The Role of Oral History in the Historiography of Heterodox Economics

Mata, Tiago; Lee, Frederic S.

doi:10.1215/00182702-2006-043

Cited by 16 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…What the FFDARPE saw was clearly not perfect: Several incidents are cited in the collective notes and memories when women though members of the Revolutionary Committee would not speak, or that even though women were holding important management positions they were still in a minority. But URPE itself was strongly male dominated (Mata & Lee, 2007) and so was FFDARPE. By comparison with their experience of a deeply sexist American society and economics profession, some delegates were impressed with the signs of progress they observed in China.…”

Section: The Public Provision Of Healthcare and The Absence Of Crude mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…All participants whose contact details could be identified were contacted and five out of six responded. Drawing on Mata and Lee (2007), we use these oral history interviews to study the delegation as part of the broader community of URPE and left economists. We are interested in FFDARPE in the context of American radical political economists' engagement with Mao's China more generally, but we do not seek to create the impression of a uniformity of thought across the delegation or the community at large.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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American Radical Economists in Mao’s China: From Hopes to Disillusionment

Weber¹,

Semieniuk²

2019

Including a Symposium on 50 Years of the Union for Radical Political Economics

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American radical economists in the 1960s perceived China under Maoism as an important experiment in creating a new society, aspects of which they hoped could serve as a model for the developing world. But the knowledge of 'actually existing Maoism' was very limited due to the mutual isolation between China and the US. This paper analyses the First Friendship Delegation of American Radical Political Economists (FFDARPE) to the People's Republic of China in 1972, consisting mainly of Union for Radical Political Economics (URPE) members, which was the first visit of a group of American economists to China since 1949. Based on interviews with trip participants as well as archival and published material, this paper studies what we can learn about the engagement with Maoism by American radical economists from their dialogues with Chinese hosts, from their on-the-ground observations, and their reflection upon return. We show how the visitors' own ideas conflicted and intersected with their perception of the Maoist practice on gender relations; workers' management and life in the communes. We also shed light on the diverging conceptions of the role for economic expertise between URPE and late Maoism. As the first in-depth study on the FFDARPE we provide rich empirical insights into an ice-breaking event in the larger process of normalization in the Sino-U.S relations, that ultimately led to the disillusionment of the Left with China.

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Section: The Public Provision Of Healthcare and The Absence Of Crude mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

American Radical Economists in Mao’s China: From Hopes to Disillusionment

Weber¹,

Semieniuk²

2019

Including a Symposium on 50 Years of the Union for Radical Political Economics

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“…The prospectus outlined a minimum of shared ground and reflected the absence of prior debate between radicals over the content of their economics. The radicals' identity was the culture of the sixties but this offered them little in terms of economic convictions (Mata and Lee 2007). “Radical economics” was thus, circa 1969, still to be demarcated and defined.…”

Section: Harvard As Place For Radical Critiquementioning

confidence: 99%

Migrations and Boundary Work: Harvard, Radical Economists, and the Committee on Political Discrimination

Mata

2009

Sci Context

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ArgumentIn the late 1960s, in the midst of campus unrest, a group of young economists calling themselves "radicals" challenged the boundaries of economics. In the radicals' cultural cartography, economic science and politics were represented as overlapping. These claims were scandalous because they were voiced from Harvard University, drawing on its authority. With radicals' claims the subject of increasing media attention, the economics mainstream sought to reassert the longstanding cultural map of economic science, where objectivity and advocacy were distinguishable. The resolution of the contest of credibility came with a string of cases of dismissals and denial of tenure for radicals. The American Economic Association's investigations of these cases, imposing the conventional cultural map, concluded that personnel decisions had not been politically motivated. Radicals were forced to migrate from the elite institutions from which they had emerged to less prestigious ones. "Place" became a marker of their marginalization within the profession.

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“…Nearly all of these contributions do not offer any comments on the specificity of using interviews and on the conditions of production of the interviews. Less than ten contributions (not necessarily using interviews themselves) propose methodological and historiographical reflections informed by other disciplines about using interviews in the history of contemporary economics (Mata, 2005, Appendix;Weintraub, 2007;Mata and Lee, 2007;Emmett, 2007;Freedman, 2010;Cherrier, 2011;Svorenčík, 2015, Appendix). These reflections are valuable but they are either quite brief or focused on a narrow object (usually a set of interviews conducted by the author).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interviews: Some Methodological and Historiographical Issues of Oral Sources

Jullien

2018

SSRN Journal

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may AbstractThis chapter discusses the similarities and differences in the plurality of practices regarding the use of interviews by historians of economics -i.e., either the use of someone else's interviews as sources or the use of interviews conducted by the historian for her or his work. It draws on methodological and historiographical contributions from other disciplines where the use of interviews is more systematic to characterize the practices in our discipline and to sometimes suggest further or new developments.

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The Role of Oral History in the Historiography of Heterodox Economics

Cited by 16 publications

References 28 publications

American Radical Economists in Mao’s China: From Hopes to Disillusionment

American Radical Economists in Mao’s China: From Hopes to Disillusionment

Migrations and Boundary Work: Harvard, Radical Economists, and the Committee on Political Discrimination

Interviews: Some Methodological and Historiographical Issues of Oral Sources

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