Frédéric Lebaron

"Yanis (Varoufakis), the Minotaur, and the Field of Eurocracy", Historical Social Research 43 (2018) 3, 216-247 │ published by GESIS DOI: 10.12759/hsr.43.2018.3.216-247

This paper aims to show the binding force within the social field of Eurocracy and, more specifically, the subfield of the European economic governance, through the singular case of Yanis Varoufakis's experience as Greek minister of finance. Why is it that, while many elements might have suggested that Varoufakis was not lacking resources, his passage from economics into politics ended up in a fairly brutal shock and a mutual exclusion so extremely invested in on the symbolic level? The paper’s hypothesis is that a substantial part of the strategies of the epistemic agent Varoufakis – an experienced economist as well as a new ruler and new politician in the EU game – were completely out of tune with the structure of the field. To show this, the paper deliberately breaks with the causal analysis of the bargain inside the Eurogroup to build on the use of two multiple​ correspondence analyses (MCA). The first describes a view of (and from) the silent fraction of the field, composed of insiders in the European administrations. The second reconstructs Varoufakis's own relational position and vision of the game from the book he wrote on his experience. Thanks to these two approaches, we combine a descriptive-institutional and a narrative- individual construction of the same social space to explore its deep structure and effects in an innovative way.

This introductory essay to the HSR Special Issue “Economists, Politics, and Society” argues for a strong field-theoretical programme inspired by Pierre Bourdieu to research economic life as an integral part of different social forms. Its main aim is threefold. First, we spell out the very distinct Durkheimian legacy in Bourdieu’s thinking and the way he applies it in researching economic phenomena. Without this background, much of what is actually part of how Bourdieu analysed economic aspects of social life would be overlooked or reduced to mere economic sociology. Second, we sketch the main theoretical concepts and heuristics used to analyse economic life from a field perspective. Third,  the focus on practical methodological issues of field-analytical research into economic phenomena. We conclude with a short summary of the basic characteristics of this approach and discuss the main insights provided by the contributions to this special issue.

English below.
Ce numéro de Cultures & Conflits part d’un constat simple : les multiples travaux – foisonnants sur les questions de migrations, de frontières, de réfugiés et de sécurité – qui se réclament d’une sociologie politique de l’international ou se reconnaissent dans ses postulats demeurent plus rares concernant les processus et les « objets » économiques, au sens restreint de ce qui est produit et circule dans la sphère économique mais aussi au sens très large avec lequel Max Weber les a définis. Ces sujets sont évidemment travaillés par l’économie politique internationale (EPI), même si celle-ci reste encore peu développée en France en raison de partages disciplinaires, entre les approches des économistes et celles des politistes et des sociologues. L’objectif de ce numéro est de déplacer le regard habituel porté sur les questionnements de l’EPI en les soumettant, de manière plus ou moins explicite selon les articles, à des méthodes et des questionnements qui traversent la sociologie politique de l’international.

This special issue of Cultures & Conflits departs from a simple observation: despite the multiple works that are framed as or situated in relation to the postulates of International Political Sociology (IPS)—most prolific on the topics of migration, borders, refugees, and security, there is little scholarship dealing with economic processes and “objects.” Here, our understanding of the economic includes that which is produced and circulates within the economic sphere as well as the broader sense of the term as defined by Max Weber. These themes evidently appear in International Political Economy (IPE) literature, even though such approaches remain relatively underdeveloped in France due to disciplinary divisions between economy on the one hand, and political science and sociology on the other. More or less explicit in each article, the objective of this special issue to shift the way that IPE topics are commonly regarded by subjecting them to methods and lines of inquiry that run through IPS.

Este artigo apresenta os resultados parciais de uma pesquisa
sobre o estado atual das disparidades educacionais em São Paulo.
A partir de uma Análise de Componentes Principais Standard
(ACP), realizada com dados do Censo 2010/IBGE, identificou-se
e comparou-se as características sociodemográficas da popula-
ção do município e a distribuição de indicadores educacionais
entre as regiões das subprefeituras da cidade. Isso permitiu examinar
a relação entre posição social, condições de vida e usos
socialmente diferenciados do sistema de ensino. Os resultados
revelaram que, se um primeiro eixo opõe de maneira esperada os
bairros ricos aos bairros pobres, um segundo revela uma divisão
mais fina, no interior do espaço urbano, ligada à posse do diploma
de ensino médio, que diferencia tanto as regiões de classes
médias e altas, como as subprefeituras das periferias da cidade.