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6 - Contested Identities
- By Roger E. Backhouse, University of Birmingham, Philippe Fontaine, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan
Edited by Roger E. Backhouse, University of Birmingham, Philippe Fontaine, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan
Book:

A Historiography of the Modern Social Sciences

Published online:

05 September 2014

Print publication:

22 September 2014, pp 183-210
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Summary

In 2007, when the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) proposed a new classification in which "history of economic thought" was moved from "economics" to "history, archeology, religion and philosophy", some in the field were up in arms, protesting that this amounted to its destruction. This chapter shows that the changing identity problem of the history of economics cannot be understood without taking account of the changes affecting economics from 1945, especially as the claim that the history of economics is economics has, for many of its practitioners, been central to the legitimation of the field up to the present. Until the 1950s or so, economists had usually attached importance to history, including both economic history and the history of economic theories, but as the discipline became more technical and acquired a more scientific self-image, this view found fewer and fewer supporters within the profession.