When Black Boxes Clash: Competing Ideas of What Science Is in Economics,1924-39

Abstract

This paper analyzes American economics during the period between the World Wars. During those years, two major groups of economists - neoclassicists and institutionalists - competed for control of the discipline. I analyze this struggle with the conceptual tools of actor-network theory: black boxes, trials of strength, allies and translation. The neoclassical - institutionalist struggle is depicted as a trial of strength of two competing approaches to the scientific study of the economy. I argue that the parties in such struggles tend to recruit allies from other prestigious disciplines, as well as from the field's own past leading practitioners, and to make arguments concerning the potential of their research programmes to solve important problems. The advocates speak in the name of these allies ('translation') and try to create unbreakable links with them. Rivals try to break these links, and the protagonists respond by mobilizing more allies and strengthening the network. Thus, methodological controversies resemble controversies over facts and theories, although the materials of which contested networks are made are different.