================= HES POSTING ================= 
 
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 
 
============ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ============ 
For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]