Economics and sociology of conventions – Taking stock, Looking ahead

From July 5 to 7, 2023, the 12th congress “Crises and inequalities: how to inhabit the world of tomorrow” [Crises et inégalités: comment habiter le monde de demain?] of the French Association of Political Economy (AFEP, https://twitter.com/AFEP_EcoPo) was held at the Université Paris Cité – which is located at the former area of the Parisian mills (“Grands moulins de Paris”).

Four sessions, organized by Rainer Diaz-Bone (University of Lucerne) and Guillemette de Larquier (University of Lille), were devoted to economics and sociology of conventions (EC/SC) entitled “Economics and sociology of conventions – Taking stock, Looking ahead”. The 13 presentations in these four sessions were (mainly) based on chapters to be published in the Handbook of Economics and Sociology of Conventions (Springer). The handbook aims for more than 100 chapters, 32 first chapters had been published online first before the AFEP congress. The presentation were grouped by topics, beginning with three of the founders, who presented main achievements of EC/SC since the middle of the 1980ies, but also gave insight into their ongoing work. The next two sessions were devoted to main fields of EC/SC: labor market analysis, the analysis of finance and the study of values and valorization. The fourth session presented considerations devoted to EC/SC’s methodology, but also ongoing research on social and regional economics.

Session1: “Perspectives of the founders” – 05/07/2023

  • Olivier Favereau (Paris/France): “The economics and sociology of conventions, a critical theory?”
  • André Orléan (Paris/France): “Où en est l’économie des conventions?”
  • Robert Salais (Paris/France): “Convention et capacités”

Robert Salais, André Orléan and Olivier Favereau

Session 2: “Labor and finance” – 05/07/2023

  • Julia Brandl (Innsbruck/Austria): “Economics and sociology of conventions in the field of human resource management: taking stock and looking ahead”
  • Guillemette de Larquier (Lille/France): “Labor, conventions and conventions of labor”
  • Tom Duterme (Louvain-La-Neuve/Belgium): “Standards as reforms. The role of conventions in sustainable finance”

Julia Brandl

Guillemette de Larquier

Tom Duterme

 Session 3: “Value and valorization” – 06/07/2023

  • Christian Bessy (Paris/France): “Valuation and Enrichment”
  • Samuel Zarka (Paris/France): “The power of valorization : a concept to link political economy and the sociology of work?”
  • Daniel Urrutiaguer (Paris/France): “Art Worlds facing the socio-ecological stakes”
  • Antoine Rieu (Paris/France): “The conventional construction of the
    economic values of Social Joint Ventures”

Session 4: “Methodology and explanatory strategies” – 07/07/2023

  • Rainer Diaz-Bone (Lucerne/Switzerland): “Methodological positions and perspectives of economics and sociology of conventions”
  • Cécile Vasseur (Lille/France): “Conventions, democracy and social economy”
  • Kenkichi Nagao & Junya Tatemi (Osaka/Japan): “Regional development. How convention theory explains economic development”

The sessions were attended by 15 up to 30 visitors each. The presenters as well as the audience gathered scholars from EC/SC from three different generations. EC/SC is an approach in which many PhD projects are proceeded – an indicator for EC/SC’s future. Also, the mostly English offered presentations and the audience demonstrated the ongoing internationalization of EC/SC. All in all, discussions of the presentations made evident that EC/SC is a developing scientific movement, which has many applications and fruitful concepts to offer for contemporary research issues in the social sciences. 

Last but not least, we can point to other presentations at the congress, which were related to EC/SC too: Philippe Batifoulier, Franck Bessis, Géraldine Rieucau, etc. See AFEP programme: Programme_XIIe_Congres_AFEP

Also, at the congress, the Grand manuel d’économie politique was presented, including sections devoted to convention theory. See the blog report.


OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
GdL (6 septembre 2023). Economics and sociology of conventions – Taking stock, Looking ahead. Économie des conventions. Consulté le 8 février 2026 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/n4e4