The most recent issue of the on-line journal
Common-Place features a
roundtable on Thomas Piketty and his
Capital in the 21st Century. The forum focuses on the work in relation to the humanities; as the introductory essay by Michelle Burnham argues:
Taken together, the short essays gathered here point out the ways in which numbers and graphs constitute narratives, and insist that data’s stories are just as constructed as those found in words and novels. . . . we hope this forum
points toward possibilities for developing a critical business humanities, an endeavor made all the more necessary in a neoliberal age
in which the human is increasingly defined in terms of numbers.
The six essays offer a different viewpoint from that of the many reviews by economists and economic historians. There is also a link to
another interesting forum on the book, this one by political scientists, philosophers, and sociologists, coordinated by Crooked Timber's Henry Farrell.
