ABSTRACT
Recent critiques of neoclassical economic theory have sought to re-present it as a particular form of ‘story-telling’ in order to draw attention to the value-laden foundations of what continues to be presented as an authoritative, dispassionate and detached methodological practice (McCloskey, 1990; Seiz, 1993; Strassmann and Polanyi, 1995). Feminist economists in particular have helped to highlight the paradox of a discipline which is premised on a fervent belief in self-interest as the primary motivating force for all areas of human endeavour but whose practitioners claim a stance of disinterested objectivity for themselves (Folbre, 1986a; Strassmann and Polanyi, 1995). In the first part of this chapter, I want to scrutinise in greater detail some of the narrative deuices by which economists construct their
stories in one particular field of research, that of the household. I want to show how these devices, in the shape of concepts, methods and argumentation, have framed the questions they asked, the methods through which they sought answers, the meanings they gave to these answers and in so doing, helped to maintain intact for a considerable period of time the claim that the neo-classical story was an acceptable rendition of what Elster terms ‘the real thing’. In the latter half, I will describe some of the alternative approaches to the household which have emerged as the gap between fact and fiction in household economics became increasingly difficult to bridge.
