EH.N: ANN: Join Klamer, McCloskey, and Ziliak in an Economic Conversation

[Susan B. MacDonald]

Dear Colleagues,

I invite you to check out an unusually open-handed and pluralistic 
conversation about the principles of economics 
at www.theeconomicconversation.com

The web site exists as a means to nurture and grow an already 
worldwide community of teachers and students observant of the facts 
that there is more than one way to think about the economy and that a 
fair and public hearing of those alternative ways is crucial to the 
health of the economic conversation. 

This is not a fly-by-night blog. Your contributions to the site will 
be considered for use in a forthcoming micro/macro textbook, The 
Economic Conversation, by Arjo Klamer, Deirdre McCloskey, and Stephen 
Ziliak (Pagrave/Macmillan, 2008). 

A full-year introduction to micro and macro, The Economic 
Conversation presents the tools and principles as does any good 
textbook. But a fourth to a third of every chapter is in dialogue 
form, Socratic dialogue, just like a real economic conversation. The 
idea is to simulate a real classroom, a real seminar room, a real 
conversation.

Inspired by educators such as Paolo Freire, bell hooks, John Dewey, 
and Jane Tompkins, the authors of The Economic Conversation reflect 
the pluralistic and dialogic spirit of the community.  McCloskey is a 
Chicago School free-marketeer, though recently also a progressive 
Christian and a postmodern literary type, too. Klamer is an evolving 
European social democrat.  Ziliak is actively committed to racial and 
social justice, leaning towards the market for some solutions and 
towards the state for others.  Each of the authors is an 
internationally recognized expert in "the rhetoric of economics," too.

Participants in the textbook dialogues are the authors themselves, 
joined by four students and the occasional "guest lecturer."

And that is where you come in.  The Economic Conversation wants to 
practice what it preaches. The authors have grown increasingly 
frustrated with the hundreds of Samuelsonian knock-offs. They want 
their book to reflect the actual richness of the economic 
conversation.

So they need to hear from you.

How are the conversations working? What is going right and what is 
not? What should they add or delete? Please tell.  Frustrated 
neoclassicals, feminists and libertarians, empirical Marxists and 
post-modern Keynesians, and everyone in between: your contribution is 
crucial.

The authors think their book provides a solution to the problem of 
teaching economics in liberal arts programs and anywhere that 
critical thinking is said to be valued.

The economic conversation is too important to be left where it is in 
most economic textbooks: in a state of neglect, we agree.

Feel free to distribute this e-mail to students and colleagues.

Sincerely,

Susan B. MacDonald
Program Administrator
<>www.theeconomicconversation.com
<>info at theeconomicconversation.com