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From History of Economics to Histories about Economics
October 16, 2010
Duke University, Center for the History of Political Economy
Rhodes Conference Room, Sanford School of Public Policy

This one-day conference will examine historical scholarship on economics from a non-disciplinary standpoint. Although most histories of economics have been written by historians of economics, scholars from other disciplines have on their own initiative engaged with the subject matter of economics in their narratives and analyses. In other words, the history of economics (broadly defined) is not, and has not been for some time, the sole province of historians of economics. Economic historians, sociologists, historians of science, literature scholars, and intellectual historians have dealt with the history of the subject and of economic thought. To us, this raises a number of interesting questions: Is this situation a passing fad, or does it signal long-term changes in the boundaries between academic disciplines in the human and social sciences? Does it signify a focus on economic culture – the place of economic ideas and knowledge in society – in human and social sciences? In what way does this historiography represent a challenge or, to the contrary, an opportunity for the history of economics community?

Historiographic debate often concludes with prescription, offering alien practices as models for history writing, ready for transplantation into the history of economics. Our goals are nonprescriptive. The one-day workshop will offer participants, from different disciplinary backgrounds, the opportunity to talk about how they work with economic subject matter. We invite participants to reflect on how economics or economic ideas fit in their narratives and analyses. We expect the meeting will conclude by showcasing avenues of research to the benefit of those that wish to engage with economics in historical research.

--Tiago Mata and Loïc Charles, organizers


Preliminary program

Session 1: Interactions

Seneca to witness: How to write history in the face of its makers?
--Andrej Svorencik and Harro Maas (University of Amsterdam)

Face-to-face: Interaction ritual, tacit knowledge, and the social structure of economics
--Daniel Breslau (Virginia Tech)

Session 2: Reading economics, Viewing economics

 Economics, Selection, and the Work of Literary Form
--Robert Mitchell (Duke University)

 Reading economics in 1980 and 2010
--Tiago Mata (University of Amsterdam)

 Lunch

Session 3: The Changing Faces of Economics Across Time

The Political Economy of Primitive Globalization
--Paul B. Cheney (University of Chicago)

Economics as Administrative Art: Sir Alec Cairncross as Chief Economic Adviser, 1961-1969
--Glen O’Hara (Oxford Brookes University)

Autarky/Autarchy—Agricultural Science in Fascist Political Economies
--Matthew Norton Wise (UCLA)

General discussion

For abstracts and notes on contributors, see
http://econ.duke.edu/events/conferences/hope-fall-conference-2010

The conference will be streamed on
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/duke-economics

For further information on the meeting, please contact [log in to unmask]