>From the issue dated January 24, 2003
Taking On 'Rational Man' Dissident economists fight for a niche in the discipline
By PETER MONAGHAN
How do you start a fire under a huge wet blanket? A faction of disgruntled economists says that is their predicament.
Their efforts to open the field to diverse views are smothered, they say, by an orthodoxy -- neoclassical economics and its derivatives -- that is indulgently theoretical and mathematical in its aspiration to be more "scientific" than any other social science.
Although it is inadequate to explain human behavior, they say, that brand of economics dominates the discipline. Its practitioners decide what work deserves notice by controlling what is published in the field's prestigious journals. And with strongholds at leading research universities and a Nobel awarded in the field, most mainstream economists are too proud of their profession to even notice these puny insurgents. ...
Despite the power of the orthodoxy, the naysayers are numerous. While the American Economic Association has some 22,000 members, the 30-odd groups under the umbrella of the International Confederation of Associations for Pluralism in Economics have American memberships totaling more than 5,000.
The confederation's pained statement of purpose laments that most of its members' interests, such as exploitation and inequitable income distribution, have been "defined out" of economics. The field has gotten away with that, observers say, because it is not as inescapably concerned as, say, political science, sociology, and anthropology with concepts like power, influence, deference, and social practice. ...
<http://chronicle.com/free/v49/i20/20a01201.htm>
Carl
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