Beyond Economic Man

by Ferber, Marianne A.; Nelson, Julie A.

• ISBN13: 9780226242019
• ISBN10: 0226242013
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1993-06-01
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

This is the first book to examine the central tenets of economics from a feminist point of view. In these original essays, the authors suggest that the discipline of economics could be improved by freeing itself from masculine biases.Beyond Economic Man raises questions about the discipline not because economics is too objective but because it is not objective enough. The contributorsnine economists, a sociologist, and a philosopherdiscuss the extent to which gender has influenced both the range of subjects economists have studied and the way in which scholars have conducted their studies. They investigate, for example, how masculine concerns underlie economists' concentration on market as opposed to household activities and their emphasis on individual choice to the exclusion of social constraints on choice. This focus on masculine interests, the contributors contend, has biased the definition and boundaries of the discipline, its central assumptions, and its preferred rhetoric and methods. However, the aim of this book is not to reject current economic practices, but to broaden them, permitting a fuller understanding of economic phenomena.These essays examine current economic practices in the light of a feminist understanding of gender differences as socially constructed rather than based on essential male and female characteristics. The authors use this concept of gender, along with feminist readings of rhetoric and the history of science, as well as postmodernist theory and personal experience as economists, to analyze the boundaries, assumptions, and methods of neoclassical, socialist, and institutionalist economics.The contributors are Rebecca M. Blank, Paula England, Marianne A. Ferber, Nancy Folbre, Ann L. Jennings, Helen E. Longino, Donald N. McCloskey, Julie A. Nelson, Robert M. Solow, Diana Strassmann, and Rhonda M. Williams.

Table of Contents

Preface	vii
Introduction: The Social Construction of Economics and the Social Construction of Gender	1	(22)
Marianne A. Ferber
Julie A. Nelson
The Study of Choice or the Study of Provisioning? Gender and the Definition of Economics	23	(14)
Julie A. Nelson
The Separative Self: Androcentric Bias in Neoclassical Assumptions	37	(17)
Paula England
Not a Free Market: The Rhetoric of Disciplinary Authority in Economics	54	(15)
Diana Strassmann
Some Consequences of a Conjective Economics	69	(25)
Donald N. McCloskey
Socialism, Feminist and Scientific	94	(17)
Nancy Folbre
Public or Private? Institutional Economics and Feminism	111	(20)
Ann L. Jennings
Discussion and Challenges	131	(38)
What Should Mainstream Economists Learn from Feminist Theory?	133	(11)
Rebecca M. Blank
Race, Deconstruction, and the Emergent Agenda of Feminist Economic Theory	144	(9)
Rhonda M. Williams
Feminist Theory, Women's Experience, and Economics	153	(5)
Robert M. Solow
Economics for Whom?	158	(11)
Helen E. Longino
Contributors	169	(4)
Index	173