ABSTRACT

All this time, however, though there was some increase in the 1930s, numbers remained extremely small compared with today. It was an era of great intellectual leaders, with extremely small departments and very few students. Institutions and professional organizations were still embryonic. From 1870 until 1929 or 1939, the development of the subject can probably be studied more fruitfully in terms of biography rather than sociology. It is rather in the second half of the twentieth century that large-scale academicism and academic institutions, together with a kind of 'professionalism', has come significantly to influence, and indeed to introduce considerable confusion and distortion into the aims of economists. It is surely on this most recent and current phase that experts in sociologicalinstitutional analysis, and pathology, should focus their efforts.2