Learning to Think Like an Economist without Becoming One: Ambivalent Reproduction and Policy Couplings in a Masters of Public Affairs Program
中文摘要
近年来，社会学家一直致力于理解经济学家如何获得了对政策制定的影响力。我们通过将关注点从影响力问题转向政策培训问题来拓展这一研究。姑且承认经济学家已拥有影响力，未来的政策专业人士是如何习得经济学理据的？这种思维方式又是如何传递给心存疑虑的学生的？通过提出这些问题，我们将社会化重新引入关于“新型”专业人员的制度研究。利用一项公共事务硕士项目民族志的数据，我们发现，学生通过一个“矛盾性再生产”的过程学习经济学：他们学会“像经济学家一样思考而不成为经济学家”。他们始终持怀疑态度，否认自己是经济学家，并且在未来的政策工作中对经济学的运用也较为有限。尽管如此，矛盾性再生产维系了政策现状，使经济学在缺乏真正信奉的情况下依然保持影响力。矛盾性再生产为理解经济学对政策的松散耦合式影响提供了新的途径，并有助于推进经济学社会学、栖居制度主义（inhabited institutionalism）与专业社会化研究。
Abstract
In recent years, sociologists have labored to understand how economists have gained influence over policymaking. We extend this research by shifting focus from the matter of influence to the matter of policy training. Granted that economists already have influence, how do future policy professionals learn economic rationales? How is this mindset transmitted to hesitant students? By asking these questions, we bring socialization back into institutional research on “new” professionals. Utilizing data from an ethnography of a Masters of Public Affairs program, we find that students learn economics through a process of “ambivalent reproduction”: they learn to “think like an economist without becoming one.” They remain skeptical and reject the notion that they are economists, and when they use economics in their future policy work they do so in limited ways. Nonetheless, ambivalent reproduction sustains the policy status-quo and allows economics to remain influential without true belief. Ambivalent reproduction provides a new means for understanding the loosely coupled influence of economics on policy, and it contributes to the sociology of economics, inhabited institutionalism, and professional socialization.