N. Emrah Aydınonat

Previously I have announced that we (Uskali Mäki and me) were organizing a special session on pluralism and heterodoxy in economics at the EAEPE 2009 conference in Amsterdam. If you missed this event, you may still get a taste of it below. (You are especially missing the lively and fruitful discussion at the end.)

Before you proceed please note that a rather strange comment concerning this session appeared in the Heterodox Economics Newsletter. The editor of the newsletter Fred Lee makes the following comment concerning the session:

“There was also a session on pluralism and heterodoxy in economics. Themes, comments, and feelings that emerged from it included the notion that pluralism should not be considered an important value for economists because it offended mainstream economists; that heterodox is a term that should not be used and that economists should not identify themselves as heterodox economists; that young economists should not spend much of their time studying heterodox economics; and that graduate students from heterodox programs were not competitive enough on the job market relative to mainstream students. No heterodox graduate programs were named, but programs at UMKC, UM-Amherst, American University, New School, SOAS, Bremen, and the University of Sydney are the reference targets. A rather strange session where apparently the intent was to make heterodox economists and their graduate students feel unwelcome at EAEPE.“

EAEPE encourages pluralism and welcomes heterodox approaches. The special session itself was pluralistic. And no unified view emerged at the end of it. The discussion at the end was lively and was full of differing views on pluralism and heterodoxy in economics. The aim of the special session was to open David Colander’s views to discussion. And I think we have accomplished just that. Uskali Mäki, Geoff Hodgson and Dimitris Milonakis presented their comments and criticism concerning David Colander’s paper. Moreover, at the end of the session scholars such as Ben Fine made extensive comments on Colander’s views. For these reasons I do not understand how Fred Lee could say that  the sessions “intent was to make heterodox economists and their graduate students feel unwelcome at EAEPE.” Our aim was to discuss different views on pluralism and heterodoxy in economics, and David Colander’s paper was in fact a very good target paper for doing that. David Colander’s paper “Moving Beyond the Rhetoric of Pluralism” is available at EAEPE website and could be downloaded by clicking here. We are planning to publish the comments by Uskali Mäki, Geoff Hodgson and Dimitris Milonakis online (at the EAEPE web site) for future discussion.

For now, you could read Colander’s paper and watch the videos below and join the discussion.

David Colander’s talk at EAEPE Conference 2009 (8 November 2009, Amsterdam)

The talk is based on David Colander’s “Moving Beyond the Rhetoric of Pluralism”. The paper is available at EAEPE website and could be downloaded by clicking here.

Comments by Geoff Hodgson, Uskali Mäki and Dimitris Milonakis are below.

Geoff Hodgson’s comments on Colander’s paper:

And Uskali Mäki’s comments: (Sorry for the low quality of the video. This was filmed with a mobile phone.)

And finally, Dimitris Milonakis’ comments. (Note that this is only a part of the talk. The other half of the talk could not be recorded because of a technical problem.)