Workshop on Money Professionals. How professionals in economics, finance, tax and law gain and practice expertise and authority

On October 26-27, the TAXLAW team and the Centre for the Study of Professions at OsloMet organised the workshop Money Professionals. How professionals in economics, finance, tax and law gain and practice expertise and authority.

Researchers from different countries and institutions were invited to a two-day workshop at Lysebu hotel in Oslo, Norway. In addition to the TAXLAW team, the participants were Lola Avril (European University Institute), Karen Boll (Dept. of Organization, Copenhagen Business School), Rasmus Corlin Christensen (Dept. of Organization, Copenhagen Business School), Valérie Boussard (Dept. of Sociology, Nanterre University), Pascale Cornut-St Pierre (Dept. of Civil Law, University of Ottawa), Daniel Muzio (School for Business and Society, University of York), Jean-Philippe Robé (Sciences Po Law School), Saila Stausholm (Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies), Silje M. Tellmann (Dept. of Business, History and Social Sciences, University of South-Eastern Norway), Giorgio Norlemann Baldari (Centre for the Study of Professions/OsloMet) and Kristin Vikan Sjurgard (Centre for the Study of Professions/OsloMet).

A wide range of studies was presented, all empirically well-founded and theoretically developing scholarship on professionals working with money in different institutional contexts and fields of expertise.

Sociology of the professions, sociology of expertise, sociology of law, sociology of the state and economic sociology approach the power of experts in different ways. In this workshop, we aimed at combining questions and knowledge from these different fields to gain new insight into the role of experts in society. The presentations were works in progress that addressed these themes from various angles and using a variety of data (e.g. quantitative, interviews, ethnographies, and document studies).

From the TAXLAW team, Corentin and Marte presented a paper on the relationship between the tax law expertise of the French state and the private sector, Jérôme and Corentin presented a paper on neutral spaces and cross-sectorial expertise within tax law in France, and Len and Helle presented a paper on gender barriers and career mobility among Norwegian tax lawyers.

The organisation of the workshop was part of our aim of building a research network of social scientists who study professions working within the fields of tax, economy, law, and finance in different contexts. The workshop was very enjoyable and academically stimulating, and this network will be an important research community for TAXLAW in the years to come.

Global Meeting on Law & Society, Lisbon, Portugal

From the 13th to the 16th of July, our team member Helle Dyrendahl Staven participated in the Global Meeting on Law & Society in Lisbon, Portugal. The aim of participating in this conference was to get an overview of relevant research groups and networks and their current research.

The conference was organised by the Law & Society Association, which is an interdisciplinary scholarly organisation committed to social scientific, interpretative, and historical analyses of law across multiple social contexts. In addition to social science researchers, many of the participants at the conference were legal scholars.

Relevant meetings for TAXLAW were sessions concerning theoretical and comparative perspectives on lawyers’ practices and careers, sessions on legal education, on tax law as well as sessions concerning methodological issues related to the study of legal actors, documents, and practices.

Helle presented a draft of a paper she is currently writing with project leader Marte Mangset at the session called The legal professions and legal practice inside and out. This paper explores the relationship between academic and practical knowledge and skills in tax law expertise. It seeks to understand the types of knowledge that are valued by tax professionals, and what types of knowledge that give authority in the construction and interpretation of our tax systems.

The Global Meeting on Law & Society was a valuable arena to test our preliminary results on social scientists and legal scholars from other countries and contexts. In addition, it was fruitful to meet scholars working on related topics and to hear about their current research.

Workshop on Money Professionals: New questions for the sociology of the professions?

On the 28th of June 2022, we organised the event Money Professionals: New questions for the sociology of the professions? at the Centre for the Sociology of Organisation at Sciences Po Paris. In addition to the participation of four of us from TAXLAW, 10 social scientists from France joined us.

The organisation of the workshop was part of our aim of building a research network of social scientists who study professions working within the fields of tax, economy, law, and finance in different contexts.

Even though there are social scientists who study issues related to tax, most have focused on international tax law, tax shelters and so forth. As such, there are no specific research networks regarding national regulative tax practices. Therefore, we are in the process of building a research community ourselves, and this workshop was the starting shot of the process.

During the workshop, five of the participants presented their research on different aspects of money professionals. From our team, Jérôme Pélisse presented a paper on how legal consciousness studies can be applied to the study of money professionals, and Marte Mangset, Corentin Durand and Helle Dyrendahl Staven introduced the TAXLAW project and presented some initial findings from our interviews with tax law professionals in France and Norway.

We are looking forward to continuing to build this research network.

Workshop in Paris: Money professionals

We will have a workshop in Paris the 28th of June called «Les professionnels de l’argent – nouvelles questions pour la sociologie des professions?» (Money professionals – new questions for the sociology of professions?).

More information will follow soon.