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Date sent: Sun, 22 Feb 1998 11:55:14 EST
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Subject: Publishing in URPE for Tenure
In a message dated 98-02-20 12:12:40 EST, you write:
<< Some of the radicals want it both
ways: doing heterodox topics and theories on the one hand, but for
the usual objectives/imperatives of publish or perish, CV knotching
and acceptability/getting published within the "mainstream" media,
conferences and institutions of "respectability".
>>
Can somebody answer this question:
When one goes up for tenure, do NCs (and P&B committee members) regard URPE
publications as "legitimate?" When I was at the New School, it was clear that
faculty publications in URPE were not considered "valid."
While Barkley makes several good points, I don't think keeping the
"legitimacy" of URPE is really important. I think the real issue is that URPE
does valid economics on its own terms and I would argue is one of the few
economics organizations doing interesting economics. I think the more
thoughtful NCs also recognize this.
jason
Response: As a "peer-reviewed" journal, an article in RRPE counts just
like any "peer-reviewed" journal as a "notch" on the old CV; since in
"mainstream" academia the real focus is on quantity rather than
quality (with a few exceptions such that articles in "AER" are
considered more "respectable" and more "permissible", Tenure and
Advancement are based primarily on numbers of publications, frequency
with some references to in which journals the publications occurred.
Yes, RRPE has some interesting and "heterodox" topics; but so do most
of the "mainstream" textbooks--alluded to and then summarily
dismissed or used as expository strawpersons to set up the summary
answers from the NC orthodoxy. The issue isn't just the topics
explored, but the analytical/conceptual angles, depth, breadth,
methods, data sources and supporting theory with which they are
explored. I find (and perhaps it is just my own myopia and dogmatism)
little evidence of real and substantive and ongoing contact and
adductive methods dealing with the subjects of analysis in RRPE
(workers, welfare mothers and fathers, oppressed minorities,
Indigenous peoples, elements of the so-called "lumpen proletariat"
etc). What I find is a lot of the same esoteric math for math's sake,
hypothetico-deductivism, apriorism, contrived syllogisms, preaching
to the choir and other approaches so common in neo-classical
orthodoxy. I find little evidence that the common subjects of "radical
analysis" (people suffering various forms/levels of oppression under
capitalism) could even read, let alone use in any meaningful way, the
content of RRPE and other publications like it.
What is at an AEA Convention worth the time? The right-wingers go to
their sessions and preach to the choir. The leftists go to their
sessions and preach to their choir. The right-wingers, if they even
deign to answer the left critiques, answer with simply more
hypothetico-deductivism, metaphysics, dogmatic positivism (can't
'operationalize' power, sexism, racism, imperalism etc so it is not
worth discussing) as some of the leftists try to use some of the
neoclassicals own methods and "axioms" to show the inherent
contradictions in the neoclassical system and paradigm--such as it is.
So the neoclassicals come back with "bounded" instead of "perfect"
rationality, "asymmetric" instead of "perfect" information,
"asymmetric" instead of "perfect" factor mobility, "imperfect"
instead of "perfect" competition and a few "neoclassical socialists"
like Romer even get somewhat respectable. So what?
Screw the "mainstream"--their personalities, their Leading theorists,
their bankrupt paradigms and all of it. To paraphrase Max Planck, we
will never win over the adherents of the old paradigms, we can just
hope they die soon and in the meantime attempt to create theoretical
and practical alternatives with which new generations will become
familiar before they are poisoned and tainted by trying to become
"respectable" to the "established/insider"gatekeepers of SUCKcess in
academia, the media, politics or any sphere of the "mainstream."
Jim Craven
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