For the 14th conference of the European Society 
for the History of Economic Thought in Amsterdam, 
I have submitted a session on the use of visual 
representation in economics, with the following text:

    The last two decades have witnessed a growing 
literature on visualization in the history of 
science following the publication of Lynch and 
Woolgar's Representation in Scientific Practice 
(1990) – see for instance a recent ffocus section 
in Isis (March 2006). Despite previous attempts 
to draw the attention of historians of economics 
and insightful published papers on the subject 
– e.g. a ECHE conference in 2002 and a related 
mini-symposium in JHET in 2003), the use of 
visual representation in economics remains 
largely misunderstood. Graphical methods, for 
instance, are still regarded as a mere 
subdivision of mathematical analysis, whereas 
Klein (1995), Cook (2005) and Giraud (2007) have 
demonstrated that they have been considered 
distinct from mathematics since the early days of 
neoclassical economics. More generally, though 
anyone would concede that graphs, charts, tables, 
pictures and illustrations are part of the 
economist's workaday tools, few efforts have been 
engaged to understand precisely how they operate 
within the larger models and theoretical 
frameworks in which they are used. Failure to 
recognize the role of visualization in economics 
is related to the fact that historians of the 
field tend to focus on the development of theory 
rather than on the practices in which 
theorization is entrenched, favoring a 
foundational approach which undermines cultural 
specificities. The most recent contributions to 
the history of science, indeed, have pointed out 
that the role of visualization in science is best 
understood within the framework of visual culture 
– see for instance Luc Pauwels (ed.), Visual 
Cultures of Science (2006).In this session, we 
would like to follow this literature by bringing 
together a set of papers which explore the use of 
visual representation in connection with peculiar 
cultures, whether disciplinary or operating at a 
larger level ­ the birth of mass-media in the US, 
for instance.. Contributions will focus on the 
invention of visual devices in relation with 
specific practices, on the interaction between 
economists and artists or on how certain visual 
methods are affected when audiences are different 
from those they were originally intended for. 
They need not be focused on theoretical economics 
but also on the use of visual representation by 
economic propagandists, state administrations or 
practitioners operating on markets     I already 
have  two papers for the session. I would be 
happy to include one or two other papers. These 
may not be strictly papers on the history of 
economics but also papers on the history of 
management or general history articles which 
cover economic themes (for instance, economic 
history, history of measurement and the larger 
history of social sciences). Beyond the ESHET 
conference, this session may help launch the 
discussion on this neglected aspect of scientific 
practice and to help increase multidisciplinary 
work on the subject in the near future. If you 
have an abstract to submit, you can do this 
directly to me (yann.giraud[at]u-cergy.fr, 
replace [at] with @), I will re-submit the 
session as a whole before the papers are 
individually submitted through the ESHET website 
(http://www.eshet.net/conference/sarea.php?p=33&sa=57).You 
can also contact me if you have already submitted 
a paper which you think may fit this session in particular.

Yann Giraud