With great resolve and all the best intentions, I began reading “Political Language in Economics” by Zubin Jelveh, Bruce Kogut, and Suresh Naidu. This is the research version of the journalism version published by 538, both referenced by Tyler Cowen.
But I stopped at p. 8, wondering how it is possible for three obviously intelligent people to jointly pen such an arbitrary, implausible and internally inconsistent theory of the role of ideology in economic research.
Maybe economists should leave the sociology to sociologists. In fact, socioeconomics and economic sociology are existing disciplines. Sociologists have developed the terminology and methods for dealing with issues like ideology. Economists apparently need to acquaint themselves more with this work, which goes back to Marx, Weber, and Durkheim. See, for example, Frank Dobbin, Economic Sociology.
Econospeak
Peter Dorman, Professor of Political Economy, The Evergreen State College
