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<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><span
style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif";color:maroon'> “The
Subway Series”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><span
style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif";color:maroon'>A
Joint Colloquium Between Harvard History of Science and MIT Program in Science,
Technology, and Society<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><b><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif";color:#244061'><o:p> </o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center;line-height:200%'><b><span
style='font-size:14.0pt;line-height:200%;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif";
color:#002060'>The Credit Crisis as a Problem in the Sociology of Knowledge<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:
auto;text-align:center'><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif";
color:#002060'>Donald Mackenzie, University of Edinburgh<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'>Abstract:<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:200%'><span style='font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif";
color:black'>A number of scholars have recently been applying perspectives from
the social studies of science and technology to financial markets (an activity
sometimes called “social studies of finance”). Amongst the questions this work
throws up is how market participants value financial instruments, an issue
which is (amongst other things) a problem in the sociology of knowledge.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:200%'><span style='font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'>This
talk will examine the role in the current credit crisis of “evaluation
cultures” (shared beliefs, practices, ways of calculating, and technical
systems that are employed when market participants evaluate financial
instruments) and “metadevices” (relatively durable configurations of social
relations and technical systems, such as the credit ratings system).
Employing documentary sources and a set of 55 predominantly oral-history
interviews, the talk will present a historical sociology of the two categories
of financial instrument crucial to the crisis (ABSs, asset-backed securities,
and CDOs, collateralized debt obligations), and in particular discusses the
evaluation of and the role played by a fateful concatenation of the two, ABS
CDOs.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><b><span
style='font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'>Monday, November 30, 2009<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><b><span
style='font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'>4pm<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal align=center style='text-align:center'><b><span
style='font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"'>Located in E51-095 at MIT<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
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