Market Square - The Polity, Economy and Society Cambridge Research Group
Alternate Wednesdays, 12.15-14.15 during term time
CRASSH, Seminar room SG2, Ground floor
Alison Richard Building, 7 West Road, CB3 9DT
Conveners
Hassan Akram (Department of Sociology)
Antonio Andreoni (Centre of Development Studies)
Ivano Cardinale (Judge Business School)
H-S Anna Kim ((Judge Business School)
Faculty Advisors
Dr Ha-Joon Chang (Reader in the Political Economy of Development, Faculty
of Economics)
Professor Andrew Gamble (Professor of Politics, Head of Department of Politics and
International Studies)
Dr Helen Haugh (Senior Lecturer in Community Enterprise, Judge Business
School)
Dr Jochen Runde (Reader in Economics, Judge Business School)
Professor Roberto Scazzieri (Professor of Economic Analysis, University of Bologna, Gonville and Caius College and Clare Hall,
Cambridge)
Professor Geoff Walsham (Emeritus Professor of Management Studies, Judge
Business School)
Understanding contemporary societies requires conceptual resources and empirical tools from across the social sciences and humanities. It requires the ability to recognise potential for integration, as well as to appreciate differences and contexts of relevance. The focus of Market Square is on the development of new categories for the analysis of society through a process of blending rooted in the multi-faceted diversity of the social sciences and humanities.
Market Square's theme for this year is "Market Politics in
Context." Each term we shall organise reading groups and invited lectures
on a subtheme. The combination of reading groups and lectures will define the
framework for a final workshop, whose subthemes will be the same as the terms’.
In Michaelmas Term we shall elaborate on the idea of the market square as a
public space of interaction and conflict at the interface between the economy,
the polity and society. In particular, we shall look at markets not simply as
“embedded in society,” but as spaces of interaction and conflict between actors
whose economic and political strategies often overlap; examples could be the
influence of economic actors on political decisions, or the use of economic
measures as a precondition for political stability. In Lent Term we shall
discuss the entrenchment of economic and political aims in the foreign policy
of modern states; in particular, we shall look at phenomena such as the rise of
sovereign funds, the race for natural resources, the trade of resources
according to political rather than economic logics, and the protection of
“national champions,” to discuss whether economic or political aims are
pre-eminent in the formation of foreign policy, and to what extent this very
distinction is appropriate. In Easter Term we shall look at the above themes
with reference to the welfare state; we shall consider issues such as the
contribution of the welfare state to social stability, international influences
on domestic welfare policy, and the approaches to welfare policy of emerging
global powers. The final workshop, to be held in Easter Term, will bring
together the terms’ subthemes.
Previous group at CRASSH Business and Society Research Group (2008-10)
Administrative contact: Esther Lamb (Grad/Fac Programme Manager)
