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History of Political Economy Annual Supplement to Volume 34 (2002) 263-271



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Confusion and “Interstanding”:
A Figured Account of Hope

Matthias Klaes


Confusion is properly a mixture of such liquid things as are fluid, and of one and the same nature.

—John Woodall, The Surgions Mate (1617)

The history of economics is an embattled field of academic research. Its subject matter and basic approach have become embroiled in emotionally charged debates (see Klaes 2001), while its institutional and disciplinary loci are opaque. Not infrequently, practitioners give in to historicist temptations to look back to a golden age predating the schism between economics and (its) history. At the coming of age of the field at the turn of the millennium, it is worth bearing in mind, however, that its institutional emergence and a certain self-aware sense of crisis are difficult to disentangle (see Winch 1962 and Coats 1969).1 When reflecting on the position of young entrants to the history of economics, there is thus a certain danger of being seduced by the current state of affairs in reporting on the particular difficulties they are faced with. Whether [End Page 263] young historians of economics have a harder time establishing themselves than other graduates in economics or history is a fascinating sociological question that cannot be further pursued here. Instead, as a participant-observer, I seek to explore the situation of a young entrant to a field that, apart from its sense of crisis, is characterized by a constant search for its identity, disciplinary allegiance, and institutional affiliation.

The present essay is thus an attempt to reflect, through my own situation and experiences, on the current state of history of economics. I intend to submit to the reader a collection of encounters that, as fragments of discourse, may allow a glimpse on the history of economics vis-à-vis economics and other disciplines. Each of these encounters should be read as a snapshot of the currently negotiated boundaries of the history of economics. Young entrants to the field are in a good position to report on these encounters, as they will find themselves crossing a number of boundaries while seeking admission to the guild of historians of economics. Nevertheless, simply reading what follows as an autobiographical account would risk missing the point. I will present not a coherent narrative but a collage of “figures” (Barthes [1977] 1990), followed by a metanarrative that interprets this collage as a representation of the current state of the history of economics in terms of Mark Taylor's (1995) metaphor of “interstanding.”

A further word of caution: figure in the sense employed here refers neither to persons nor to a stereotype. Instead, the ambition is to follow ethnomethodologists in their attempts to capture the choreography of discursive encounters. While based on actual encounters, figures both go beyond these encounters and fall short of them. They fall short because they do not intend to accurately reproduce the encounters, and they go beyond because they reach out further than the particularity of the moment. In the present context, the figures presented below would speak not just as idiosyncratic experiences but as expressions of the complex boundary dynamics of the history of economics. In Roland Barthes's ([1977] 1990, 4) words, successfully crafted figures would tempt us to say, “That's so true!” [End Page 264]

A Figured Account of History of Economics

The Agnostic:2 “Surely you are not suggesting that Coase and his 1960 paper had nothing to do with the Coase theorem!?”3 Some practicing economists seem to have a peculiar relationship with past literature. They may not have read the sources themselves but will vehemently defend any questioning of the canonized readings of these sources, right down to calling your economic expertise into question. From my own experience, sometimes it does not even help going through the original sources with them as they tend to lack the taste for detailed exegesis.

The Bystander: “To be honest, your chances will be slim, but I have done some historical research myself in the past...

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