Project description
Investigating human capital theories to maximise future well-being
Human capital encompasses knowledge, skills and health that individuals acquire to realise their full potential. With the support of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the GenHumCap project will explore the development of human capital theories between the decline of the labour theory of value and the recent Human Capital Plan of the World Bank. Specifically, the project traces the process through which human life, though formally excluded from market exchange, became quantifiable and subject to neoclassical practices of valuation and investment. Subsequently, it investigates how various experts applied these methods to reshape healthcare, development aid and population control programmes with the goal of optimising future well-being. The project seeks to reframe sociological debates surrounding neoliberalism, biopolitics and biocapital.
Objective
Genealogies of Human Capital (GenHumCap) explores the rise of human capital theories between the collapse of the labor theory of value and the World Bank’s recent Human Capital Plan. Specifically, it charts how human life, although formally absent from market exchange, was rendered tractable to neoclassical practices of valuation and calculated investment; then how diverse experts used these methods to reconfigure healthcare, development aid, and population control programs in the name of maximized future wellbeing. Using methods from sociology, the history of science, and the digital humanities, the project will gather new data from archives, expert interviews, and new text-mining techniques, analyzing the results in light of contemporary French sociological studies of the social sciences. It will do so in close dialogue with leading sociologists at the CESSP in Paris, under the supervision of Professor Gisèle Sapiro. To disseminate its findings, the project will result in a conference, two academic articles, and a book manuscript; and in public-facing summaries in newspapers and EU-sponsored dissemination projects. Through innovative, interdisciplinary methods, GenHuC will provide the first substantial investigation into human capital, advancing multiple fields by reframing a series of sociological debates on 'neoliberalism,' 'biopolitics,' and 'biocapital,' and creating new connections between the history of science, sociology, and economics. In the process it will cement the base for a competitive research career in European academia.
Fields of science
Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European FellowshipsCoordinator
75794 Paris
France