Intervenant

Pierre DOCKÈS

Member - Cercle des économistes

Pierre Dockès is professor emeritus at the University Lyon 2 and researcher in the laboratory Triangle (UMR CNRS).

Aggregation in 1969, professor at the University Lumière Lyon 2 in 1971. Professor Emeritus since 2008. Member of the Circle of Economists (1995 – 2010)

He intends to profess historical economics rather than economic history, using historical episodes to understand contemporary situations and history of economic thought to broaden the narrow circle of contemporary theory. Early in his career, he was concerned with the emergence of a spatial economy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and then with international economic relations. Influenced by Fernand Braudel and Georges Duby, he expressly takes the long view in history and his research focuses on the major transition phases (feudal mutation, birth of capitalism, industrial revolutions). With Bernard Rosier, he tries to identify a « ambiguous » theory of history and studies the economic rhythms (crises, long waves, cycles). He contributed to the foundation of a research Center on History of Economic Thought, the “Centre Walras » (now “Triangle” and he directed this research center until 1998). He heads the team that publishes the complete works of Auguste and Léon Walras.

During the 2000s, he worked on the role of power in economy and on the relationship between innovations and conflicts, hence also his reading of Thomas Hobbes, theorist of power that anticipates some contemporary theories. More recently, his work focused on the sugar economy in a long historical perspective (from colonial slavery to contemporary forms of exploitation, marketing and consumption) and he wrote a little book where he tries to focus on the potential of the French economy in globalization. Currently, he completed a monumental work on the history of crises and cycles since the late seventeenth century to the present and the analysis of these rhythms to contemporary theories.

Main books since 2000

Le Sucre et les Larmes. Bref essai d’histoire et de mondialisation, Paris : Descartes & Cie, 2009, 286 p.

Jours de colère. L’esprit du capitalisme, avec Francis Fukuyama, Marc Guillaume et Peter Sloterdijk : Paris : Descartes et Cie, 2009, 159 p. (the authors received the “prix spécial Turgot”, awarded in 2010).

Hobbes. Economie, terreur et politique, Paris : Economica, 2008, 282 p.

L’Enfer, ce n’est pas les autres ! Bref essai sur la mondialisation, Paris : Descartes & Cie, 2007, 156 p. (the author received the “prix du livre d’économie”, awarded by the Senate on November 24, 2007.)

Léon Walras, Vie et œuvre économique, avec J.P. Potier, Paris : Economica, 2001

Pouvoir et autorité en économie, Paris : Economica, 2000.

With Jean-Hervé Lorenzi, he was editor (and an author) of Fin de Monde ou sortie de crise, Perrin, 2009 and Le choc des populations : guerre ou paix, Perrin, 2010.

Pierre Dockès was nominated honorary member of the European Society for the History of Economic Thought (ESHET) in 2014.