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The Economy of the Word: Language, History, and Economics

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  • Tribe, Keith

Abstract

It was only in the sixteenth century that texts began to refer to the significance of "economic activity"---of sustaining life. This was not because the ordinary business of life was thought unimportant, but because the principles governing economic conduct were thought to be obvious or uncontroversial. The subsequent development of economic writing thus parallels the development of capitalism in Western Europe. From the seventeenth to the twenty-first century there has been a constant shift in content, audience, and form of argument as the literature of economic argument developed. This book proposes that to understand the various forms that economic literature has taken, we need to adopt a more literary approach in economics specifically, to adopt the instruments and techniques of philology. This way we can conceive the history of economic thought to be an on-going work in progress, rather than the story of the emergence of modern economic thinking. This approach demands that we pay attention to the construction of particular texts, showing the work of economic argument in different contexts. In sum, we need to pay attention to the economy of the word. l The Economy of the Word is divided into three parts. The first explains what the term economy has meant from Antiquity to Modernity, coupling this conceptual history with an examination of how the idea of national income was turned into a number during the first half of the twentieth century. The second part is devoted to Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, considering first the manner in which Smith deals with international trade, and then the way in which the book was read in the course of the nineteenth century. Part III examines the sources used by Karl Marx and Leon Walras in developing their economic analysis, drawing attention to their shared intellectual context in French political economy. Available in OSO:

Suggested Citation

  • Tribe, Keith, 2015. "The Economy of the Word: Language, History, and Economics," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780190211615.
  • Handle: RePEc:oxp:obooks:9780190211615
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    Cited by:

    1. Rae Dufty-Jones & Chris Gibson & Trevor Barnes, 2022. "Writing economies and economies of writing," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 54(2), pages 370-381, March.
    2. Maxime Desmarais-Tremblay, 2017. "Paternalism and the public household. On the domestic origins of public economics," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) halshs-01560189, HAL.
    3. Ben Huf, 2021. "Making Things Economic: Theory and Government in New South Wales, 1788–1863," Australian Economic History Review, Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 61(1), pages 117-125, March.
    4. Horn, Karen, 2019. "The difficult relationship between historical ordoliberalism and Adam Smith," Freiburg Discussion Papers on Constitutional Economics 19/3, Walter Eucken Institut e.V..
    5. Ian Coelho de Souza Almeida, 2019. "Non nova, noviter?: Heinrich Dietzel and the last breath of classical political economy in Germany," Textos para Discussão Cedeplar-UFMG 602, Cedeplar, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais.
    6. Maurício C. Coutinho & Carlos Eduardo Suprinyak, 2018. "Steuart, Smith, and the ‘system of commerce’: international trade and monetary theory in late-18th century british political economy," Textos para Discussão Cedeplar-UFMG 575, Cedeplar, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais.

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