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Summary
Is or has economics ever been the imperial social science? Could or should it ever be so? These are the central concerns of this book. It involves a critical reflection on the process of how economics became the way it is, characterised by a narrow and intolerant orthodoxy, that has, nonetheless, increasingly directed its attention to appropriating the subject matter of other social sciences through the process termed 'economics imperialism'. In short, the book addresses the shifting boundaries between economics and the other social sciences as seen from the confines of 'the dismal science', with some reflection on the responses to the economic imperialists by other disciplines.
Author Biography
Ben Fine is Professor of Economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He is the author of Social Capital Versus Social Theory (2001), The World of Consumption (2002), the co-editor of Development Policy in the 21st Century (2001), and co-author of From Political Economy to Economics (2009), all published by Routledge. Dimitris Milonakis is Associate Professor and Head of the Economics Department at the University of Crete. He is the co-author of From Political Economy to Economics (2009), published by Routledge.
Table of Contents
| Preface | p. x |
| Introduction and overview | p. 1 |
| Preliminaries | p. 1 |
| From reductionism ... | p. 2 |
| ... To expansionism | p. 5 |
| General outline | p. 8 |
| The historical logic of economics imperialism | p. 11 |
| Introduction | p. 11 |
| Questions raised by economics imperialism | p. 13 |
| Bringing back in the 'social'? | p. 17 |
| Concluding remarks | p. 26 |
| The economic approach: marginalism extended | p. 29 |
| Introduction | p. 29 |
| Becker and the pure, if rough, road to economics imperialism | p. 32 |
| Politics as public choice: Buchanan and Tullock | p. 36 |
| From the rational to the non-rational | p. 42 |
| Concluding remarks | p. 51 |
| New economics imperialism: the revolution portrayed | p. 56 |
| Introduction | p. 56 |
| The information-theoretic approach: from Akerlof to Stiglitz | p. 58 |
| Human capital, finance, development and space | p. 66 |
| Concluding remarks | p. 74 |
| From economics, through institutions, to society? | p. 78 |
| Introduction | p. 78 |
| New institutional economics ... | p. 79 |
| ...Versus new economics sociology | p. 87 |
| Concluding remarks | p. 91 |
| From social capital to freakonomics | p. 94 |
| Introduction | p. 94 |
| Economic history and social capital | p. 96 |
| From Coase theorem to Coasean worlds | p. 99 |
| Freakonomics-abnormal economics as normal | p. 106 |
| Concluding remarks | p. 110 |
| Economics confronts the social sciences: resistance or smooth progression? | p. 115 |
| Introduction | p. 115 |
| From Becker to Akerlof and beyond | p. 116 |
| Economics: bright light or dim science? | p. 122 |
| Concluding remarks | p. 126 |
| Whither economics? | p. 130 |
| Introduction | p. 130 |
| How economics got its spots | p. 131 |
| The why and how | p. 136 |
| Concluding remarks | p. 147 |
| Whither social science? | p. 149 |
| Introduction | p. 149 |
| Beyond neoliberalism and postmodernism: social science at a crossroads | p. 149 |
| Structure and agency in social theory | p. 153 |
| Concluding remarks | p. 158 |
| Whither political economy? | p. 161 |
| Introduction | p. 161 |
| Historical and social economics versus value theory? | p. 162 |
| What is to be done? | p. 165 |
| Concluding remarks | p. 172 |
| References | p. 176 |
| Index | p. 198 |
| Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved. |
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