Emily Chamlee-Wright — 2025 Markets and Society Conference Keynote

On this episode of the Hayek Program Podcast, Emily Chamlee-Wright delivers a keynote lecture at the 2025 Markets & Society conference on the precarious state of liberalism and the cultural foundations necessary to sustain a free society. Drawing on the cultural economy framework she developed with Virgil Storr, Chamlee-Wright argues that liberalism faces not only overt constitutional threats but a deeper "soft tissue" problem: the erosion of the values, norms, and habits that make formal institutions work. Once degraded, she warns, no legislative remedy can restore them. She walks through four dimensions of this cultural ecosystem, shared mental models, generalized norms, cultural tools, and social networks, and shows how they can either reinforce liberal resilience or spiral into vicious cycles of decay. She closes with an urgent call to action: liberal intellectuals and scholars must boldly deploy the cultural tools at their disposal, the stories, symbols, and founding ideals of a free society to decisively reverse the illiberal drift before it becomes irreversible.Dr. Emily Chamlee-Wright is a senior affiliated scholar and Board Member at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. She is the President and CEO of the Institute for Humane Studies and the author of numerous books, including The Cultural Foundations of Economic Development (Routledge 1997) and Culture and Enterprise (Routledge 2000), co-authored with the late Don Lavoie.**This episode was recorded October 19, 2025**If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a 5-star review, and tell others about the show! We're available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you get your podcasts.Check out our other podcast from the Hayek Program! Virtual Sentiments is a podcast in which political theorist Kristen Collins interviews scholars and practitioners grappling with pressing problems in political economy with an eye to the past. Subscribe today!Follow the Hayek Program on Twitter: @HayekProgramFollow the Mercatus Center on Twitter: @mercatusCC Music: Twisterium