Elements of a Pragmatic Theory of Capitalism
https://doi.org/10.22394/2074-0492-2021-1-125-168
Abstract
This paper offers a review of the recent literature on capitalism in history
and sociology inspired by the Pragmatist perspective. In historical sociology and economic sociology, capitalism has largely been discussed in
terms of its institutional attributes, e. g. property rights, money, markets,
proletarianization of labor, supportive governments, etc. This approach
can tentatively be called “attribute-based.” In contrast to the “attributebased” approach, the pragmatic approach takes a different perspective on
capitalism, treating it as a set of practices rather than a set of institutions.
Thus, capitalism appears as a set of historically specific valuation practices,
whereby legal property is transformed into income-generating assets. The
first part of the paper describes the origins of the “pragmatic turn” in the
study of capitalism in economic sociology and the “new” history of capitalism. For the former, the emergence of the pragmatic approach to capitalism
resulted from the development of the research program on “economization”
elaborated by Koray Çalışkan and Michel Callon. For the latter, the impetus
came from the necessity to rethink the economic characteristics of chattel slavery in the history of American capitalism, as well as the history of
the trans-Atlantic economy more generally. The second part of the paper
focuses on the divergences between “attribute-based” and pragmatic approaches to capitalism. The latter presupposes a turn from representation
to action, putting the temporal organization of capital as a process into the
centre of analysis, a turn from commodification processes to the processes
of capitalization or assetization, as well as the role of competent agents in
these processes. In conclusion, several tentative generalizations are offered
regarding the prospects of the pragmatic approach to capitalism
About the Author
Dmitrii М. Zhikharevich
European University at St Petersburg
Russian Federation
Russian Federation
PhD
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Zhikharevich D.М. Elements of a Pragmatic Theory of Capitalism. Sociology of Power. 2021;33(1):125-168. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.22394/2074-0492-2021-1-125-168
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