constituted
by a particular set of time bound, and culture bound, political,
social, economic, and legal ground rules (explicit and implicit). These
ground rules are neither natural nor universal, but came into being
at a particular historical moment as the contingent result of the
convergence of distinct developments.
Participants
Sven Beckert History, Harvard University
Christine Desan Harvard Law School
Colleen Dunlavy History, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Pierre Gervais History, University of Paris, VIII
Geoffrey Hodgson Economics, University of Hertfordshire,
England
Walter Johnson History, New York University
Dominique Margairaz History, University of Paris, I
Philippe Minard History, University of Lille, III
Robert Steinfeld University at Buffalo Law School
Patrick Verley Economic History, University of Geneva, Switzerland
Registration
Faculty, law and graduate students are welcome to attend. There
will be no fee for this colloquium; however, space is limited so
registration is recommended and we ask that you RSVP for lunch.
Please e-mail your name and affiliation to Ellen Kausner, Events
Coordinator, at the Baldy Center at ekausner@buffalo.edu.
Workshop Organizers
Contact Rob Steinfeld at UB Law School at steinfel@buffalo.edu for information or with any questions about the substance of the
colloquium. For questions about logistics, including travel, accommodation,
or local transportation contact Ellen Kausner in the Baldy Center
at ekausner@buffalo.edu .
Driving Directions & Parking
Driving directions and information about parking on UB's North Campus
can be found here.
Conference Sponsors
This workshop and subsequent conferences are jointly
sponsored by:
Baldy Center for Law & Social Policy, University at Buffalo Law School
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
Centre d'Etudes Nord-Americaines (CENA)
Harvard Law School
Baldy Center For Law & Social Policy
511 O'Brian Hall, University at Buffalo Law School
Buffalo, NY 14260
716.645.2102
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