Institutions and Society – Towards a Critical Theory of (Economic) Institutions
Principal Investigator at ZRC SAZU
dr. Uroš KranjcProject Team
dr. Uroš Kranjc-
Duration
1 February 2024–31 January 2026 -
Financial Source
Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency
NextGenerationEU
Recovery and Resilience Plan
Funded by the »European Union - NextGenerationEU« within the framework of the Recovery and Resilience Plan, Investment »(Co)financing projects to enhance the international mobility of Slovenian researchers and research organisations and to promote the international involvment of Slovenian applicants".
The Recovery and Resilience Plan| GOV.SI
Project funds awarded: 178.320,00 €
The project INSTITUTIONS conceives of economic categories as economic institutions. It aims to explore the social constitution of (economic) institutions – what they are, what they hold, how they are formed and transformed, become manifest and obsolete, or simply exist or inexist. The central tenets will be drawn from the economic sociology of Thorstein Veblen along with other major figures in the Institutionalist tradition in the history of economic thought. It introduces a critical reinterpretation of economic categories by drawing on the philosophical thought of Alain Badiou and Cornelius Castoriadis. The ultimate aim of the study is to present a Frankfurt School inspired critique of the economic institutions as real abstractions of definite forms of social relations.
The project will present a novel reading of Thorstein Veblenʼs theory of institutions and progresses towards a Frankfurt-School-inspired critical theory of (economic) institutions. It engages the mathematical turns of Alain Badiou and Cornelius Castoriadis and draws on mathematical meta-structures, such as ZFC set theory and category theory to accommodate and model different underlying logics – Veblenʼs evolutionary methodology opposed to materialist dialectics of Marx, Badiou, Castoriadis, the Frankfurt School, etc. It retraces Marx’s positing of the real-general as real abstraction proposed by Alfred Sohn-Rethel and Theodor W. Adorno, conceptualizing the particular object-moment emerging in market commodity exchange.
The MSC Action INSTITUTIONS study is divided into three main parts, which correspond to the three core research work packages (WP1 – WP3) of the Action.
WP1 focuses on a comparative and interpretative analysis of key literature centred on “Old Institutional Economics” of Thorstein Veblen and his followers (John R. Commons, Clarence Ayres), complemented with an assessment of the notion of the “Institution” in various social sciences. The outcome formes the first part – a formal ZFC set-theoretic axiomatization of Veblenʼs theory of instincts, habits of thought and institutions – outlining an ontological basis for a new critical theory of (economic) institutions.
WP2 aims at assessing the convergences and divergences in the theoretical systems of Alain Badiou and Cornelius Castoriadis, particularly their appropriation of a particular branch in mathematics – set-theory. It establishes a point of intersection – inconsistent multiplicity as the site of truth – a concept that also underlies the conceptualization and insurrection of an institutional framework. Furthermore, it expounds on the conceptual transposition of philosophical categories into an economic dispositive of values and prices of commodities.
WP3 involves a synthesis of the “ontological” basis with the “phenomenological” appearing of institutions conceived as a critical theory. The conducted inquiry and analysis of WP1 and WP2 links to an important notion endorsed by Theodor Adorno – the real abstraction. Taken as a particular institution of a capitalist institutional framework it introduces a pathway to Marx’s critique of economic categories and analysis of forms and content of value. The particular aim of this WP is to establish a logical congruence between Marx’s value form, Adorno’s call for systematic-encyclopaedic analysis of the abstraction of the exchange on the one hand, and Badiou’s phenomenological transcendental operations of being-there, on the other. Formalized with set theory and category theory, Veblen’s and the Institutionalists’ account of economics is re-inscribed in Badiou’s and Castoriadis’s analytical framework, introducing a novel groundwork by relying on Marx’s and Adorno’s critiques of capitalist reified societies.
KRANJC, Uroš. Towards a materialist reading of Thorstein Veblen's notion of (economic) institution. Filozofski vestnik. 2023, letn. 44, št. 1, str. 7-28. ISSN 0353-4510. https://ojs.zrc-sazu.si/filozofski-vestnik/article/view/13566/11914, DOI: 10.3986/fv.44.1.01.
KRANJC, Uroš. Number(s) and function(s) - traversing economical, mathematical and philosophical discourses : prispevek na mednarodni konferenci Reconfiguration of Borders in Philosophy, Politics, Psychoanalysis and Arts, ZRC SAZU, Ljubljana, 23. 9. 2024.