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On the 'Nobel Prize in Economics' and the monopoly of neoclassical theory at university departments of economics February 12, 2010pesodLeave a commentGo to comments from Peter Söderbaum,  peter.soderbaum@mdh.se Early in October 2009 a journalist from a French business journal, Challenge, called me to discuss the so called Nobel Prize in Economics. He referred to a translated version of my critical article in Dagens Nyheter from 2004. I hope that the result from the interview was meaningful but at the same time I felt that I need to consider once more where I stand in relation to these issues. In what follows, there is a 'socially constructed' interview with myself in both roles; the person asking questions and the one responding. I hope this will clarify my position. At the final stage of writing these pages I heard of the new winners of the Economics Prize, Elinor Ostrom and Oliver Williamson. A short comment on this is made as a postscript. Is economics a science as you understand it? I have nothing against thinking of economics as a science. Economics is one of the social sciences, such as political science, sociology, psychology, management science. There are also important relationships to the humanities, such as a possible focus on individuals as actors and their subjectivity. I am skeptical to the attempt to emphasize similarities between economics on the one hand and physics, chemistry, medicine on the other. The latter disciplines are too limited to positivism as a theory of science (standing outside, watching ecosystems and nature, looking for regularities in a value neutral way, making experiments etc.) You are skeptical to, if not against a Nobel Prize in economics; why is this so?For me, it is the combination of two states of affairs or facts that make me question the economics prize in its present form:  There is a dominance and monopoly for one kind of economics, 'neoclassical economics' at university departments of economics in

Research Papers 220)     Cowen, Deborah and Vanessa Parlette Inner Suburbs at Stake: Investing in Social Infrastructure in Scarborough, June 2011, 86pp. ISSN 0316-0068; ISBN 978-0-7727-1482-4. 219)     Jim Simmons, Larry Bourne, and Shizue Kamikihara, The Changing Economy of Urban Neighbourhoods: An Exploration of Place of Work Data for the Greater Toronto Region, December 2009, 44 pp. ISBN 978-0-7727-1477-0 218)     Greg Suttor, Rental Paths from Postwar to Present: Canada Compared, December 2009, 59 pp. ISBN 978-0-7727-1476-3 217)     Michael Noble, Lovely Spaces in Unknown Places: Creative City Building in Toronto's Inner Suburbs, March 2009, 50 pp. ISBN 978-0-7727-1474-9 216)     Jason Hackworth, Habitat for Humanity and the Neoliberal Media: A Comparison of News Coverage in Canada and the United States, March 2009, 39 pp. ISBN 978-0-7727-1473-2 215)     David Wachsmuth, From Abandonment to Affordable Housing: Policy Options for Addressing Toronto's Abandonment Problem, November 2008, 48 pp. ISBN 978-0-7727-1472-5 214)     Katharine N. Rankin, with the assistance of Jim Delaney, Courtney Hood, Justin Ngan and Sabin Ninglekhu, Commercial Change in Toronto's West-Central Neighbourhoods, September 2008 ISBN-13 978-0-7727-1471-8 213)     Emily Paradis, Sylvia Novac, Monica Sarty, J. David Hulchanski, Better Off in a Shelter? A Year of Homelessness and Housing among Status Immigrant, Non-Status Migrant, and Canadian-Born Families, July 2008, 89 pp. ISBN-13 978-0-7727-1469-5 212)     Duncan Maclennan, Housing for the Toronto Economy, July 2008, 72 pp. ISBN 978-0-7727-1468-8 211)     R. Alan Walks and Richard Maaranen, The Timing, Patterning, & Forms of Gentrification & Neighbourhood Change in Montreal, Toronto, & Vancouver, 1961 to 2001, May 2008, 109 pp. ISBN 978-0-7727-1465-7 210)     Jason Hackworth, Neoliberalism, Social Welfare, and the Politics of Faith in the United States, June 2007, 36 pp. ISBN 978-0-7727-145

This is a book about a distinctive methodological approach inspired by Dorothy Smith- one of Canada's most respected scholars. Institutional ethnography aims to answer questions about how everyday life is organized. What is conventionally understood as the relationship of micro to macro processes is conceptualized and explored in terms of ruling relations. The authors suggest that institutional ethnographers must adopt a particular research stance, one that recognizes that people's own knowledge and ways of knowing are crucial elements of social action and thus of social analysis

Due to request of delaying the submission by several authors, the deadline of "Cities, Technologies and Planning" (CTP 12) for submitting full paper has been extended to 28 February, 2012.  Due to request of delaying the submission by several authors, the deadline of "Cities, Technologies and Planning" (CTP 12) for submitting full paper has been extended to 28 February, 2012. "Cities, Technologies and Planning" CTP 12   http://www.unibas.it/utenti/murgante/ctp_12/descr.html in conjunction with The 2012 International Conference on Computational Science and its Applications (ICCSA 2012) June 18th  - June 20th, 2012 Federal University of Bahia , Salvador de Bahia, Brasil  http://www.iccsa.org/ Description 'Share' term has turned into a key issue of many successful initiatives in recent times. Following the advent of Web 2.0, such positive experiences based on mass collaboration generated "Wikinomics" have become "Socialnomics", where "Citizens are voluntary sensors". During the past decades, the main issue in GIS implementation has been the availability of sound spatial information. Nowadays, the wide diffusion of electronic devices providing geo-referenced information have resulted in the production of extensive spatial information datasets. This trend has led to "GIS wikification", where mass collaboration plays a key role in main components of spatial information frameworks (hardware, software, data, and people). Some authors (Goodchild, 2007) talk about "Volunteered Geographic Information" (VGI), as the harnessing of tools to create, assemble, and disseminate geographic information provided by individuals voluntarily creating their own contents by marking the locations of occurred events or by labeling certain existing features. not already been shown on map. The term "neogeography" is often adopted to describe people activities when using and creating their own maps, geo-tagging pictures,