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Patric Gunning wrote: 
[ ..."Holism" in such a world of uncertain economic process would refer to 
the image that we build to enable us to conceptualize that interaction. 
Adam Smith's invisible hand was one of the first steps along the lines of 
building such an image. In the late 19th century, economists built a more 
complete image of "an economy" [ my emphasis] in which the concept of 
economic class was replaced by the concept of functions and roles....] 
 
 
Some months ago I read a paper by Timothy Mitchell - "Origins and Limits of 
the Modern Idea of the Economy" ( the paper to be presented at the workshop 
on University of Chicago). It seems that Patric's comment gives me a chance 
to check with the HES list's members as to the paper's central idea. Here 
is a short summary of it: 
 
The concept of "the economy," like everything else, is a mere construct, a 
mere representation, not something natural. "The economy" today plays such 
a powerful role in political discourse it is difficult to imagine that it 
emerged so recently - that only since the middle third of the twenieth 
century has it been imagined to exist. Adam Smith, never once refers in WN 
to a structure or whole of this sort. When he uses the term economy, the 
word carries the older meaning of frugality or the prudent use of 
resources. From the works of Munn and Petty in the seventeenth century to 
Smith in the late eighteenth, political economy was not concered with 
structure of production or exchange within an economy, but with goverment 
of the community's affairs. As recently as the 1920s, _Palgrave's 
Dictionary of Political Economy_ contained no separate entry for or 
difinition of the term economy. In 1932, Robbins' classic_ Essay on the 
Nature and Significant..._ never employed the term economy in its novel 
mid-twentieth -century sense. The economy came into being between the 1930s 
and 1950s as the field of operation for novel powers of planning, 
regulation, statistical enumeration and representation. Through these forms 
of political rationality and practice it become possible to imagine the 
economy as a self-contained sphere, distinct from the social, the cultural, 
and other spheres. 
 
 
Regards, 
Mohamma Maljoo 
 
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