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Date: | Fri Mar 31 17:18:33 2006 |
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======================== HES POSTING ===================
In response to Shira Lewin:
Thank you for your posting of last week. I find little to disagree
with in what you say or, perhaps, should say that I would welcome
a colleague who sees the discipline in the way that you do. I still
am a little uneasy with your idea that all/most history of thought should
be focused on contemporary issues in economic theory, but I would like
to imagine that we're only a healthy distance apart on this issue.
I would very much like, for instance, to see more courses (graduate
and undergraduate) on themes like "Monetarism, 1960-1985" or "The
Economics of Poverty, 1880-1980"; I believe that looking at the
developments (and dead ends, reversals, lost threads, quixotic efforts)
in specific areas such as these (with consideration of the social
and political history) would be a great boon to the discipline. We
could help students to see how questions get framed, how theory
develops (doesn't develop), how theory does and doesn't get used,
how people and politics shape what happens. Understanding economics and the
work of economists in fuller context might even help to slow the widely
discussed fall-off in economics enrollments. I won't go on...
Thanks, again, for your posting. I hope that when you're tenured
and secure you will speak out thoughtfully in your department for
a strong role for the history of thought in the curriculum of the
department.
Brad Bateman
Grinnell College
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