Marion Fourcade-Gourinchas, Assistant Professor of Sociology, College of Letters & Science, University of California-Berkeley

Price and Prejudice: Economic Technology as Cultural Practice
Marion Fourcade-Gourinchas, Assistant Professor of Sociology, College of Letters & Science, Department of Sociology, University of California-Berkeley

Description

Semester: 
Fall 2008
Lecture Time: 
Friday, November 7, 2008 (All day)
Lecture Location: 

Room K1320, Ross School of Business

Abstract

PRICE AND PREJUDICE: ECONOMIC THEORY AS CULTURAL PRACTICE The natural environment, human life and health, are priceless. Yet they are routinely priced in the court system, public policy, and business decisions. How do we reach these monetary statements, and do countries differ in their approach to valuation? Drawing on an in-depth analysis of two major environmental pollution legal cases –the maritime oil spills caused respectively by the tankers Amoco Cadiz in Brittany (France) in 1978 and Exxon Valdez in Alaska in 1989– this paper investigates how plaintiffs from two different societies constructed the notion of ecological damage and turned it into monetary value. While both court cases were tried in the United States and reached a conclusion at about the same time (in 1991-1992), they had very different political and economic outcomes. The difference, I suggest, may be partly explained by the valuation technologies used by the parties, which in turn are inextricably linked to varying cultural assumptions about the legitimacy of monetary exchange as well as different institutional legacies about the prerogatives of scientific experts and political actors in the legal process.

Recording & Additional Notes

Guest Curator: Greta Krippner, Assistant Professor of Sociology
Introducer: Dan Hirschman, Ph.D. student, Sociology