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Sheila Dow Foundations for New Economic Thinking: a Collection of Essays. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, Hampshire, 2012, ISBN 9780230369108, pp. 280, $171.
Reviewed by Stuart Birks
This publication draws on over 30 years' work by Sheila Dow on methodology and modes of thought. Over this time she has repeatedly argued for broader and more flexible approaches to economics. Her reasoning is the product of extensive academic debate, primarily in the UK. Coincidentally, this provides insights into the evolution of ideas, as well as the barriers evident in academic institutions (the sociology of knowledge):
Scientific communities form around shared ontological beliefs, epistemologies and methodologies, out of which emerge distinctive sets of methods and theories, expressed in terms with meanings shared by the community. Arguably, elements of ideology inevitably are embedded in what is ultimately a belief system.
Not surprisingly, much of the debate is in reaction to the dominance of 'mainstream economics'. She is critical of its emphasis on formal mathematical models as the preferred, if not the only, approach to take. Dow advocates methodological pluralism (awareness and acceptance of more than one valid methodology) and pluralism of method (using more than one method in a piece of research).In contrast, she sees mainstream economists as only able or willing to acknowledge as economics those analyses which use their accepted tool kit. Challenging this narrowness, she says:
economics would benefit from a wider acceptance of the legitimacy of a broader range of approaches than the mainstream, from learning about the content of different paradigms, and from engaging in debate across paradigms
Key to her analysis is a representation of levels on which differences can be observed. She and Tony Lawson both emphasise ontology. However, Dow does not agree with Lawson's critical realism, considering it overemphasises the unsuitability of closed systems to offer explanations of an open-system ontology. Lawson's point is perhaps weaker than might at first appear. Given that we are constrained by the classifications and meanings associated with language, any representation will be flawed. Dow suggests that the closest we can get to a true ontology is a 'world view', and Lawson also states that attempts to describe the real world are inevitably abstractions.
At the broadest level, then, people may have different world views or types...