Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on the geometric aspects of economic models to consider how the content of economic assumptions and analyses are given traction through the forms in which they are depicted.

Paper long abstract:

The practice of modelling is central to the production and transmission of knowledge amongst economists. In particular, training in the discipline entails learning to triangulate between the algebraic, diagrammatic and verbal expressions of models. Based on ethnography of undergraduate economics education at a university in Northern Europe, this paper will focus on the diagrammatic aspects of these models to consider how the content of economic assumptions and analyses are given traction through the forms in which they are depicted.

It focuses on the utopic imaginaries elicited in these images, including how they envisage 'the political'. It suggests that some of these models emerge through techniques of 'imagination' invoking islands compiled of individuals interacting in standardised exchanges. 'The political' is subsequently located as an outside entity enacting interventions which disrupt the aesthetics of smoothness, simplicity and balance imbued in the notions of optimisation and equilibrium. Thus (dis)order is produced through a practice of temporal ordering.

The paper highlights how these pictures proliferate throughout the course of an undergraduate degree, and the sense of mastery entailed in learning to manipulate them in particular ways. In particular, the routines of performing particular processes with these models are both repetitive and generative of certain senses of satisfaction. Through them social interactions are made legible with the geometric and algebraic forms of models.