Future Directions in Socio-Economics 2022

One year ago, SASE decided to say goodbye to its pdf-based newsletter and launch a blog. Thus, Future Directions in Socio-Economics was born. Continuing the newsletter’s tradition, a group of graduate students and early-career scholars from both sides of the Atlantic edit the blog with the help of the SASE staff. Members of the editorial team rotate each year, primarily recruiting from the SASE Early Career Workshop participants.

The editorial team is as diverse as SASE itself, but we all share a commitment to the development and growth of socio-economics. Melike Arslan (Postdoctoral Fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University) connects the sociology of expertise, organizations, and markets with the international political economy of laws and regulations. Javier Baquero (Ph.D. Candidate in Economics at the Autonomous University of Madrid) researches labor economics and its relationship with the education system. Ke Nie (Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology at the University of California San Diego) is a mixed-method lover who studies cultural industries and cultural policies with a specific focus on music. Gabor Scheiring (Marie Curie Fellow at the Department of Social and Political Sciences at Bocconi University) is the current chief editor, whose research addresses the political-economic determinants of inequality in health and wellbeing, and how these inequalities shape the evolution of democracy and capitalist diversity.

We have an ambitious agenda for the coming year. As the editors of this young but growing blog, we are dedicated to bringing attention to the works of young scholars and pulling new and often not well-understood topics in socio-economic research into the fold. We aim to move the blog forward by showcasing emerging topics in socio-economics, testing new venues for academic job market candidates, reviewing recent books on the cutting edge of socio-economic research, and profiling some of the leading figures in the socio-economics community through in-depth interviews. We aim to post updates on the blog at least once a month or more frequently. It is our hope that by outlining a more crystallized editorial policy, we will be able to provide a cornerstone for future editors to build on.

In the first regular post of this academic year, Javier will write about the upcoming SASE-RISE regional conference in December and the importance of this meeting in the field of socio-economics. In December, Gabor will review Isabella Weber’s much-discussed new book, How China Escaped Shock Therapy: The Market Reform Debate. We will kick off 2022 by interviewing the new leadership of SASE’s journal, Socio-Economic Review. Ke will discuss with the new Chief Editors, Dr. Akos Rona-Tas and Dr. Alya Guseva, about their view of the journal, where it is heading, and how to celebrate its 20th anniversary.

We have several other posts in the pipeline for next year. Among others, the blog’s previous chief editor, Laura Adler (Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at Harvard University), will review Jake Rosenfled’s You’re Paid What You’re Worth: And Other Myths of the Modern Economy. Javier will look at the inequalities that university graduates find when entering the labor market. Gabor will write an essay about the social and political effects of deindustrialization. Melike will discuss how socio-economic research can investigate the “price-gouging” on hand sanitizers and medical masks during the early phase of the Covid-19 pandemic. Ke will share his insights on how music regulations in China twist genre boundaries and facilitate cultural change.

Stay tuned, and do not hesitate to reach out to us if you have any questions or comments.

SASE Editors 2021-2022

Bocconi University

Gabor Scheiring

Gabor Scheiring is a Marie Curie Fellow at Bocconi University, Milan. He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge, where he also worked as a political economy research fellow. His research focuses on the social and political consequences of neoliberal globalization, the political economy of health, and populism. In his doctoral thesis and several related articles, Dr. Scheiring investigated the impact of deindustrialization, privatization, and foreign investment on health, using multilevel survival modeling based on a novel dataset encompassing individual, town, and company data, as well as qualitative in-depth interviews. As part of his research on the political economy of populism in East-Central Europe, Dr. Scheiring investigates how neoliberal transformations paved the way for the populist backlash. His book, The Retreat of Liberal Democracy (Palgrave, 2020) analyses the socio-economic roots of illiberal populism in Hungary, with a focus on the role of business elites and working-class neo-nationalism. His work has been published in Sociology, International Sociology, The Lancet Global Health, and Sociology of Health and Illness, among others. He served as a member of the Hungarian Parliament between 2010–2014.

Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies

Melike Arslan

Melike Arslan is a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne. She mainly studies the legal and regulatory infrastructure of liberal market economies from a comparative and international perspective. Her previous works on corporate bankruptcy laws, transnational legal indicators, and the legal foundations of money were published in the International Journal of Law in Context and Annual Review of Law and Social Science. Her new project delves into the drivers and consequences of consumers’ moral denouncement of price hikes as “price gouging” during the Covid-19 pandemic. She is also involved in several collaborative projects on business elite networks, state aid (subsidy) policies, and long-term planning for global climate change.

Autonomous University of Madrid

Javier Baquero

Javier Baquero is a doctoral candidate in Economics and business at the Autonomous University of Madrid, where he is also research teaching staff in training. His research focuses on labor economics, education and socioeconomics. Specifically, his doctoral thesis focuses on the study of the labor placement of university students in the European Union. He has published several articles in scientific journals. In the same way, he has presented different papers and has been part of the organizing committee of relevant international conferences. He is member of Labor Socioeconomic Research Team (UAM)

University of California, San Diego

Ke Nie

Ke Nie is a doctoral candidate in sociology at the University of California, San Diego. He uses both computational and qualitative methods to study cultural markets and cultural policies around the world with a specific focus on music. His dissertation project examines how music creativity is shaped by social and political institutions in the digital era. Before joining the doctoral program at UCSD, he worked as a news correspondent and amateur musician in China.