EJPE.ORG – BOOK REVIEW 175 Review of Arjo Klamer’s Speaking of economics: how to get

Arjo Klamer wants to change the way we think about economics. He argues that economics is not a body of accumulated knowledge, a mirror of the economic world out there, or rhetoric (the art of persuasion), but rather a bunch of conversations. In his recent book, Speaking of economics (2007), he introduces the term conversation in order to show that this perspective helps us understand the practice of economics better. Klamer has previously done a lot of work in the rhetorical approach to economics together with Deirdre McCloskey, for example in their joint book The consequences of rhetoric (1988), and their article The rhetoric of disagreement (1989). Klamer’s metaphor of the conversation, although it includes rhetoric, is more encompassing and places emphasis on the social and cultural as well as the rhetorical aspects of the practice of economics. According to Klamer what economists do can be best compared t