Give Them Something to Think about, Don't Tell Them What to Think: A Constructive Heterodox Alternative to the CORE Project

Economics must change. In the light of the traumatic economic events in 2008-09, that has become the conventional wisdom, both within the economics profession and without. Two questions inevitably follow. First, what degree of change in economics is appropriate: should it be limited and incremental (the mainstream view) or genuinely transformative (according to most shades of heterodox opinion)? Second, how should the necessary change be enacted; should it be from the top-down or from the bottom-up? In response to the Global Financial Crisis, the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) was created and tasked with transforming the discipline of economics from the top-down. At its inception INET identified two key problems considered responsible for conformity within economics. First, there is an internationally homogeneous, narrow, and technically-oriented content of the economics curriculum, which has failed to engage students in terms of real world issues and lacks pluralism. Second, an inability of, often young, economists to secure funding for innovative research which might diversify the field and create the basis for progress (INET 2011a and 2011b). INET has already provided significant funding for many new research projects within economics. (1) It has also initiated a process to develop a new open access curriculum for economics: the Curriculum Open-Access Resources in Economics (CORE) project. The CORE project, however, has attracted significant criticism from heterodox economists (e.g. AHE, 2014). Critics note that there is a mismatch between the founding commitments of INET and the scope of CORE. Though not yet completed, the CORE project seems to be proposing limited changes within a conventional framework, rather than a genuine challenge to mainstream conformity. Because it seems to exclude heterodox approaches, it raises a question about the capacity of the curriculum developers to deliver a pluralistic learning experience for students. As such, it seems destined to disappoint contemporary student movements such as Post-Crash Economics, who have identified their own curriculum concerns (see Post-Crash Economics Society, 2014). We argue that there are three possible heterodox responses to the CORE project: active engagement, critical observation, and the construction of alternatives from within heterodoxy--from the bottom-up. This third approach potentially makes good on INET's claims and the implicit commitments of the CORE project. Heterodoxy is, by its very character, pluralist. It is not a single position or theoretical body as such. Rather, it involves recognition of unity in difference and tolerance of diversity (Lawson, 2006; Lee, 2009; Mearman, 2011; Martins, 2014). Heterodoxy encompasses a range of schools of thought. Implicit in the commitments of heterodoxy is that our knowledge of reality is fallible and contingent, both because theory is not reality and because reality is a cumulative historically-conditioned set of processes within which change occurs. It follows that one cannot discount that another theory, or alternative methods of inquiry, are defensible as ways to investigate an economy. Heterodoxy is intrinsically pluralist because of this recognition. Heterodoxy is also associated with objectivity as a value rather than the method-based objectivity sought by mainstream economics (see Arnsperger & Varoufakis, 2006; Morgan & Rutherford, 1998; Milonakis & Fine, 2009; Chang, 2014). Objectivity as a value acknowledges that evidence and argument are the basis of potentially more adequate accounts of some aspects of social reality, including the economy. By contrast, objectivity of method proceeds outwards from the primacy of fixed methods and propositions. Proponents of mainstream economics find it difficult to reconcile objectivity of method with alternatives, which they marginalise as not science in the appropriate sense of technique (Caldwell, 1986). …