2023/12/01 by Lee Vinsel · 1 voice
Business, Management and Accounting · Social Sciences · #Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice #Management and Organizational Studies #Social and Cultural Dynamics
paper · pdf · doi:10.1017/s0269889725100859
openalex publication_date 2023/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
This article examines the intellectual and interventionist trajectory of American popular writer and commentator Robert Reich from his early 1980s advocacy of "industrial policy" to his time as US Secretary of Labor in the 1990s. It argues that Reich is an interesting figure to consider through the lens of "interventionist knowledges" because, although he draws selectively on social scientific data and knowledge, his syntheses of these things are more rooted in mythic thinking than in disciplined analysis. This article recounts the history of a failed bill, the Reemployment Act of 1994, to examine how Reich and those around him drew on and interpreted existing social scientific data to construct an idea of "the New Economy" and what, they claimed, it meant for national human capital policy. This article suggests that mythic visions of society and economy possibly play a large role in policy-making and issues advocacy.