================= HES POSTING ================= Robert Whaples' posting raises an issue regarding Roy's editorial that I had thought about bringing up, but hadn't had time to address. In his editorial Roy said: "It is not as if the perspective I urge is alien to economists, for it is precisely the model that has been established in the subdiscipline of economic history. That is, many economic historians hold joint appointments in departments of economics and departments of history. Sometimes economic historians have their primary affiliation with history departments. Nonetheless, the standards for writing and publishing and professional acceptance in the discipline of economic history are different from the standards of the subdisciplines of labor economics or international trade, or economic demography, or Post Keynesian economics." The comparison of the situation in the history of economics with that in economic history is interesting. First, from a recent discussion on EH.Teach (including Fred Carstensen, who has contributed to this discussion as well) I gather Roy's characterization of history and economic history is not quite correct: there has been a mass migration of economic historians out of history and into economics departments, precisely for some of the reasons that Robert identifies. Thus, the "sometimes" in Roy's sentence is increasingly less of the time. Secondly, Robert's characterization of the difference between an economic historian's historiographic standards and a historian's standards suggests a parallel with the history of economics. Let me see if I can explain what I mean: for many years the relevant standard of historical explanation in economic history was that adopted by the historian (not to say that there was one standard, simply that the standards were established in the historical profession -- see Peter Novick's history of the American history profession or Michael Bliss' work on Canadian historiography). Contemporary economic historians use the standards of both history and economics, which challenges the earlier standards of historical scholarship. On the history of economics side, for many years the historian of economics often viewed him/herself as an economist, and success was judged in terms of the economic profession's standards. Roy's editorial, and quite a bit of recent work in the profession, challenges the earlier standard in the history of economics by suggesting that the history of economics should be judged by the standards of history. In both sub-disciplines, then, there has been a movement toward standards that differ from those traditionally used in the sub-discipline. In economic history the resulting migration is from history toward economics. In history of economics the migration may be from economics toward history of science (or science studies/cultural studies, etc.). Thirdly, the acceptance by economic historians of the standards of economics rather than those commonly adopted by historians suggests a alternative "migration" pattern for historians of economics. It may be that the economics of science literature could be extended into the study of economics sufficiently to suggest economic explanations for the history of economics. These explanations would contrast with the type of history Roy suggested (depending upon the type of economics employed by practioners of the economics of science) but would still constitute legitimate explanations within the historical study of the economics discipline. Ross Ross B. Emmett Editor, HES and Co-manager CIRLA-L Augustana University College Camrose, Alberta CANADA T4V 2R3 voice: (403) 679-1517 fax: (403) 679-1129 e-mail: [log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask] URL: http://www.augustana.ab.ca/~emmettr ============ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ============ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]