The making of US monetary policy: Central bank transparency and the neoliberal dilemma

This article explores the implications of the Federal Reserve’s shift to transparency for recent debates about neoliberalism and neoliberal policymaking. I argue that the evolution of US monetary policy represents a specific instance of what I term the “neoliberal dilemma.” In the context of generally deteriorating economic conditions, policymakers are anxious to escape responsibility for economic outcomes, and yet markets require regulation to function in capitalist economies (Polanyi 2001). How policymakers negotiate these contradictory imperatives involves a continual process of institutional innovation in which functions are transferred to markets, but under the close control of the state. Thus, under transparency, Federal Reserve officials discovered innovations in the policy process that enabled “markets to do the Fed’s work for it.” These innovations enlisted market mechanisms, but did not represent a retreat from the state’s active role in managing the economy.

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“I Only Want to Know What You Know”: The Use of Orienting Messages During Forensic Interviews and Their Effects on Child Behavior

The purpose of this research was to evaluate orienting messages within the CornerHouse Forensic Interview Protocol in two formats: provided both at the outset and as needed throughout the interview compared to previous practice in which orienting messages were provided only as the opportunity arose. Through the content analysis of 120 videotaped forensic interviews and corresponding case files in which children were interviewed for sexual abuse allegations, results suggest that the use of orienting messages both at the beginning and as needed lead to significantly more autonomous responses from children, that use of more orienting messages was significantly related to more autonomous responses from children, and that the specific orienting messages of “can’t/won’t say” and “ask me a question” significantly predict more autonomous responses among children. Implications for practice include the use of orienting messages as a way to provide a respectful and safe experience for children participating in forensic interviews.     

The elusive market: Embeddedness and the paradigm of economic sociology

Theory and Society -     

Reviews

M. I. Finley, The Use and Abuse of History (1975), 254 (Chatto &; Windus, £4.50).

John H. Langbein, Prosecuting Crime in the Renaissance. England, Germany, France (1974), ix+321 (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, £7.50).

Hans‐Ulrich Wehler (ed.), Der Deutsche Bauernkrieg, 1524–1526 (1975), 356 (Geschichte und Gesellschaft, Sonderheft 1, Vandenhoek und Ruprecht, Göttingen, DM 39).

Mervyn James, Family, Lineage and Civil Society. A Study of Society, Politics and Mentality in the Durham Region 1500–1640 (1974), x+233 (Oxford University Press, £5.00).

C. W. Chalklin and M. A. Havinden (eds.), Rural Change and Urban Growth 1500–1800. Essays in English Regional History in Honour of W. G. Hoskins (1974), xxvi+360 (Longman, £8.50).

Peggy K. Liss, Mexico under Spain, 1521–1556. Society and the Origins of Nationality (1975), xvi+229 (University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, £7.50).

J. I. Israel, Race, Class and Politics in Colonial Mexico, 1610–1670 (1975), xiii+305 (Oxford University Press, £8.00).

Olwen H. Hufton, The Poor of Eighteenth‐Century France, 1750–1789 (1974), xiii+414 (Oxford University Press, £9.00).

B. R. Mitchell, European Historical Statistics 1750–1970 (1975), xx+827 (Macmillan, £24).

Edward Royle, Victorian Infidels (1974), viii+357 (Manchester University Press, Manchester, £6.00).

Verena Martinez‐Alier, Marriage, Class and Colour in Nineteenth‐Century Cuba. A Study of Racial Attitudes and Sexual Values in a Slave Society (1974), x+202 (Cambridge University Press, £4.40).

John Burnett (ed.), Useful Toil. Autobiographies of Working People from the 1820s to the 1920s (1974), 364 (Allen Lane, £5, paperback £2.50).

A. Allan MacLaren, Religion and Social Class: The Disruption Years in Aberdeen (1974), xii+268 (Routledge, £4.95).

David Jones, Chartism and the Chartists (1975), 229 (Allen Lane, £6.00, paperback £3.00).

Robert Gellately, The Politics of Economic Despair: Shopkeepers and German Politics 1890–1914 (1974), xvi+317 (Sage Publications, £6.00).

Alan A. Jackson, Semi‐Detached London: Suburban Development, Life and Transport 1900–39 (1973), 381 (George Allen and Unwin, £6.50).     

The person of the category: the pricing of risk and the politics of classification in insurance and credit

In recent years, scholars in the social sciences and humanities have turned their attention to how the rise of digital technologies is reshaping political life in contemporary society. Here, we analyze this issue by distinguishing between two classification technologies typical of pre-digital and digital eras that differently constitute the relationship between individuals and groups. In class-based systems, characteristic of the pre-digital era, one’s status as an individual is gained through membership in a group in which salient social identities are shared in common with other group members. In attribute-based systems, characteristic of the digital era, one’s status as an individual is determined by virtue of possession of a set of attributes that need not be shared with others. We argue that differences between these two types of classification technologies have important implications for how persons attach (or fail to attach) to groups, and therefore what kinds of political mobilization are possible. We illustrate this argument by examining contention over the use of gender as a variable in the pricing of risk in insurance and credit – two markets in which individuals directly encounter class-based and attribute-based systems of classification, respectively.