================= HES POSTING =================
Robert Whaples' posting raises an issue regarding Roy's editorial that I had
thought about bringing up, but hadn't had time to address. In his
editorial Roy said:
"It is not as if the perspective I urge is alien to economists, for it is
precisely the model that has been established in the subdiscipline of
economic history. That is, many economic historians hold joint
appointments in departments of economics and departments of history.
Sometimes economic historians have their primary affiliation with
history departments. Nonetheless, the standards for writing and
publishing and professional acceptance in the discipline of economic
history are different from the standards of the subdisciplines of labor
economics or international trade, or economic demography, or Post
Keynesian economics."
The comparison of the situation in the history of economics with that in
economic history is interesting. First, from a recent discussion on
EH.Teach (including Fred Carstensen, who has contributed to this
discussion as well) I gather Roy's characterization of history and
economic history is not quite correct: there has been a mass migration of
economic historians out of history and into economics departments,
precisely for some of the reasons that Robert identifies. Thus, the
"sometimes"
in Roy's sentence is increasingly less of the time.
Secondly, Robert's characterization of the difference between an economic
historian's historiographic standards and a historian's standards suggests
a parallel with the history of economics. Let me see if I can explain what
I mean: for many years the relevant standard of historical explanation in
economic history was that adopted by the historian (not to say that there
was one standard, simply that the standards were established in the
historical profession -- see Peter Novick's history of the American
history profession or Michael Bliss' work on Canadian historiography).
Contemporary economic historians use the standards of both history and
economics, which challenges the earlier standards of historical
scholarship. On the history of economics side, for many years the
historian of economics often viewed him/herself as an economist, and
success was judged in terms of the economic profession's standards. Roy's
editorial, and quite a bit of recent work in the profession, challenges
the earlier standard in the history of economics by suggesting that the
history of economics should be judged by the standards of history. In both
sub-disciplines, then, there has been a movement toward standards that
differ from those traditionally used in the sub-discipline. In economic
history the resulting migration is from history toward economics. In
history of economics the migration may be from economics toward history
of science (or science studies/cultural studies, etc.).
Thirdly, the acceptance by economic historians of the standards of
economics rather than those commonly adopted by historians suggests a
alternative "migration" pattern for historians of economics. It may be
that the economics of science literature could be extended into the study
of economics sufficiently to suggest economic explanations for the
history of economics. These explanations would contrast with the type of
history Roy suggested (depending upon the type of economics employed by
practioners of the economics of science) but would still constitute
legitimate explanations within the historical study of the economics
discipline.
Ross
Ross B. Emmett Editor, HES and Co-manager CIRLA-L
Augustana University College
Camrose, Alberta CANADA T4V 2R3
voice: (403) 679-1517 fax: (403) 679-1129
e-mail: [log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask]
URL: http://www.augustana.ab.ca/~emmettr
============ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ============
For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]
|