ABSTRACT
Economics as a discipline resists definition. 1 Such indeterminacy regarding the exact nature of practice probably lent credence to the statement “economics is what economists do.” 2 There are numerous different ways of ‘doing’ economics resting on different conceptualizations of the phenomena worth investigation and the attributes of the agents involved. The practice followed by the bulk of the discipline is conventionally termed mainstream economics. 3 Mainstream economics encompasses pure general equilibrium theory neoclassical economics, new classical economics, and game theory (Dow 1995: 717–19). Implicit in these different strands is mathematical formalism and determinism. It is important to note that while there have been many histories of economics, and many ways of writing those histories, there are not enough histories of contemporary mainstream economics around. 4
