Jonathan Levy, The Real Economy: History and Theory, Princeton University Press, 2025.
This review has been co-written with my colleague Étienne Goron – currently a PhD student at SciencePo Paris. We also have written two reviews, in French, on the works of Bernard Lahire (Les structures fondamentales des sociétés humaines) and Robert Boyer (Une discipline sans réflexivité peut-elle être une science ?).
When asked the question “what is the economy?” today’s scholars in the social sciences and humanities—whether economists, historians, sociologists, or anthropologists—provide divergent and sometimes incompatible answers, depending on their schools of thought. Facing this conundrum, Sciences Po professor Jonathan Levy sets out to examine the fundamental concepts of economics as an object of study in their own right. While Levy has gained recognition for his work on the history of American capitalism, The Real Economy takes a much more speculative stand. It lays the groundwork of a new conceptual space in order to reestablish a fruitful dialogue between studies of the economy in the 21st century.
At the center of his approach is the idea of a “return to the real.” The theories that have dominated the field of economics since the mid-20th century have failed to substantially define what the economy is, as a set of social and material conditions. The challenge that Levy addresses, therefore, is to deepen the “real” idea of the economy as an order changing over time—real in the sense that it is analytic and accessible through field research. A densely theoretical book, The Real Economy is based on an original reading of historical studies in American capitalism—focusing on accounting practices, taxation, company law—and of Keynesian and psychoanalytic theories of capitalist investment… read the rest of the review on Œconomia’s website.