Roy writes:

The issue is that calling Smith "the founding
father of economics" instead of the "founder of economics" sets up a
reader's expectation that there is someone who then could be called
"the founding mother of  economics", else why introduce "father" at
all? The only point of using "father" is either insensitivity to
language or subtly to suggest that economics is itself gendered from
its beginnings.


Evelyn writes:

How is it that a discipline founded on the rhetoric of families manages 
to marginalize families in most of its analysis and for most of its 
history, pretending instead that we are all more or less rational adult 
creatures who can make independent decisions?


Edith writes:

In my view trying to understand Adam Smith from a feminist perspective 
brings to light how his perception and take on gender relations have 
been of influence not only on his moral thinking but also on his pure 
economics, to paraphrase Schumpter. This is a valid and promising 
endevor, as it enriches our understanding of Smith and his work.



These people write about economics or economists without defining it. 
Who knows whether a feminist critique of economics or Adam Smith can be 
relevant to if one is unwilling to define economics and, by implication, 
Adam Smith's contribution to it? Everyone knows Roy's views on the 
definition of economics: let every flower bloom. One can hardly make 
sense of the phrase that "economics is itself gendered from the 
beginning." Whose economics? What economics?

Evelyn criticizes the assumption of choice and action on the grounds 
that economists do not deal with families. This is a non sequitor. There 
is no obligation of economics to deal with families. And the critique of 
the assumption of choice and action is either a criticism of those 
economists who make this assumption or, in my definition, a criticism of 
economics as a field of endeavor. Such a critique is pretty shallow 
given the obvious difference between those societies (and the families 
therein?) in which market systems have developed and those in which they 
have not.

Edith writes about Smith's pure economics. What does she mean, one asks? 
It seems a stretch to me that a "feminist perspective" on "Adam Smith's 
"take on gender relations" would have had a significant effect on his 
discovery and transmission of the principle of the higher productivity 
of the division of labor under capitalism. This is not to say that such 
a "feminist perspective" would be uninteresting. Many reports are 
interesting. It says that insofar as one is concerned with the history 
of economics, Edith's "feminist perspective" on Adam Smith has so little 
significance that one can safely ignore it.



On 4/4/2011 10:31 PM, E. Roy Weintraub wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 4, 2011 at 9:39 PM, Matias Vernengo
> <[log in to unmask]>  wrote:
>> I would agree that political economy does not have a founder in the 
>> proper sense of the word.  But I didn't understand the feminist 
>> critique.  For example, Rosa Luxemburg refers to Quesnay as the 
>> "father of the Physiocrats." Is that inappropriate?
>>
> It's not about any critique, feminist or otherwise. Rosa Luxemborg
> would hardly, today, accept being enlisted in such an argument,
> polymorphous libertine that she was. It's instead about what Americans
> call a "tin ear", an aural blindness to the usage subtleties of the
> English language.  The issue is that calling Smith "the founding
> father of economics" instead of the "founder of economics" sets up a
> reader's expectation that there is someone who then could be called
> "the founding mother of  economics", else why introduce "father" at
> all? The only point of using "father" is either insensitivity to
> language or subtly to suggest that economics is itself gendered from
> its beginnings. So using the language in that way, writing that way,
> suggests that the rhetor is either a poor writer/speaker/thinker, or a
> misogynist, alternatively either an uneducated person or what was
> formally called "a male chauvinist pig".  Hope this helps, and places
> Backhouse's amazed query in context.
>

-- 
Pat Gunning
Professor of Economics
Melbourne, Florida
http://www.nomadpress.com/gunning/welcome.htm