By WILLIAM GRANDI*
Academic malaise and the attempt to reduce research in economic history
It is not new that single-minded thinking surrounds economics students. The so-called mainstream continues to guide the views of many teachers, students and economists within and outside university circles in Brazil and abroad. Based on neoclassical economic theory, the dominant thinking present in economics courses has caused distortions in the education of students due to a limited and, at times, inconsistent perception of historical knowledge.
A relevant question that anyone interested in economics and economic science should ask themselves is: what is history? I suppose that many followers of this neoclassical conception of economic science have never asked themselves this question. For us, economic historians, however, the assessment of what history is and how it is produced is central and is part of our work routine.
I do not intend to discuss here the epistemological elements of research in history, but I want to point out the idiosyncrasies that I have observed within the Department of Economics of the Faculty of Economics, Administration, Accounting and Actuarial Science of the University of São Paulo, FEA-USP, where I have worked since 2014, as a professor and researcher in the area of economic history.
A representative portion of my departmental colleagues have advocated a specific type of historical research (and, therefore, of historiographical production) that, in its origins, dates back to the early 1960s, when the so-called “cliometric revolution” took place. Based on the pioneering work of Alfred Conrad, John Meyer, and Robert Fogel on the impacts of slavery and railroad transportation on the XNUMXth-century American economy, a new strand of economic history studies emerged, characterized by the intensive use of quantitative methods (statistics and econometrics) and the application of concepts and models derived from conventional economic theory.
This type of approach has spread and consolidated not only in the United States, but also in other academic centers of excellence, mainly in Europe. Currently, journals specializing in economic history and published privately in the United States and England give great preference to publishing works that follow the cliometric proposal or, at least, that consist of some empirical exercise carried out along the lines of so-called quantitative history and applied economics.
There is no doubt about the importance of quantitative data for studies of economic history. Nowadays, what has been most frequently debated by researchers in the field is related to the validity and usefulness of certain analytical resources (software, machine learning, artificial intelligence, etc.) and statistical data sets, in addition to the challenge of finding the most appropriate criterion for quantifying a specific historical-economic aspect.
What generates the greatest opposition is not quantification itself, but the eventual mathematical formalizations that it gives rise to. This is due to the sometimes considered orthodox nature of the conclusions found, according to the application of models imported from other social sciences, such as economics itself.
In this sense, defending as valid and scientifically robust, as some of my colleagues in the department have done, only one type of methodological approach in economic history is certainly a reductionist stance in this field of research, which, by its intrinsic nature, should be broad and open to other perspectives of analysis. Furthermore, it is not the use of quantitative data that defines whether or not a study follows the historiographical approach of cliometrics. François Simiand and Ernest Labrousse were already promoting historical research with extensive sets of economic data in the 1930s and 1940s, long before the emergence of cliometrics.
Therefore, one should not associate the mere use of extensive statistical databases, or the use of time series, with cliometric studies, since these are defined by something particular, by a specific analysis model known as a counterfactual model. This is the defining element of a study guided by this branch of historiography, called cliometrics. It is necessary to be very clear about this so that, as has been happening in the department of which I am a member, the defense of the use of large databases is not confused with the defense of cliometrics as the only acceptable perspective of analysis in economic history, in a reductionist view that limits the possibilities of other epistemological approaches.
This academic stance of narrowing down, of attempting to close off the field of economic history, actually goes against the very history of this area of research in the Department of Economics at FEA-USP. If, initially, the history work developed by FEA professors followed the basic guidelines of Professor Alice Canabrava's studies, over time, other perspectives, although also heavily supported by primary sources and raw data as Canabrava herself required of her students, were gradually introduced, thus increasing the range of possibilities for historical analyses produced at FEA.
Studies not only under the influence of Annales School, but also derived from other theoretical-methodological perspectives such as Marxist, institutionalist, evolutionary economics, Weberian, Schumpeterian, Keynesian, neoinstitutionalist, among others, were systematically developed and disseminated in the form of theses, dissertations and scientific articles.
The reductionist view regarding historiographical learning and the historical education of students has generated discomfort in the academic community of FEA. The attempt to close the field went from discourse to practice with the recent publication of the announcement of a competition for two positions for professors with doctorates in the area of economic history.
More than the focus on a specific profile of professor who demonstrates mastery of the selected content – the notice includes bibliographical references, which is not common in FEA competitions –, what is most shocking is the profile of the members selected to compose the examination board for the competition: of the five nominated as full members, only one has academic production in economic history. Furthermore, the resumes of these nominees show that they are researchers in the area of applied microeconomics, an area currently best served by FEA's Department of Economics, with a significant number of professors who display this academic profile.
Except for the hypothesis of a conscious hijacking of the two positions originally intended for the area of economic history and obtained with great difficulty, a hypothesis in which I prefer not to believe, it is not easy to understand what could have guided the choice of the aforementioned committee. What is often mentioned in departmental meetings is that the selection committees should bring together academics whose research agendas are relevant to the type of professional that is being selected. That said, when five professors are nominated for a selection committee for an economic history selection committee, four of whom teach and research in the area of applied microeconomics, what should we think?
Now, it is clear, given the profile of teachers that such a competition will select, that it is effectively a matter of reducing the field of economic history to a specific type of “doing history”, which is defined more by the methodological resources employed than by other equally important scientific aspects.
The low appreciation, or lack of due recognition, of other ways of doing economic history indicates an antidemocratic stance and averse to the department's own trajectory, marked by the plurality of views and in line with humanist perspectives that reinforce the fact that economics is, above all, an applied social science, that is, a field of study focused on solving social problems whose temporalities are varied and historically determined.
In short, I do not agree with the hegemonic view present at FEA and other Brazilian economics teaching institutions, which, in my opinion, remain stuck in an academic past characterized by a kind of dogmatic neopositivism, which is reflected in reified, alienated, monolithic and ahistorical academic positions and views. Is simulating a fictitious scenario to validate (or not) quantitatively testable hypotheses important to studies of economic history? Yes, without a doubt, and in this sense, I do not oppose the counterfactual model so widely touted by cliometricians.
But this cannot be the only scientifically relevant method to be used by researchers. In the areas of applied social sciences, the topics addressed are not only socially determined; they are always inserted in an environment of uncertainty and the results are conditioned, above all, by the forces of the imponderable, an indelible mark of human reality and, therefore, of the challenges that such researchers face.
History and its study are essential to the training of professionals in these areas and its approach cannot be reduced to a single aspect, under penalty of reducing the scope of investigations, preventing this discipline from fulfilling its role of expanding not only the type of reflection that is produced, but above all the universe of questions that motivate the research itself.
*Guilherme Grandi is a professor in the Department of Economics at FEA-USP. Author of, among other books, State and railway capital in São Paulo (Mall).
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