"Dissident economists fight for niche in discipline"

[Carl Remick]

[From the Chronicle of Higher Education]

>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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