The politics of conventions : beyond a microphysics of power?
Abstract
The archeology of the "Economie des conventions" reveals the importance of the analyse of statistical work, as a form of deconstruction of statistical aggregates. It opens to a new way of conceiving State power in relation with the elaboration of a knowledge of society, and leads to a view of economic conventions as a microphysics of power (Foucault). This analyse of statistical work accompanies a critique of general equilibrium mechanism found by Olivier Favereau in Keynes' General Theory, with an emphasis on the action of the State in the search for a full employment economy. In this perspective, Invention of Unemployment by Robert Salais (1986) examines the process leading to a common understanding of such a category, shaping a "keynesian convention". This is a crucial step for the discovery of the conventions as coordination operated in the firms, which implies to conceive a plurality of "worlds of production". Thus, conventions and more specifically labour conventions are conceived as a microphysics of power, in which power in a relational way (Foucault) implies uncertainties of the coordination based on the institutional categories (either statistical and juridical).
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