[Sci-tech-public] TODAY: Colloquium - November 30 with Donald Mackenzie

[Bianca Singletary]

 "The Subway Series"

A Joint Colloquium Between Harvard History of Science and MIT Program in
Science, Technology, and Society

 

The Credit Crisis as a Problem in the Sociology of Knowledge

Donald Mackenzie, University of Edinburgh

Abstract:

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.

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.

Monday, November 30, 2009

4pm

Located in E51-095 at MIT

 

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