In the midst of a world in severe economic, financial, and unemployment crisis,
this article seeks to examine what economic intellectual history is and what it has
been, and what it might be in the process of becoming. Economic intellectual
history as a sub-field of intellectual history has been flourishing at least since the
1970s, but it has not been given as much attention as, e.g., the history of political
thought. This is partly because much history of economic thought has been written
by economists, trained in the techniques of economics. Taking notice of two
recent developments, one inside intellectual history, and one outside of it, this
article seeks to show how economic intellectual history is, and increasingly can
be, something different than “the history of economic thought,” economist-style.
The first development is the broadening of intellectual history. This relates to
its now many available methodologies, its expansions in relation to time, space,
actors and sources it can study. This broadening has important consequences for
economic intellectual history. The article thus maps how different genres of intellectual
history, such as conceptual history, genealogical studies, etc., already deal
specifically with the histories of economic concepts, discourse, and ideas. The
second development refers to the many recent contributions of the study of economic
discourse, ideas, reasoning, etc., which have been developed in other disciplines
than intellectual history, such as economic sociology, anthropology, etc.,
that economic intellectual history can draw upon. The article uses and develops
categorizations of economic intellectual history which will hopefully be useful for
orientation in a broad field, distinguishing between historical and rational reconstructions
of economic thinking, mapping out various approaches to economic
intellectual history, such as histories of legitimization, and outlining some possible
future perspectives.
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