The Moral Background: An Inquiry into the History of Business Ethics

The Max Planck Sciences Po Center (MaxPo) has the pleasure to invite you to its next event in the series Conversations on Ökonomie, Politics and Society (COOPS)

Guest speaker: Gabriel ABEND, Assistant Professor of Sociology – New York University; Fellow – Institut d’études avancées de Paris

Discussant: Jeanne LAZARUS, Sciences Po, CSO-CNRS

Gabriel ABEND is an assistant professor of sociology at New York University, and a 2013-2014 fellow of the Institut d’études avancées de Paris. Recent articles include: “Thick Concepts and the Moral Brain” (in Archives Européennes de Sociologie); “The Meaning of ‘Theory’” (in Sociological Theory); “Two Main Problems in the Sociology of Morality” (in Theory and Society); “The Origins of Business Ethics in American Universities” (in Business Ethics Quarterly); and “What the Science of Morality Doesn’t Say about Morality” (in Philosophy of the Social Sciences). His book, The Moral Background: An Inquiry into the History of Business Ethics, is forthcoming from Princeton University Press.

Jeanne LAZARUS is a tenured CNRS research fellow at the CSO in Sciences-po. Her research has focused on relationships between bankers and customers in French retail banks. She published L’Épreuve de l’argent in 2012. She has also conducted research on the sociology of money and the consumption and monetary practices of the impoverished. She is currently studying the making of a “responsible” financial market for individuals, in particular via education programs aimed at improving financial literacy, directives, and regulations regarding the commercialization of financial products and credit.