Department of Sociology
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720
Telephone: (510) 643-2707
Fax:(510) 642-0659
fourcade@berkeley.edu
Marion Fourcade received her PhD from Harvard University (2000) and taught at New York University and Princeton University before joining the Berkeley sociology department in 2003. A comparative sociologist, she is primarily interested in studying the social mechanisms and institutions that shape how individuals in different countries understand what they do and who they are.
Fourcade’s first book (Economists and Societies, Princeton University Press) is an analysis of the historical trajectories and transformations of economics as a discipline and profession in the United States, Great Britain and France since the end of the nineteenth century. In this book, she traces cross-national differences in the structure and content of the economics profession back to the nature and exercise of public power in each country, and its concrete articulation in the educational, administrative and economic domains. Also within this broad line of research are a comparative study of transitions to neoliberalism in four nations (with Sarah Babb); an analysis of how international political and economic dynamics feed into the scientific and professional transformations of economics; and a book chapter on the “linked ecologies” between economics and business education in twentieth century America (with Rakesh Khurana).
Fourcade’s second book project is tentatively titled Measure for Measure: Social Ontologies of Classification. The purpose of this work is to understand why certain measurement, ranking or valuation technologies emerge and gain social authority and efficacy in certain social contexts –but not others. It investigates the cultural and institutional logic of what we may call “national classificatory styles” through three detailed cases studies, conducted simultaneously in France and the United States (on the ranking of wines, the digitization of books and the economic valuation of nature). Other ongoing work focuses on the comparative and historical analysis of forms of political organization (with Evan Schofer and Brian Lande); and the relationship of market processes to social order (with Kieran Healy). Fourcade’s research has been published in professional journals such as the American Journal of Sociology, the American Sociological Review, and Theory and Society. In 2008-2009, she will be on leave at the Center for Advanced Study in the Social and Behavioral Sciences.
