ABSTRACT
What is the influence of national scholarly organizations on the development of their respective academic disciplines? To the best of my knowledge there is no general “theory” on this subject, and no agreed set of criteria or yardsticks by which to gauge any given organization’s success or failure. Admittedly in the case of economics, which is the primary focus here, one prominent member of the relevant community has recently claimed that the American Economic Association (AEA) has “shaped and formed many features of the profession ‘Economics’” (Weintraub 1992:369); but while such a claim appears reasonable enough at first sight, possibly even obvious, it has limited value unless it is backed by adequate documentation and supported by comparative studies of other disciplines. Unfortunately, it would take some years to complete a serious comparative study of a range of American national scholarly organizations in the social sciences and humanities, let alone the international dimension of such research, and one may legitimately question whether the results would justify the effort involved. Nevertheless, a tentative first step in this direction may be taken via an examination of the varied reactions of a number of American national disciplinary organizations, including the AEA, to the crisis period of the late 1960s and early 1970s, a time when their customarily peaceful activities were seriously disrupted by a remarkable and unprecedented radical uprising which directly challenged their established policies and even their raison d’être.
