Transforming Homo Economicus

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Project leader: Philippe Fontaine

This project studies the relationships between economics and other social sciences from 1918 to the present. Concerning the changing nature of these relationships, our working hypothesis is that the image of economics as estranging itself from other social sciences from WWII on obscures its actual transformation over the past hundred years. The gradual shift away from interwar pluralism to postwar neoclassicism is well-established. What is less known, however, is that economists continued to draw on other social sciences even as their discipline became less pluralistic. Throughout the period, the use of findings and approaches from other social sciences remained inextricably linked with the critique and amendment of economics’ behavioral assumptions. In other words, the use of other social sciences in economics can be regarded as a means for considering its transformation throughout the twentieth century and in the first two decades of the next.

The project is supported by the International Research Network (IRN, CNRS) from 2022 to 2026. It brings together scholars from different countries to work on the use of other social sciences in US economics through organising workshops at LSE, Duke University, École normale supérieure Paris-Saclay, Cy Cergy Paris Université and the University of Chicago.

Events & Activities

History of Postwar Social Science Workshop

2 December 2016

London School of Economics, Lakatos Building, Room LAK.2.06

Supported by the CNRS European Scientific Coordination Network

History of Postwar Social Science Workshop

4 December 2015

London School of Economics, Lakatos Building, Room LAK.2.06

Supported by the CNRS European Scientific Coordination Network

History of Postwar Social Science Workshop

12 December 2014

London School of Economics, Lakatos Building, Room LAK.2.06

Supported by the CNRS European Scientific Coordination Network (GDRE #711)

History of Postwar Social Science Workshop

6 December 2013

London School of Economics, Lakatos Building, Room LAK.2.06

Supported by the CNRS European Scientific Coordination Network (GDRE #711)

History of Postwar Social Science Workshop

22 February 2013

London School of Economics, Lakatos Building, Room LAK.2.06

Supported by the CNRS European Scientific Coordination Network

History of Postwar Social Science Workshop

12 December 2011

London School of Economics, Lakatos Building, Room T.2.06

Supported by the CNRS European Scientific Coordination Network

History of Postwar Social Science Workshop

6 December 2010

London School of Economics, Lakatos Building, Room T.2.06

This workshop is one of the activities of the History of Post-war Social Science Group, supportedby grants from the Leverhulme Trust ('Academic Collaboration International Networks') and theFrench CNRS (GDRE 'History of Recent Economics')

History of Postwar Social Science Workshop

Monday 1 November 2010

10.00 – 10.50 Jean-Baptiste Fleury, EconomiX-Cachan - H2S – "The Evolving Notion of Relevance: An Historical Perspective to the 'Economics-Made-Fun' movement"

11.00 – 11.50 Daniel Geary, Trinity College Dublin –"Race, Liberalism, and Social Science: The 1965 Daedalus Conference on the 'Negro American'"

12.00 – 12.50 Peter Mandler, University of Cambridge –"Deconstructing Cold-War anthropology"

14.15 – 15.05 Daniel Immerwahr, University of California Berkeley – "The Small Group: A Focal Point of Midcentury Social Science"

15.20 – 16.20 Ed Gitre, University of Virginia – "'A Typological Menagerie': Post-war Psychoculturalists and the Triumph of the (American) Social scientific Imagination"

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