Economists never revolted from such conditions; they surrendered, although a
few made a strategic retreat.
Manski, Charles F. 2000. "Economic Analysis of Social Interactions." Journal of
Economic Perspectives, 14: 3 (Summer): pp. 115-36.
121: "Charles Camic (1987) has written engagingly on how the discipline of
sociology emerged out of economics. According to Camic, separate university
departments of sociology came into being as a consequence of the triumph of
neoclassical economics over institutional economics in the 1920s and 1930s."
Camic, Charles. 1987. "The Making of a Method: A Historical Reinterpretation of
the early Parsons." American Sociological Review, 52, pp. 421-39.
Louis Proyect wrote:
> NY Times, November 4, 2000
>
> THINK TANK
>
> Political Scientists Are in a Revolution Instead of Watching
>
> By EMILY EAKIN
>
> The protester used the code name Mr. Perestroika. His e-mail messages
> preached popular revolt. "Head for the Parliament folks! (just as they did
> in Belgrade)," one read in part. "When people are pushed to the brink, the
> leaders go, the regime goes, the country changes!" read another.
>
> The 17 sympathizers who received Mr. Perestroika's original message
> forwarded it to others, and within 10 days the movement had grown to more
> than 100 people. By the middle of this week, drafts of several letters
> calling for change were circulating on the Web.
>
> So who are these Internet guerrillas who have been fomenting revolt over
> the last two weeks? They are American political scientists, more accustomed
> to studying revolutions than to waging them. And their target? The leaders
> of their professional organization, the American Political Science
> Association, and its journal, the American Political Science Review.
>
> At the heart of this latest uprising is a decades-old split in the field
> over the best way to study politics. On one side are quantitative
> researchers who favor rigorous mathematical techniques and on the other are
> more traditional qualitative researchers who look at history and culture,
> using case studies, written documents and firsthand observations. For
> shorthand, you can think of the feud as the pronumber versus the nonnumber
> folks (terminology that could no doubt spur a protest of its own). And
> what's at stake are jobs, power and prestige.
>
> Indeed, after receiving Mr. Perestroika's original e-mail message, dozens
> of scholars wrote back saying they had seen colleagues denied jobs and
> tenure and have trouble publishing their work because their research
> methods did not conform with the quantitative approach championed by the
> powerful minority that controls the association and the journal.
>
> "Why does a coterie of faculty dominate and control A.P.S.A. and the
> editorial board of A.P.S.R.?" Mr. Perestroika asked. "I hope this anonymous
> letter leads to a dismantling of the Orwellian system that we have in
> A.P.S.A. and that we will see a true Perestroika in the discipline."
>
> Mr. Perestroika, who receives messages at an anonymous e- mail account at
> Yahoo.com and is rumored to be not one but several junior professors (or
> possibly graduate students), is orchestrating the protest under the cloak
> of anonymity, presumably out of fear of reprisals.
>
> Yet the anonymous protest created one on the record. Yesterday 125
> scholars, including prominent people like Theda Skocpol, James C. Scott and
> Adolph Reed Jr., submitted a letter summarizing their grievances and
> suggesting changes in the association's leadership and the editor of the
> review. The letter, drafted by Rogers Smith, a professor of government at
> Yale University, argued that in its current state, the discipline was "in
> danger of alienating a larger and larger number of those who should be its
> active members, and contributing less and less to the kinds of
> understanding of politics that it is our responsibility to advance."
>
> Full article at: http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/04/technology/04TANK.html
>
> Louis Proyect
> Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/
--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
