Jack Barbalet is Scholar in Residence at the MPIfG

 
Scholar in Residence Website | Scholar in Residence Lectures
 

 
Starting in 2007, the MPIfG invites each year a distinguished scholar from political, economic or social science to spend six months at the institute. Scholars-in-residence are known for their outstanding academic achievements and pursue a particular research project that coincides with the research focuses at the MPIfG.
 
This year's scholar-in-residence is Jack Barbalet from the University of Leicester. Jack Barbalet has been Professor of Sociology at the University of Leicester since 1999, and previously held positions in sociology at the Australian National University, in political science at the University of Adelaide, and economics at the University of Papua New Guinea. He has researched widely in sociological theory, political sociology, economic sociology and, more recently, the sociology of emotions. 
 

 

 
Among his many publications are

• Marx's Construction of Social Theory (1983)
• Citizenship: Rights, Struggle and Class Inequality (1988)
• Emotion, Social Theory, and Social Structure: A Macrosociological Approach (1998)
• Emotions and Sociology (2002)
• Weber's 'Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism' in Context (2008).

Barbalet is currently working on a new book, Power, Emotions and Markets: Methodological and Theoretical Principles for a New Economic Sociology.
 
Whilst at the MPIfG Jack Barbalet's research will focus on exploring key themes in the development of the ideas of the economist Mancur Olson. Although well known in political science, for instance, Olson is quite neglected in sociology.
 
And yet the trajectory of Olson's thought, as represented in three major books (The Logic of Collective Action [1965], The Rise and Decline of Nations [1984] and Power and Propensity [2000]), arguably represents a shift toward a framework of sociological sensibility. Historically, sociology has benefited from and developed through contact with economic science. Since the "cultural turn," though, such contact has been less attractive to sociologists. In addition, then, to elucidating the role of emotions and power in market relations through consideration of Olson's later formulations – especially around the concept of "encompassing interest" – the research is to demonstrate the benefits to sociological theorizing of critical engagement with recent developments in economic science.
 
Jack Barbalet will be at the MPIfG from January to July 2007. He will give a lecture series entitled "The Constitution of Markets: Rationality, Power and Interest." The three MPIfG Scholar-in-Residence Lectures will be on May 8, 15 and 22, 2007.