Popular appeal and peer recognition
Heilbroner certainly never cared too much about whether fellow economists thought of him as one of their own or a mere “popularizer.” (In this, he resembles Gailbraith.) He did care, however, about the direction of academic economics away from social concerns — concern for the public good — towards esoteric, abstract models, which he highlighted with this charming line, according to the LA Times obit (via Lexis-Nexis, so no link):
But does it have to be that way: the more popular you become, the less your peers take you seriously? Sure, there’s a fair share of envy in this. Some guy who’s been working on an esoteric manuscript for the last ten years is not going to take too kindly to some dude who keeps churning out book after book (see what happened to Niall Ferguson). But is that the whole explanation? What do all these academic bloggers out there think — could this be a reason why we tend to stay anonymous (except for brave individuals like Gordy)?I’ve conned millions of young people into thinking that economics is an interesting subject in tune with their social concerns, he once said.
T K Vogel | 6:36 pm |
Brave? I just like to be mentioned in the same post as Heilbroner and Galbraith (the father, I hope). But there aren’t so few non-anonymous folks out there. Take a look at the listing at “Political theory”:
http://www.politicaltheory.info/weblogs.htm
One anonymous academic I am dead curious about is Abu Aardvark, but I guess this business of being excessively popular for the academy never struck me as a problem. I do the blog and write for magazines and stuff partly for fun, and partly because the nature of this regional-studies business often means that by the time you think you have figured something out it doesn’t matter anymore. It’s also a nice way to gather up links for future reference in “serious” writing.
But then I am American, so this is the only way to engage in self-promotion since it doesn’t happen here that every university department has its own political party.
Comment by Eric — January 14, 2005 @ 9:21 pm