Re: [OPE] Studs Terkel died, and lives on

Whatever the problem you see with mainstream economics that Terkel
illuminates is also true, e.g., about political science.

And there are mainstream economists who are not ignorant about issues
Terkel brought out.

Paul

--On 11/1/2008 9:18 AM +0100 Jurriaan Bendien wrote:

>
> Modern economics is mainly a technical science about how to huckster with
> prices.
>
> Yet, as Sarah Palin noted, the "resilience of the American economy" which
> continues to attract large quantities of foreign capital, is based
> principally on the productive power of its workforce.
>
> This workforce is the main productive force of the economy, in Marxist
> terms. Yet, despite their central role, workers are almost totally absent
> from modern economics - they only exist as an abstract "factor of
> production", or an abstract "consumer", a "labour input", an "economic
> agent" or a "game-theoretical rational actor", i.e. as objects rather
> than subjects.
>
> Studs Terkel did what most economists do not do. He investigated workers'
> lives and their meanings. He investigated the people behind the abstract
> markets, what drove them their lives, with genuine curiosity,
> conscientious data gathering and an open mind, revealing in story form
> the record of human meaning behind the reifications of commercial life.
>
> Any economist can benefit a a lot from reading Studs Terkel, I think.
> Read and be amazed how people's lives can go, often defying economic
> logics.
>
> J.
>
>

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF 9-11, P. Zarembka, editor, Seven Stories Press, 2008
 available at sevenstories.com & amazon.com - "benchmark in 9/11 research"
~~~~~~~~~~~~ http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/PZarembka/7S9-11.htm

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Received on Sat Nov 1 09:40:11 2008