History, Economics, and Anthropology: The Work of Karl Polanyi

Abstract

Historians in their consideration of theory have to concern themselves not only with theories of but also with the theory of the other social sciences. Social scientists perhaps hope that one day they may be able to announce that dum Romae consulitur, Saguntum expugnatum est. This article is in the nature of a report from Saguntum. Economics, being the most scientific of the social sciences, the most ready to formulate laws, is particularly apt to provoke conflict. The present debate over the economic with its emphasis on the use of models and of econometric techniques, is an example. Those who accuse Cliometrics of dehumanizing history are in fact asking whether economic laws are valid for all periods and types of society. The new economic historians claim, with some justice, that they have not introduced economic laws and methods of inference into history, but only questioned some hypotheses which already implicitly relied on them. But their methods in any case have brought into prominence the question of the range of the deductions from economic theory possible at any point in time, and the question whether economic theory becomes less valid as we move further from the modern economy.'