The return of social government

From ‘socialist calculation’ to ‘social analytics

Bibliographic Data

ID2398089
AuthorsWilliam Davies (0000-0003-1830-5403)
Year2015
Volume18
Issue4
Pages431-450
Publication date2015-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEuropean Journal of Social Theory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1368-4310 • E-ISSN: 1461-7137
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1368431015578044
OpenAlexW2155696209
LanguageEN
Citations received18
References cited59

In recent years, there has been a panoply of new forms of 'social' government, as manifest in 'social enterprise' and 'social media'. This follows an era of neoliberalism in which social logics were apparently being eliminated, through the expansion of economic rationalities. To understand this, the article explores the critique of the very notion of the 'social', as manifest in neoliberal contributions to the socialist calculation debate from the 1920s onwards. Understood as a zone lying between market and state, the social was accused by Mises and Hayek of being both unaccountable (lacking any units of measurement) and formless (lacking instruments of explication). The article then asks to what extent these critiques still retain their purchase, following recent developments in hedonic measurement and data analytics. The argument is made that new post-neoliberal forms of 'social government' may now be entirely plausible, though focusing on the corporation rather than the state

Economics · Epistemology · Explication · Governmentality · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Positive economics · Social science · Sociology · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Law · Political and Economic history of UK and US · Social Policy and Reform Studies

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