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Tony Brewer writes:
> The same goes for the history of economics. Internal history is a
> perfectly sensible pursuit. So is analysis of the socio/political
> context. I stress again that I have nothing against studies that
> emphasize the social context. Sometimes we want to link the history of
> economics to the history of (say) philosophy, sometimes to the history
> of mathematics, or physics. Sometimes we focus on a very narrow range
> of questions, sometimes we zoom out to a wider view.
He goes on to write, and it is this which I want to focus upon:
> My objection is to an attempt to privilege certain approaches over
> others. Weintraub's claim was that because economics is an human
> activity we must study the social background.
We appear to be getting closer to the heart of the matter. Tony has
me right, in his last sentence, but I am nowhere to be found in his
first. Saying "we must study" says just that, where "we" are
historians of economics. I believe that not everyone should do this,
not no one should do this, but some of us must do this.
Thus "we" should, which was, I though, Jim Henderson's point
which began this thread. De-privileging internalist, and/or Whiggish,
histories is not the same thing as privileging social history, or
psycho-history, or any other histriographic stance. It is simply
opening our discipline to more varied, and I believe (it is of course
an ethical not epistemological stance) more interesting and therefore
more compelling narratives. In Geertz's terms, it makes for a thicker
history; in McCloskey's terms, it makes for a a richer conversation.
E. Roy Weintraub, Professor of Economics
Director, Center for Social and Historical Studies of Science
Duke University, Box 90097
Durham, North Carolina 27708-0097
Phone and voicemail: (919) 660-1838
Fax: (919) 684-8974
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
URL: http://www.econ.duke.edu/~erw/erw.homepage.html
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