How Does Economic Knowledge Have a Politics?

Autor(en)

Verena Halsmayer, Eric Hounshell

Abstrakt

In the late 1960s, two big shots of postwar economics debated model-building techniques in the Public Interest. Robert M. Solow argued that the new methods enabled precise state intervention. To John K. Galbraith, they marginalized critical economic thinking and abetted the prevailing growthist ideology to the detriment of the public good. Both claimed influence over policy making but through different channels. Both argued vigorously to fix the political meaning of modeling before a general audience. This article focuses on the actors’ frustrated attempts to establish clear-cut relationships between research practices, modes of intervention, and political ideals. Despite their strenuous exertions, they did not succeed in equipping their competing methodological stances with equally distinct politics. Where these efforts failed, they resorted to constructions of scientific self and other. Personae glued together practices (including assumptions, tools, and standards of evidence) and politics where perhaps no inherent bond existed. Our reading (1) elucidates the confusion over mathematical models just as they became the objects of political debate, and (2) aims to confound the idea that there is a politics of knowledge that is clearly delineable and transparent to historical actors and retrospective observers alike.

Organisation(en)

Institut für Geschichte

Externe Organisation(en)

Universität Luzern

Journal

KNOW: A Journal on the Formation of Knowledge

Band

4

Seiten

263–293

Anzahl der Seiten

31

ISSN

2473-6007

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1086/710608

Publikationsdatum

09-2020

Peer-reviewed

Ja

ÖFOS 2012

601022 Zeitgeschichte

ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete

General

Link zum Portal

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/aea87b88-4bcc-41ba-827c-fb8dbd5da096