Historiography
This chapter provides an introduction to historiographical reflection in the history of economics in the context of selected wider debates in general history, philosophy, and the history of science. Historiographical reflection in the history of economics can proceed in several directions. What is it that distinguishes history of economics from the history of science, for example, or from general history, cultural and social history, intellectual history, the philosophy and methodology of economics, economic history, and finally, economics itself? Related, although not strictly of a historiographical nature, are attempts to justify the pursuit of the history of economics, especially vis-à-vis the economics profession at large. On a more particular level, one may ask how the history of economics could be pursued, should be pursued, or is being pursued. Of this triad, the first inquiry typically takes the form of trying to identify dimensions by which histories of economics could differ from each other in principle. Historiographical debate has approached this question on the basis of various binary oppositions, such as relativist versus absolutist history, historical versus rational reconstruction, presentism versus contextualism, internal versus external, thick versus thin, or social versus conceptual history. After reviewing general historiography, and various strategies of arguing for the disciplinary relevance of history of economics, the chapter critically examines the apparent opposition of rational versus historical reconstruction and thus of absolutism and relativism in the history of economics, pointing to a crucial ambiguity in how historians of economics employ the notion of historical reconstruction.
Preprint: 2003-Klaes-Historiography.pdf
Bibliographical details of authoritative and final version:
Klaes, M. 2003. Historiography. In Warren J. Samuels, Jeff E. Biddle, and John B. Davis eds A Companion to the History of Economic Thought. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 491-506.
Comments (No comments)
Comments are closed for this post.
Post a comment
Comments are closed for this post.