My becoming
I pursued my interests in human science, economics and China studies since my high school times, when ideas emerged that still shape my thinking today. In these youthful days, I thought that linguistics and the philosophy of language are the gateway to understanding human existence by merging the sciences and the humanities. Language is the core artefact of our human way to approach the world, and so I thought that linguistics could be model to follow also by other disciplines.
I decided that all this could only be explored by becoming familiar with a non-Western culture, so I chose China, because Chinese writing exerted a spell on me, considering its high aesthetic value. I enrolled in Chinese studies, with a focus on linguistics. I added economics as a second major because I thought that an academic area which deals with the more mundane issue of human life might be useful to anchor my thinking in the real world. However, at that time economics was what I call a ‘mathematical Geisteswissenschaft’, often very remote from the real world in its model platonism, so I got frustrated and turned to alternative approaches, in particular evolutionary economics, and I went back to the old German language tradition in economics, which, after all, nurtured the ground for the creation of the ‘Social market economy’ after the tragedy and the horrors of Nazi-rule.
I decided that all this could only be explored by becoming familiar with a non-Western culture, so I chose China, because Chinese writing exerted a spell on me, considering its high aesthetic value. I enrolled in Chinese studies, with a focus on linguistics. I added economics as a second major because I thought that an academic area which deals with the more mundane issue of human life might be useful to anchor my thinking in the real world. However, at that time economics was what I call a ‘mathematical Geisteswissenschaft’, often very remote from the real world in its model platonism, so I got frustrated and turned to alternative approaches, in particular evolutionary economics, and I went back to the old German language tradition in economics, which, after all, nurtured the ground for the creation of the ‘Social market economy’ after the tragedy and the horrors of Nazi-rule.
Linguistics also is a model regarding its connection with two other important areas of research. The first is biology, because obviously language is one of the features that distinguishes human beings from other animals. This observation inspired me to study evolutionary theory and Darwinism, and there where obvious bridges to evolutionary economics. The second is brain sciences, since the brain is the biological entity that combines the evolved human capacity for language with the limitless cultural creativity of languages. As a student, I discovered that the only economist who had also conjoined these two aspects in his work was Friedrich von Hayek. His book ‘The Sensory Order’ was one of the greatest reading experiences in my life. So I decided to follow his track in my own research.
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These were my intellectual roots more than three decades ago. My first synthesis was my PhD thesis (in German): ‘China: Culture and Economic Order: An investigation based on systems theory and evolutionary theory’. I developed a new approach to analyse economic systems based on James Grier Miller’s systems theory, grounded this in evolutionary theory, and applied it on China. My early work was mostly published in German, but I received strong support by Paul Levinson, the editor of what was an influential journal in general evolutionary theory at that time, the Journal of Social and Biological Structures. Especially, I published a ‘Darwinian theory of history' that aimed at providing an alternative to North’s theory, and two articles on Hayek, in which I laid the philosophical foundations of the conjunction of evolutionary theory, brain sciences and the analysis of institutions.
My paper on the Darwinian view of history has been recently selected by Andrew Lo of MIT in his selection of papers that define the field of biological economics (Edward Elgar, 2018). Here is the original piece:
Since my first job as a professor was in Chinese economic studies (1992), my main focus in research in the 1990s was China. I tried to develop two paradigmatic approaches in understanding the Chinese economy in cultural terms. One is the role of the state in shaping economic institutions, which I distinguish from ‘government’. I think that the primary factor of driving Chinese economic development is the secular process of transformative state building, starting out from the peculiar governance structures of Late Qing dynasty China. Based on this insight, I developed a strong interest in the relationship and tension between the unitary state and regions in China. The other is the relationship between indigenous conceptualizations of emotions and economic behaviour, especially with regard to networking. In this time, probably my most important contribution to Chinese studies was not my own work, but my role as the spiritus rector in a systematic revival of the ‘comparative village studies approach’. Together with a Chinese research team, we published a book series on five Chinese villages with companion volumes that received a National book award in China and was praised as a standard setting achievement in an extensive review published in the journal ‘Modern China’. However, this work was never made accessible in English. You can learn about it via downloading the review:
After completing this work, I returned to China studies. I felt that I was still missing a central idea how to grasp the interaction between culture and economy in China, and in general. First I wrote a book in German, published in 2015, but that only happend to be a sort of 'working paper' which generated my final idea: This is to centre on the notion of 'ritual', both as a theoretical concept and as an indigenous term. This discovery triggered another period of intensive writing. In winter 2017, my magnum opus on China was published with Routledge, 'China's Economic Culture: The Ritual Order of State and Markets'. I continued with this research in collaborating with Chinese colleagues, exploring ritual practices in modern Shenzhen.
I am now working intensively on elaborating on the consequences of my decades of research for rethinking economics. In 2018, I published a book in German 'Fundamentals of Critical Economics' with Metropolis publishers. Based on this work, I joined forces with my former PhD student, now a professor of economics, Christian Hederer, in writing a new textbook of economics which is a remake of the classical 'Principles' format: A New Principles of Economics: The Science of Markets
(Routledge 2022).
Since November 2022, I enjoy the unique opportunity to participate as one of the Principal Researchers in the HORIZON EUROPE consortium COEVOLVERS led by Juha Hiedanpäa of the Natural Resources Institute Finland. My focus is on theorizing Nature-based solutions in terms of the new concept ofr 'co-evolutionary technology', building on close cooperation with seven 'Living Labs' in Europe where such NBS are implemented, with a focus on creating resilient communities.
© Carsten Herrmann-Pillath, Max Weber Centre, Steinplatz 2, 99085 Erfurt, Germany