History of Economics Playground

Not everyone agrees, so it seems. Fourcade's book has been slashed by Keith Tribe in the Fall 2011 issue of History of Political Economy. Keith Tribe is no hard-core economist: he has graduated in sociology and he is as far as I know the first historian of economics to have seriously discussed and used Foulcault's methodology in two very interesting essays (Land and Labour; and Governing economy; both published at CUP). He has also translated Koselleck in english. His main argument against Fourcade's book is historical and his review closes with a sentence that I like very much for its sharp bitterness: "It would be good to have a reliable international perspective on this important issue [how economists have been trained, LC], but unfortunately this book is not it."
Unlike Yann, I have not read Fourcade's book, yet, but I have a high regard for Tribe's opinion and would like to know if other readers of this blog (and Yann) have a follow-up on this.

Dear "anonymous" (Loïc, really?!), I wanted to discuss Tribe's HOPE review in this post, but then I thought it might be kind of confusing regarding my main argument, which is not much about the content of the book than about how Fourcade credits the HET community. In many ways, I am dual about Tribe's review. On one hand, it seems that the drawbacks he points out are legitimate. His main points are all about economics in the UK and it seems that in this regard, Fourcade's book has its share of inaccuracies. Also, his more substantial claim is that in Fourcade's book, the sociological work poorly complements the historical elements, that the fact that the interviewees are all anonymous is problematic, because we do not know much about the various positions they occupy and how legitimate their discourse is in relation with the wider picture that is drawn in every chapter. And here, again, he has a point, because I also found some of these paragraphs quite jarring in comparison with the remaining parts of the book.

Still, what poses problem in Tribe's review is that it is not done fairly. He does not describe what is actually in the book, he goes straight to criticism but does not say anything about Fourcade's main arguments. To say in the beginning that Fourcade is merely interested in how "national styles" exist in spite of the "postwar neoclassicism" is hardly a good depiction of what the book is about. The book is about what economics has been and what it has been to be an economist in the 20th century. When Tribe writes that "there is no discussion of what economics at any given time is", his reproach is misplaced because it is justly Fourcade's purpose to avoid defining economics at any given point of the time because what she wants to do is precisely to account for the construction of the identity of economists on the national and on the global levels. It is particularly striking in the chapter on France that what was an economist has remained something quite unclear during the period under scrutiny. Was it some engineer from the Ponts et Chaussée trying to determine public goods tariff? Was it a Law faculty liberal ideologue? Likewise, because it is a book on the professionalization of economics, it's quite normal that it is mostly focused on institutional matters. It does not address much the question of the content of economic models or textbooks but it is not the purpose of the book. That is for other people to do. For instance, one could write a nice paper asking whether Fourcade's identified national styles in economics can be located by doing a comparative study of French, American and British textbooks. And the results might be interesting to read. But it is not what Fourcade's book is about.

Tribe is right in saying that a "reliable international perspective" is needed and he might even be right in saying that Fourcade's book is far from perfect in this respect. But one can also ask whether historians of economics have fared much better! How many works giving a large perspective on the discipline have been published since Coats (1996) and Morgan & Rutherford (1998)? It is a pity that the works people refer to when they want to understand economics from an outsider's point of view are more often written by non historians of economics (Amadae, Nassar ...). Maybe it is just because apart from a few researchers like Phil Mirowski, barely anyone has attempted to write such boundary works in a visible way. Can we let sociologists write our histories and at the same time criticize them for doing it the sociological way? The thing with Fourcade's book is that it may contain a few (many?) inaccuracies, but it is (to my knowledge) the only book that gives a large perspective on the making of economics without being particularly critical of the profession or being internalist. But as I see things, it seems to me that Fourcade is being globally right on the big picture - many things she says about economics in France or in the US help me understand a lot of things I have observed over the years or have reinforced my intuitions - and I think it is quite unavoidable that a global work like hers is going to be criticized by those who are more interested in the details or in an accurate study of a period of time or of a particular group of economist. Clearly, Rutherford's study of the institutionalists is more accurate about its subject than anything Fourcade has to say about it but on the other hand Fourcade has a wider scope. Are these two levels mutually incompatible or complementary? I have no definite answer for this. 

I hate to be bitter about the bitter review, but that was my first reaction when i read it. I thought it was unfortunate that HOPE chose Tribe to do this job and be the voice of the history of economics. Fortunately, Phil Mirowski wrote a review of the book that is much more balanced and appreciative.

I too have great respect for Tribe's scholarship but I found the review terse and lacking substance. It argues as fact Tribe's own peculiar views, for instance, that the American University did not follow the model of the German research University. I have seen that argument made many times and very well, why Tribe classifies this as mortal sin I do not know.  

I agree with Yann's assessments above, except "Also, his more substantial claim is that in Fourcade's book, the sociological work poorly complements the historical elements, that the fact that the interviewees are all anonymous is problematic, because we do not know much about the various positions they occupy and how legitimate their discourse is in relation with the wider picture that is drawn in every chapter."

There is nothing irregular in this practice. I see no merit in pidgeon holing ones' informants? As in "Ah, X is a Cambridge don, then..." then what? How does one present them? What does that mean? More importantly, what does that do to one's argument? Tribe plays on the common sense belief that everyone is self-serving and has an axe to grind. I am sure Fourcade knows that too. I am much more willing than he is to trust the judgment of the analyst in making the calculations about which informants to trust and which ones not to trust. The sweep and nature of the book requires that such judgments do not take over the text.

Tribe's own interview project is important, was important, but in no way addressed the questions of a comparative sociological work. I think he objects to the possibility of a comparative sociological analysis of the economics profession and tries to torpedo it with historical minutiae. His loss.

Tiago. Just a quick adjustment, because I do not want to be misunderstood here. The following sentence 

"Also, his more substantial claim is that in Fourcade's book, the sociological work poorly complements the historical elements, that the fact that the interviewees are all anonymous is problematic, because we do not know much about the various positions they occupy and how legitimate their discourse is in relation with the wider picture that is drawn in every chapter"

is something I attribute to Tribe and though I say he might have a point here, I am not endorsing his view either. When I say that I found the interpenetration of historical analysis and anonymous interviews quite "jarring" at times, I was not inplying, unlike Tribe, that the sociological analysis itself is problematic. It is more to me a matter of style than of substance. In the chapter on the United States for instance, 90 % of the content is historical and the bits of interviews come very late in the narrative, making it look quite dichotomic (the interviewees almost all talk about the present and have nothing to say about the past), whereas in the chapter on France, the interviews are much more intertwined with the historical narrative, making it much more fluid for the reader. Is it that the French interviewees are much more interested in the history of the discipline themselves? Is it also that the chapter on France is more focused on the recent period whereas the chapter on the US has more to say about the interwar period and those who could testify to that are either dead or too old to be trusted? Or is it just that as a product of the French system herself, Fourcade was much more in empathy with the French interviewees?

So to sum it up, and make myself clear here, I am not saying that the sociological work that is done by Fourcade has flaws or is not worth pursuing, I am just saying it is not always integrated in a way I found completely satisfying. And to concur with Tiago, I must say that, though I tried to be as cautious as possible in my report of Tribe's arguments and voice my criticisms in a timorous way , I also believe that overall his review is highly detrimental for our profession because HOPE readers will think that the book is not worth reading at all. It is a pity that he has opted for trench warfare instead of providing a comprehensive analysis of Fourcade's book. Our community will run risks of continuing and irreversible isolation by ignoring and not addressing this literature. OUR loss.

see my review in Business History Review, 84 (1), 135-137, Spring 2010.

Roy writes "Historians of the social sciences, and of science more generally, will find this work to be invaluable in their own attempts to contextualize post- World War II scientific practice." I think that is just the right assessment.

I completely concur with Roy's assessment. In fact, I would go even further because I believe that the book is not only useful for historians of (social) science, who do not have to be convinced that sociological approaches are worth pursuing, but that the book is also useful for the economists who want to have a large overview of how their profession has evolved over the 20th century. Actually, I am really enthusiastic about this aspect and I have promoted Fourcade's book with such zeal at my department that I think my colleagues may suspect that I hold some shares at Princeton University Press. To me, Tribe's critique is really characteristic of the historian of economics' position as the gatekeeper, the internalist who think that he is the only one who can write accounts of the economics' profession. 

In fact, I am still reading the book as I write these comments and now that I have finished the sections on the French and Us economics, I am now in the middle of the chapter on Britain (I'm not doing it in order). And I must say it is where I learnt the most - maybe it is just that I started lower on the learning curve here. Tribe's remark that Fourcade does not give enough attention to the work that was done at the LSE is annihilated when you read the paragraphs on how utilitarianism as shaped the new welfare economics there. It might not be new for specialists, but I believe it is the clearest synthesis of these quite complicated ideas that I have ever read (all praises to Roger Backhouse whom Fourcade is referring to in this passage). The conlusion to me is that this kind of work should not be judged upon some prefefinite standard set by the reviewer but by answering this question: does one feels more informed when he has finished reading it? So far the book has helped fix some of my ideas on economics in a way that few other works have done in the past. To me, the most valuable lesson one can draw from it is that in spite of increasing technicization, economics has always remained a political science (something Roy is also pointing in his review). What has changed is just the way the discipline situates itself toward the political sphere. 

I had not realised that this discussion had continued after I came across it some months ago, and thought that I might add some words in defence of the stance I adopt. I admit that the tone of the review is sharp and aggressive, for which I apologise. However, while I started out as a sociologist provided with an excellent background in the social sciences by my teachers at Essex, by the time I started my grad work I had decided that while sociology might give you a perspective upon the development of economic discourse, it never really gave you anything substantive. For that I turned to historical research, first of all, the history of the sciences.

I do feel that some of the above comments read over the key argument I make: that Fourcade makes her comparison through the contruction of three national models which are in effect stereotypes; then synthesises some of the secondary literature related to each of the three national cases. The secondary literature is uneven, as I know from my work co-ordinating the international institutionalisation project in the 1980s with Istvan Hont. Generally the outcome of Fourcade's approach is that each sees their views confirmed in the result, given the sterotypical nature of the national model. So my argument is that the method simply ends up confirming received opinion. Those who find anything new in the account are mostly catching up with the received opinion.

My own approach to comparative method is that you have to examine one case thoroughly, and at the same time examine all those similar cases that might or might not relate to it. But the "comparative method" applies to the research, and not to the way you make arguments based on the research. Strictly speaking, this is the way Max Weber went about things, but here again you have to read a great deal of Weber to understand that, and not simply read about his work. So for example, I have done a reasonable amount of work on the development of economics in the USA in the later 19th century and the early 20th, in the course of which I looked at the way university structures developed. Of course, I am also familiar with the German side. And so I believe that no matter how often the story about the German and the US university is repeated, it does not stand up if you examine how individual universities, and the system of which they were a part, actually developed.

The book of interviews with economists (1997) is only a small part of the research and publication that I did over many years on the development of the discipline of economics. I embarked upon the interview project because existing British university and departmental records lent little insight into development of economics in postwar Britain, which I had reconstructed up to that point. If you want to see how I think one should go about accounting for the way in which a discipline is created, then please look at my essay on the development of Betriebswirtschaftslehre in Strategies of Economic Order. This shows how, starting with standard commercial education in 1898, business education was developed in Germany within about twenty-five years into an enterprise with its own schools and departments, journals, textbooks, students and academic qualification. This is fitted to no model, but draws upon my extensive knowledge of the development of commercial education in Britain, France, and the USA. It demonstrates the underlying dynamic of Disziplinierung, Verwissenschaftlichung and Verschulung of the twentieth century university, which is the framework within which modern economics was created.

Dear Keith Tribe, thank you very much for this message. It is good to realize that our blog postings (and the comments section), which are mostly intended as reflections on the fly, are still read months after their publication. The clarifications are useful, indeed. Regards, Y.