Speaking of Economics: How to Get in the Conversation / Edition 1

by Arjo Klamer

Overview

Making sense of economists and their world in a persuasive and entertaining style, Arjo Klamer, the author of a number of influential books including Conversation with Economists and The Consequences of Economic Rhetoric, shows that economics is as much about how people interact as it is about the models, the mathematics, the econometrics, the theories and the ideas that come from the enormous aggregate of economics literature. Knowing and understanding economics requires both bookwork and mingling with other economists.

Viewing the subject as a collection of conversations, Klamer examines fundamental disagreements over the nature and purpose of the discipline, addressing how it is that a discipline that so permeates daily life is at once ‘soft’ and scientific, powerful and ignored, noble and disdained and in a reader-friendly style – without eschewing academic methodology demonstrates economics to be a living, breathing discipline rooted in the real world.

Whether you are a student, academician, journalist, practising economist or interested outsider, Speaking of Economics will get you interested in a conversation about economics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415395113
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	02/19/2007
Series:	Economics as Social Theory
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	222
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Arjo Klamer is Professor of Cultural Economics at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and Dean of the Academia Vitae.

Table of Contents

1. The Strangeness of the Discipline 2. Economics is a Conversation or Better, a Bunch of Conversations 3. What it Takes to be an Academic Dog or the Culture of the Academic Conversation 4. It’s the Attention, Stupid! 5. A Good Scientific Conversation, or Contribution Thereto, is Truthful, Meaningful and Serves Certain Interests 6. The Art of Economic Persuasion: About Rhetoric and All That 7. Why Disagreements Among Economists Persist, Why Economists Need to Brace Themselves for Differences Within their Simultaneous Conversations and their Conversations Over Time and Why they May Benefit from Knowing about Classicism, Modernism and postmodernism 8. How and Why Everyday Conversations Differ from Academic Ones and How and Why Academic Conversations Clash with Political Ones

Editorial Reviews

'This is an engaging book, in which the author's long association with, knowledge of, and affection for his field easily shows through. Summing Up: Highly recommended.' - A. R. Sanderson, University of Chicago, February 2008 issue of CHOICE.

From the Publisher