Globalization Strategies and the Economics Dispositif: Insights from Germany and the UK

Abstract

This contribution analyses current transformations in the field of economics as a reconfiguration of various academic cultures embedded in globalised hierarchies. The theoretical argument points to the rules and modalities which constitute the field of economics as a dispositif that covers different local academic fields and reaches into other areas of the global political economy. Drawing on empirical data from German and UK economics, the study shows how national fields respond to global pressures and create a global class society of economists. I will analyse, first, how academic hierarchies develop in two different countries and, second, how discourses of excellence constitute academic cultures within these hierarchies. On the basis of wide-ranging empirical data, the analysis develops new theoretical reflections about the logic of academic fields under globalisation. As a result, three different scientific cultures emerge that characterise the current field of academic economics: “native transnationals,” “migration transnationals,” and “local transnationals.”