The Construction of Political Economy as a Discourse and a Science

In this episode, Ryan Walter and Keith Tribe join Lina Weber for a conversation about the history and historiography of political economy and the creation of economics as a university discipline in the 19th century.

Ryan Walter is Associate Professor at the University of Queensland. Ryan’s new book, Before Method and Models - The Political Economy of Malthus and Ricardo (OUP, 2021), sets out to replace the outdated and unhistorical notion of 'classical political economy' with a contextual and historical account of political economy in the early nineteenth century.

Keith Tribe is an economic historian and academic translator. Having taught for many years at the University of Keele, he currently holds the position of Senior Research Fellow in History at the University of Tartu and teaches the history of economics at the University of Birmingham. His new book, Constructing Economic Science - The Invention of a Discipline 1850-1950 (OUP, 2021), explores the role of the modern university as an institution in the creation of economics as a science and academic discipline.