----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- My name is Loic Charles, I am a French assistant professor in economics specialized in thick history of economics (18th French economics). I have just one comment on the discussion which has been going on for a few days now and two queries to American historian of economics with an interest in thick history. First, I think that the idea that heterodox economists are more open minded and less anti- intellectual than orthodox economists is simply non-sense, at least in France. When it comes to the history of economics, or economic thought as they prefer to call it, they hold the same kind of excluding policy against historians of economics doing "thick history" than orthodox economist do against them in the economic discipline. My personal case (and that of few others who had less luck than I, and have now left the academic world) is exemplary. It took me four years to secure a position at the university and the position I finally got is in a department that had not developped an interest in the history of economics in whatever form: They recruited me as a "normal economist" with a specialisation in the subdiscipline of the history of economics and they count on me to publish in good academic journals. At the same time, none of the three universities that had announced that they they needed an historian of economic thought was interested in my application, simply because they were interested and wanted to recruit an heterodox type of historian of economic thought without regards for the intellectual quality of the discourses and writings of the candidates in presence. I don't blame them: they simply follow the policy that suits their best interests, just as orthodox economists do when they exclude heterodox economists from the discipline as Roy has explained it, but they are no more open-minded and intellectually-inclined than the others. Now the questions: 1. American and English historians have developed during the last few years a rapidly growing interest in the the history of 18th century French and Scottish economics. Several articles, most of them very interesting and challenging, were published in leading Historical Journals such as the "Historical Journal", "Journal of modern history", "French history", "French Historical Studies" and even the "Economic History Review". Is there a possibility in the Anglo-saxon system to develop institutionally (I mean positions, Ph. D., etc.) the parallel interest that scolars in different departments (History, History of Science and Economics) are developing for HE? and 2. Why there are so few conferences (and more generally collaborations) that associates Intellectual Historians (save historians of science) and economists in the USA? Loïc Charles Université Paris II ------------ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ------------ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]