Political Economy

Providing a short take on the long history of political economy, this book examines both the stories about and those within economics.

Providing a short take on the long history of political economy, this book examines both the stories about and those within economics. It traces the history of political economy from its beginnings in the Scottish Enlightenment; through its disciplinary demarcation as a science in the nineteenth century that saw its differentiation from literary, aesthetic, and moral discourses; and to its emergence as the amoral market-driven neoliberalism that dominates economic theories and policies today.

In exploring the long history of economic thought, it examines and challenges both Enlightenment and contemporary grand narratives such as the stadial theory of progress, the Great Divergence and the Great Convergence that have divided the world into global norths and souths a