How Not to Cogitate on Disciplinary Identity
Alex Contarino once again demonstrates why history and facts are critically important things for talking about the academy -- and especially when cogitating about the state of the academic disciplines. There is something odd about contemporary (so-called) conservative attitudes toward history: they are all for understanding the past, but they always interpret the past in presentist terms.
Lamenting the absence of "balance" in UNC Chapel Hill Economics courses, Contarino makes the all-too-common student mistake of confusing their myopic experiences in college with an authoritative view of what universities -- and especially big, complicated research universities like Chapel Hill -- have to offer. Apparently blinkered by his aversion to courses in the other social disciplines, Contarino takes the Economic faculty to task for not teaching what he wants. What he should have been doing is looking for what he wants in other departments, and if he doesn't like the particular scholarly focus at Chapel Hill Economics, he should have looked for other institutions where economics is taught differently.
So, herewith, some historical perspective on matters of disciplinary identity, with the side effect of explaining (without excusing!) the Economics faculty at UNCH
Contarino is about 130 years late to the party. Economics went "mathematical" when it tried to establish itself as an independent discipline (along with Political Science and Sociology) in the late 19th century, mostly (along with Political Science and Sociology) by pretending that all the interesting philosophical issues from the discourse of Political Economy weren't as important as the assumption that everyone is a utility maximizer. (You can thank Jeremy Bentham for that once very ugly and now ahistorically commonplace neologism)
There is no small irony in the fact that Contarino's commentary is an indictment of the failure of that effort. But recapitulating the economics methodenstreit of the 1880's, or the critique of positivism in the 1960s and 70s, isn't the point. The point is that there are plenty of people who still take these questions seriously, and who (contra Patrick Conway) don't think the distillations of economics textbooks do justice to the complex concerns of classical political economists (yes, you might actually learn something from Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments!), but they travel in circles quite a distance from mainstream economics.
With a bit of an open mind, and a relaxation of definitional and conceptual rigidity, those courses can be found. But a "trigger warning" may be in order: taking courses in economic sociology, economic history, economic anthropology, the history of political thought, and (I can't believe I am recommending!) comparative literature, might require exposure to notions in classical political economy that are somewhat critical of the catallactic assumptions shared by everyone who works for the Pope Center. Just don't tell Jay Schalin -- he would most certainly not approve of the indoctrinating pap you might read in those old books, or the writings of people who actually read them closely and study the people who wrote them!
