ABSTRACT
The Handbook of Heterodox Economics contains a significant variety of contributions invited and ordered according to a number of themes. One useful way to bring final order to the whole, and by way of conclusion, is to return to the issue of what heterodox economics is, and to emphasize the characteristics that make the varieties of heterodoxy common and valuable. Heterodox economics is important irrespective of innovation within the mainstream. Its collective potential is as a critical community subject to constructive pluralism, and its further characteristics establish it as a living body of knowledge that plays an important role as social science, able to address the most important questions.
