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The article presents a call for papers for the meeting titled "Annual Allied Social Sciences Association Meetings" to be held on January 4-6, 2008 at New Orleans, Louisiana with a theme about inequality, democracy, and the economy. The Association for Social Economics members and nonmembers are encouraged to submit proposals for the New Orleans ASE program. The papers can be send by email of 300 words or less by May 1, 2007 to John Davis of University of Amsterdam and Marquette University. Guide questions are also included.

The article calls the attention of interested individuals to submit article that will be presented during conferences of Associations concerning economics. The organizers of the Seventh Annual Heilbronn Symposium in Economics and the Social Sciences Christian Freiherr von Wolff that will be held on June 22-25,1995 is inviting everyone to submit abstract and correspondence relevant to the theme. Likewise, the organizers of the 22nd Annual Meeting of the History of Economics Society that will be held on June 2-5, 1995 in South Bend, Indiana is calling the same.

Since 1953, when Anthony Thwaite described Geoffrey Hill as a ‘runic visionary’ in the Oxford student magazineThe Isis, the visionary has been a site of contestation for Hill and his critics. Tom Paulin's 1992 essay on Hill, ‘A Visionary Nationalist’, identified vision with an entrenched belief in ‘the magical transcendence of art’. While Paulin seems to have overlooked the fact that Hill's early poems subject this very belief to intense scrutiny, it can sometimes appear that their dense, hermetic forms are merely the despairing flip side of the transcendence they rebuke. In this paper, I suggest some ways to read the prosodic and thematic disposition of the mythical elements in Hill's early poetry, arguing that they constitute a complex, differential attitude towards the temporality of visionary thought. My argument draws on the notion of the speculative proposition as expounded by Gillian Rose, to explore how Hill inhabits the gulf between art's vision and the world of commerce and society. Through close readings of ‘Doctor Faustus’ and ‘Of Commerce and Society’, as well as Hill's early essay ‘The Poetry of Allen Tate’, the paper suggests that Hill's early poetry works towards an apprehension of society as productive content rather than repressed other. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article presents several papers related developments in economics as realist social theory. According to the author, social theory expressly committed to work out the nature of social being, and, or how people access social reality is going through something of a revival in economics. The papers presented, provide numerous results, arguments, conjectures, and critiques have been produced in recent years, and aim to take some of these specific developments further. Context of the papers and basic ideas and results are presented.

This paper considers some of the impediments to interdisciplinary integration in migration theory, focusing on the problem of combining economics and sociology. It argues that neoclassical economics has a number of methodological advantages, deriving from its elegant theoretical structure and its aptitude for measuring and predicting individual behaviour. However, these features are contingent on a number of simplifying assumptions about social action: namely, a commitment to methodological individualism, a uniform conception of rationality, and a theory of individuals as utility-maximising. These assumptions become untenable in the case of migration decision-making, which partially accounts for the failure of economics theories adequately to explain and predict migration flows. Instead of rejecting such approaches, however, the article suggests how economics methodologies can be usefully applied within interdisciplinary research: either as a tool for modelling patterns of migration decision-making already observed through more qualitative methodologies; or as a means of testing and ruling out certain hypotheses about migration decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this journal, Welch and Mueller (WM) (2001) demonstrated a classificatory method for conceptualizing relationships between religion and economics. No judgement can be drawn from WM as to which of their four classifications might be a, or the, correct one. They conclude that the relationships are “both complex and controversial”, and that before any assessment can be apprehended adequately of how the two fields interact, “the permutations and subcategories implied by the system” used need to be identified and explored more thoroughly. This paper pursues that path, but argues that a more determinate verdict than WM's is possible. Here, an alternative interpretation of the relationship between religion and economics is investigated, in which WM's categories are assessed. In the alternative, WM's four classes are not taken to possess equal intellectual merit, as they appear to be. Using more current and comprehensive definitions of religion than WM's, a case is constructed that three of their four categories possess greater intellectual value than the remaining one. These three are here collapsed into one new mega-category regarded as that most validly describing the relationship between religion and economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the treatment of ontology offered by critical realism. It addresses much of the material elaborated upon in two editions of this journal. Three main groups of criticisms are made here of the critical realist treatment of open systems. It is argued that critical realism, particularly in the project in economics emanating from Cambridge, UK, tends to define systems in terms of events. This definition is shown to be problematic. The exemplar of a closed system provided by critical realism of the solar system is shown to be flawed in that it is not closed according to the closure conditions identified by critical realism. Second, the negativity of the definitions adopted is problematic for heterodox traditions attempting to build positive programmes. Furthermore, the dualism of the definitions is also inconsistent with Dow's approach, which has ramifications for the coherence of post Keynesianism. Third, the definitions tend to polarize open and closed systems and ignore the degrees of openness evident in reality. The polarization of systems leads to polarized methodology and unsustainable arguments to reject so-called “closed-systems methods.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There have been comparative discussions about Thorstein Veblen and Max Weber before, but not quite from the most appropriate viewpoint. The present paper treats them as theorists of action, in social and economic analysis, and this perspective yields some interesting new findings. Both theorists are to be taken as participants in the great Methodenstreit in economics, 100 years ago, and it is Veblen who suggests a more radical solution to this dispute, he suggests its final abolishment. The main difference between Veblen and Weber is in their respective appreciations of the role of psychology in social analysis. Weber does not think it important, but in so thinking he misses the viewpoint of evolutionary psychology that Veblen endorses. Accordingly, both of these classical thinkers are to be considered as theorists of action, but so that it is Veblen who proffers a more general theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the growing number of analysts who employ the world system perspective on national development, theoretical disagreements have evolved which may only be settled by examination of available data. Using an adaptation of the network metaphor, this paper blockmodels the world trade system in order (1) to demonstrate a single mode of international exchange in the world system instead of the competing capitalist and communist modes proposed by some, and (2) to illustrate the unique position of the middle level of nations in a three tier world system—a position sometimes denied. Implications for the competing world system theories and world development itself are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theorizing in economics is often associated with some form of individualism. This paper considers the nature of this association in the work of Carl Menger. I adopt this focus not only because of continuing interest in Menger's work, but because recent developments in social theory facilitate a fruitful reevaluation of his general position. I argue that a convincing link between theory and individualism is absent in Menger's work. Moreover, I argue that the various criticisms often made of his work actually relate to the ideas which underlie his individualism rather than, as is usually supposed, those arising from an adherence to a form of Aristotelianism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]