The scholar as reader: the last 50 years of economic theory seen through G.C. Harcourt's book reviews

Abstract

G.C. Harcourt has written over a hundred book reviews during the last fifty years. These are published in a number of journals and on widely different topics. In this article this literature is used in order to discuss three important issues. These are: (1) How did Harcourt engage with the developments in economic theory across the different schools in economics during this period? (2) What do these book reviews tell us about how Harcourt does economics? (3) Why is this reviewing activity such an important part of Harcourt's research activity, and what does this tell us about the structure of postKeynesian economics? This article argues that book reviews as well as review articles are a constitutive element of how Harcourt does economics, as they organise different and occasionally disparate theoretical contributions into a coherent narrative that gives form and substance to his theoretical approach. JEL classifications : B31, B41, B50, A11Keywords : post-Keynesian economics, review articles, book reviews, heterodox economics. Reader notes "the common reader... differs from the critic and the scholar" (Woolf, 1925, 1). He is "worse educated and nature has not gifted him so generously" (Woolf, 1925, 1). However, he is still the person for whom literature and literary criticism ultimately takes place, and that is why he deserves 'all claim to poetical honours'.A central issue in the tradition of the common reader is this tension between the amateur reader and the academic, the scholar or man of learning. In a world of increasing segmentation in fields of knowledge and narrowing specialisation, the academic reader finds himself detached from his amateur counterpart. In fact, their viewpoints are increasingly in conflict. Frank Kermode makes the following comment: "the time is long past when the Common Reader could expect to follow the discourses of theoretical professors, and we have a rather remarkable situation in which literary theorists would actually be offended if it were suggested that they had obvious relation to common readers. They claim to be specialists, with no more obligation to common readers than theoretical physicists have" (Kermode, 1989, 8). And yet, the concept of the common reader persists, with celebrated literary critics writing hundreds of book reviews and review articles for a wide nonspecialist readership. These literary critics; often academics; mediate between academia and the public. They are, to use Christopher Knight's felicitous book title when discussing the reviewing work of Denis Donoghue, Frank Kermode and George Steiner, Uncommon Readers that serve the common reader.3 G.C. Harcourt is himself an uncommon reader of books and economic theory over the last 50 years.2 He writes his reviews in the 'conversational style', 3 with a view of informing a wider audience of the developments in economic theory. He is an 'insider' that writes reviews both for the academic, and the general reader who has some basic knowledge of economics. His targeted audience is then not only the spec...

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