Economic experts: a discursive political economy of economics
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Abstract
The aim of this article is to show that economic experts are not the product of one single social field, with one identity and one role. They are rather the product of a trans-epistemic discursive field. By a combination of discourse analytical tools from post-structuralism and a theory of symbolic power derived from Bourdieu's work, the contribution explores how economists occupy a powerful, hegemonic position in the global political economy. While classical approaches in Political Economy reduce power mainly to money and violence, this paper takes the recent debates on the cultural turn in Political Economy as a starting point to develop the idea of a Discursive Political Economy of Economics. In the first step it is shown how discourse and power interact. In the second step the paper explores the discursive power logic of economic expert discourses at the interface between academia, politics, media and the economy with illustrations from empirical research. The claim of this paper is that the power of economic expert discourses in the media, politics and the political economy is based on an elitism dispositif which emerged in the academic world of economics in the USA as an ‘excellence myth’.