The rhetoric of economics: meanings. significange and critics

Retorika ekonomije je dio šireg pravca u metodologiji znanosti, studija znanstvene retorike. Počiva na postmodernom pristupu metodološkim problemima, pružajući način promišljanja rada ekonomista iz perspektive analize ekonomskog diskursa. Deirdre McCLoskey i Arjo Klamer su započeli sa literarnom kritikom ekonomskog jezika, te njegove relacije sa praksom i ciljevima znanstvenih zajednica kojima je upućen. McCloskey je producirala niz analiza iz kojih je zaključila da ono što uvjerava ekonomiste nisu empirijska testiranja ili uspješne predikcije, već svari koje formalna metodologija ne uzima u obzir, poput matematičke virtuoznosti, argumenata iz analogije, simetrije, itd. Važnost retoričke analize je naglasio i Klamer, koji je pošao od niza intervjua, otkrivajući kako ekonomisti razumiju vlastiti rad kada pričaju na neformalni način. I njegovi su zaključci slični, teoretska neslaganja ne proizlaze iz empirijskih dokaza. Na kraju, većina ovih istraživanja vodi do etičkih pitanja, diskusije o načinu na koji se ekonomsko znanja shvaća i proizvodi.Rhetoric of economics is part of a wider current in scientific methodology, the study of rhetoric in science. It follows naturally from post-modernist approach to methodological issues, for analysing economics discourse provides a way to think about what economists are doing without passing judgement on it. These concerns have led Deirdre McCloskey and Arjo Klamer into literary criticism as a perspective from which to view economics. They have looked at language use in relation to authors’ purposes and the reading practices of the communities they are addressing. McCloskey produced a series of brilliant case studies from which she drew the conclusion that what persuaded economists was not empirical testing or successful prediction, but things that no explicit methodology took into account: mathematical virtuosity, arguments by analogy, symmetry and so on. The importance of analysing economists’ rhetoric was also stressed by Klamer, who started with a series of interviews, finding out how economists saw their work when talking about it in a more informal way. His conclusion, however, was similar. Theoretical disagreements were not settled by accumulating empirical evidence. At the end, much of this research lead into a discussion of the values held by economists, and of the way economic knowledge is created and conceived