The historical literature on neoliberalism, financialization, and marketisation has flourished in the last decade. Historians have joined forces with sociologists and political scientists to uncover historical layers of market thinking, and explore the limits of contemporary approaches to society, politics, environment and climate through market intervention. Through historical research, the market has proven to be a complex category, one which makes claims to polity and demos, gives rise to new subject identities within welfare state frames as well as in global geopolitics, and structures new forms of bureaucratic banality as well as symbolic intervention. Market thinking contains ideas of liberty and discipline, sovereignty and anarchy across time. The market concept is eminently plural with specific connotations in local culture, yet it carries a claim to universality and globality. Market thinking has given rise to specific political movements in neoliberalism and libertarianism, but also in forgotten ideologies such as georgism, cooperation, reformist social democracy and market socialism. Market thinking co exists today in complex ways with nationalism, populism, fascism, communitarianism and ecologism. Does the market have a conceptual history, and how does this intersect with the upheavals and cataclysms of the 20th century?

The conference is organized jointly by the Neoliberalism in the Nordics research programme and SCAS.

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