Economists and the Shadow of "The Other" Before 1914 (original) (raw)
Related papers
Not An Average Human Being': How Economics Succumbed to Racial Accounts of Economic Man
Race, Liberalism and Economics, 2002
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The Significance of Race in Neoclassical Economic's Concept of Homo Economicus
Despite homo economicus coming under increased scrutiny by a wide array of other scholars from various disciplines since the latter half of the 20th century, it continues to be used in mainstream economic thought (Semov, 2009: 98). While the critique provided by feminist economics has concentrated on the gendered construction of the theory, there is limited scholarship that has dealt with its racialised construction (Persky, 1995: 229). I define racialised as being characterised by a racial system of oppression, which privileges white people and disadvantages PoC. In this essay, I will attempt to fill this gap in the literature by arguing that mainstream economics’ construction of homo economicus is racialised to a large extent for two primary reasons. The first reason is that mainstream economics textbooks employ the example of Robinson Crusoe as the typical economic man, as he supposedly represents the perfectly rational, self-interested subject (Watson, 2018: 544). The textbooks, more often than not, completely exclude the character of Friday, a Native American man, whom Crusoe enslaves (Watson, 2018: 544). Thus, the textbooks imply that Crusoe’s survival is enabled by him being the epitomised rational economic man, which is problematic because his survival is clearly also enabled by the slave labour performed by Friday (Hewitson, 1994: 144). The textbooks that do include Friday present him as an object to be used by the “true” economic man, i.e. the white economic man, in order to maximise the latter’s utility (Watson, 2018: 546). This creates a racialised construction of economic man because it denies Friday’s rationality and therefore his ability to also be an economic man, since rationality is such a defining characteristic of the mythical species. The second reason I argue that economic man’s construction is racialised is due to the Western colonialist mentality that shaped the assumptions of the scholars who primarily theorised homo economicus (Williams, 1993: 145). This creates a racialised construction in two primary ways. Firstly, the Western universalist mentality that made these thinkers believe that Western knowledge is superior and therefore homo economicus can be universalised ignores the different socialisations, theorisations and lived experiences that PoC have had (Williams, 1993: 145). Secondly, the scholars’ colonialist mentality of self-interest and the colonialist belief that cheap racialised labour was readily available had clear impacts on developing the mythical species of homo economicus (Dixon, 1977: 122).
Drawing New Lines: Economists and Other Social Scientists on Society in the 1960s
History of Political Economy 2010 Volume 42, Number Suppl 1: 315-342, 2010
This article contextualizes the writing, reception, and impact of Gary Becker’s first book, The Economics of Discrimination, in order to deepen our understanding of the relationships between economics and the other social sciences. First, we study the social scientific work on race relations prior to Becker’s book, work that was heavily influenced by the work of the economist Gunnar Myrdal and criticized for lacking an underlying theoretical framework. Second, we analyze the novelty of Becker’s contribution. Becker’s book introduced nonpecuniary motives into the neoclassical framework so as to respond to the criticisms leveled by institutional economists against the marginal analysis of labor markets. In doing so, Becker attempted to redefine the relationship between economists and other social scientists. Third, we study the reaction to Becker’s redefinition of disciplinary territories, which illustrated the current debates within sociology and labor economics. Finally, we study the impact of Becker’s book on social scientific research in the 1960s.
Attitudes toward Race, Hierarchy and Transformation in the 19th Century
2005
Using the debates between Classical political economists and their critics as our lens, this paper examines the question of whether we\u27re the same or different. Starting with Adam Smith, Classical economics presumed that humans are the same in their capacity for language and trade ; observed differences were then explained by incentives, luck and history, and it is the vanity of the philosopher incorrectly to conclude otherwise. Such analytical egalitarianism was overthrown sometime after 1850 , when notions of race and hierarchy came to infect social analysis as a result of attacks on homogeneity by the Victorian Sages (including Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin), in anthropology and biology (James Hunt and Charles Darwin), and among political economists themselves (W.R. Greg). Two questions were at issue. Do everyone\u27s preferences count equally, and is everyone equally capable of making economic decisions? In Smith\u27s account, philosophers and subjects alike are capable of m...
American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 2008
Abstract. At the end of the 19th century, Georges Vacher de Lapouge and Otto Ammon founded a school of thought denominated “social anthropology” or “anthropo-sociology,” aimed at placing racism on a scientific basis. Their intent was to create a new discipline into which the themes of biological heredity, natural selection, social stratification, and political organization were to converge. This paper intends to demonstrate the wide resonance that anthroposociology had in the economic literature, analyzing the thought of authors such as Carlos C. Closson, Vilfredo Pareto, and Thorstein Veblen. A particular focus will be on the racial and eugenic arguments used as explanation of social and economic inequality.
Attitudes Towards Race, Hierarchy and Transformation in the 19th Century
2005
Using the debates between Classical political economists and their critics as our lens, this paper examines the question of whether we’re the same or different. Starting with Adam Smith,Classical economics presumed that humans are the same in their capacity for language and trade;observed differences were then explained by incentives, luck and history,and it is the“vanity of the philosopher”incorrectly to conclude otherwise.Such “analytical egalitarianism”was overthrown sometime after1850,when notions of race and hierarchy came to infect social analysis as a result of attacks on homogeneity by the Victorian Sages (including Thomas Carlyle and John Ruskin), in anthropology and biology(James Hunt and Charles Darwin), and among political economists themselves (W.R.Greg).Two questions were at issue.Do everyone’s preferences count equally,and is everyone equally capable of making economic decisions?In Smith’s account,philosophers and subjects alike are capable of making decisions.The opp...
This paper examines the relationship between contemporary financial practices and race. The paper aims to look beyond specific empirical regularities like the racial dimension of access to credit, austerity measures, or credit scoring. Following the intuition that race is already the product of racist policies, it looks at the condition of possibility for these empirical racial differences. Central to this analysis is the deployment of post-colonial techniques that challenge the assumptions and direction of historical progress to reveal hidden socially reproduced hierarchies of power. Through an examination of finance and slave trades, this contribution identifies race with the three processes of de-humanisation, de-socialisation, and de-territorialisation. Specifically the definition of slaves as property and then interest, the remoteness of plantation ownership and the absolution of guilt through liberal rationality are shown to be of great importance. It traces those ‘processes’ and recognizes their full operational power – albeit in a different disguise – in contemporary finance. It closes with the plea to challenge those technocratic debates and identifies the –at first sight – rather technocratic concept of risk as an important ‘device’ through which this financialized rationality (with its racist manifestations) is made operational.
American Journal of Sociology, 2010
This small book, part of the publisher's Great Thinkers in Economics series, was written by a man with a mission. As Paul Davidson says in the preface, "The purpose of this book is to convince the reader, whether an intelligent layperson, a student of economics, or even a professional economist, that what passes as the conventional wisdom espoused by the talking heads on television or written about in the mass media and mainstream economics journals is not applicable to the world in which we live" (xiii). Davidson's mission, then, is to introduce the reader to the life and work of a man whose economic analysis he believes is applicable to the world: Maynard Keynes. The story that emerges, however, in Davidson's telling is not a historical narrative of the Keynes who lived from 1883 to 1946, but rather a composite of snapshots that create a portrait of a static figure whose ideas did not apparently change in any essential way during his lifetime. This figure is, on the one hand, perfectly suited to stand against everything that Davidson believes to be wrong with contemporary economics and, on the other hand, to stand on the same side of every political issue important to Davidson. To be sure, Davidson gets Keynes right at several moments in time, and there are some important continuities in Keynes's thought across his lifetime; but Davidson fails to probe the many changes that took place in Keynes's beliefs during a long and active life (he may have died at sixty-two, but he was the editor of the Economic Journal for thirty-seven years). In abandoning the Keynes who was capable of changing his mind and who worked deftly to fashion new policies and new theories, we find a rigid Keynes whom many people will not recognize. One area in which Keynes experienced many shifts during his lifetime involved international trade and finance; his interest in those areas is a major constant in his thought, but his positions changed appreciably. Thus, a good example of the static Keynes drawn by Davidson emerges in chapters 8, 9, and 10, which deal with those areas. Davidson begins in chapter 8 with a fair amalgam of Keynes's macroeconomics History of Political Economy