Fügen Sie Ihren individuellen HTML-Code hier ein
My name is Carsten Herrmann-Pillath. I am a transdisciplinary researcher in the human sciences and Professor and Permanent Fellow at the Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies at Erfurt University, Germany. By training, I am economist and expert in Chinese studies, with a focus on culture and economy. Since my high school times I have followed a consistent ‘master plan’ in my research. This website gives an overview about the results of four decades of research and offers access to many of my papers put into this context.

Introduction: Human sciences, economics and China

The term ‘human sciences’ covers two defining aspects of my work. Firstly, my interest is in analysing and understanding human life, our existence and the world of artefacts created by human beings in the course of the evolution of human civilization. Secondly, I try to combine and synthesize methods and theories from the natural sciences and the humanities. Human sciences is a synthesis of ‘Naturwissenschaften’ and ‘Geisteswissenschaften’. On this basic outlook, see my paper "Dilthey and Darwin Combined? 19th Century Geisteswissenschaft for 21st Century Cultural Science" (download below). Recently, I expanded my vision to include more-than-human culture, exploring the realms of other species and artificial subjects, working as editor-in-chief of the journal Cultural Science: A Multidisciplinary Journal of the Study of more-than-human Culture.

download paper

The role of economics

I think that economics plays a central role in human sciences, for the simple reason that scarcity of resources is a basic fact of life as a biological phenomenon. However, human beings have developed the capacity to overcome given resource constraints by means of cultural creativity, which includes technological innovation  and  the capacity to create vast networks and organizations of cooperation. In the history of human civilization, both aspects have worked together in the emergence of markets as ‘spontaneous orders’. I regard economics as the science of markets: markets are a technology of cooperation which is unique to the human species, and thus deserves special attention in human sciences. I emphasize the word ‘cooperation’ here: People ‘inside’ markets may only see the competition side, but as a human scientist I see the cooperation side in the first place. This has deep implications for the question how markets and ethics relate.
Economics is another creation of human civilisation, and markets have become a social technology that is built on economic theories, just as physics relates to engineering. So, one remarkable fact about economics is that it also shapes economic activities, so it is endogenous to economic change. Therefore, economics does not merely describe and analyse natural phenomena, but takes part in transforming human existence. I call this the ‘performative function’ of economics.
Together with my former PhD student, now professor, Christian Hederer, I condense my economic thinking in the book: A New Principles of Economics: The Science of Markets (2022, Routledge).

The role of China

Performativity of economics is part and parcel of cultural creativity. Therefore, one of my major interests in economics  has been the role of culture in shaping economic institutions and economic processes. In my view, understanding the impact of particular cultural frames and activities on economic behaviour and institutions requires a deep knowledge of history, society and politics in a region or country. This knowledge is specific to time and place, and is mostly gained by other methods as typically applied in economics today. This is why I am also a student of China, as one of the most significant cases beyond the scope of the 'Western' experience.
Beginning in 2021, my research on China is conducted under the umbrella of the DFG Sonderforschungsbereich Transregio 294 (Collaborative Research Center) "Structural Change of Property".
Share by: