This article interrogates relations between dual senses of economics as ‘discipline’: as a form of knowledge and as a form of training. Scholars have suggested that economics performatively brings homo economicus into being. Yet this has been often posited as a singular figure, while eclipsing the unequal forms of personhood and sociality it instantiates. Through ethnography of elite undergraduate economics education in the United Kingdom, I ask how the ‘representative agents’ of homo economicus are considered ‘representative’, and how they relate to the forms of ‘agency’ that students cultivate. I argue that ambivalent epistemologies in economics oscillate between a‐realism and what I term ‘brutal realism’, which appeals to epistemic prowess yet normalizes the partial perspective of a detached elite masculinity. Students are encouraged to foreclose critique to stabilize these unstable models; thus the multiplicity of representative agents paradoxically contributes to their traction. Meanwhile, students cultivate ethics of efficiency that facilitate this wilful blindness, shaping their trajectories into finance. I demonstrate that the authority of economics emerges through distinct affective, pedagogical, and epistemological forms, and there are multiple mirrors between these forms and the content of economics education.

中文翻译：

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经济学学科：矛盾的认识论和精英经济学教育中批判的排除


本文探讨了经济学作为“学科”的双重含义之间的关系：作为一种知识形式和一种培训形式。学者们认为，经济学以表演方式催生了经济人。然而，这常常被视为一个单一的人物，同时掩盖了它所体现的不平等的人格和社会形式。通过对英国精英本科经济学教育的民族志研究，我询问经济人的“代表性代理人”如何被视为“代表性”，以及它们与学生培养的“代理”形式有何关系。我认为，经济学中矛盾的认识论在非现实主义和我所说的“残酷现实主义”之间摇摆，“残酷现实主义”诉诸认知能力，但使超然的精英男性气质的片面观点正常化。鼓励学生排除批评以稳定这些不稳定的模型；因此，矛盾的是，代表性代理人的多样性反而增强了它们的吸引力。与此同时，学生们培养效率道德，助长了这种故意的盲目性，从而塑造了他们进入金融业的轨迹。我证明经济学的权威是通过不同的情感、教学和认识论形式出现的，这些形式和经济学教育的内容之间存在多重镜像。