PRESTOPUNDIT:

December 05, 2003

Seminar on Hayek-L -- Dec. 8 - Dec. 19

Ken Hoover will conduct an e-seminar on the Hayek-L email list between Monday, Dec. 8 and Friday, Dec. 19 discussing his new book Economics as Ideology; Keynes, Laski, Hayek, and the Creation of Contemporary Politics (subscription information found below).

Order the book from Amazon

Economics as Ideology -- Table of Contents:

Preface: Left, Center, and Right in the 20th Century
Of Identities, Ideas, and Ideologies
The Pre-War World: Seeds of Struggle
World War I: Unresolved Conflicts
The Twenties: Government and the Market in Combat
The Thirties: Duel of Allegiances
World War II: Destruction and Deliverance
The Post-War World: Denouement
The Second Half-Century: From Ideas to Ideologies
Developmental Turning Points and the Formation of Ideology
The Oppositional Bind of Ideology
Identity, Ideology, and Politics

From the publisher:

"Economics as Ideology: Keynes, Laski, Hayek and the Creation of Contemporary
Politics explores the lives and thought of three powerful theorists who shaped
the foundations of the center, left, and right of the political spectrum in the
20th century. Noted scholar Kenneth R. Hoover examines how each thinker
developed their ideas, looks at why and how their views evolved into ideologies,
and draws connections between these ideologies and our contemporary political
situation.

Similar in age, colleagues in academic life, and participants in the century's
defining political events, the story of Keynes, Laski, and Hayek is also the
story of how we in the west came to define politics as the choice between
government and the market, between regulation and freedom, and between the
classes and the masses."

About Ken Hoover:

Kenneth R. Hoover is professor of political science at Western Washington University. His previous books include The Elements of Social Scientific Thinking, Ideology and Political Life, and The Power of Identity: Politics in a New Key. "

Ken Hoover's email address is:

Ken.Hoover - at - wwu.edu

His web page is at:

http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~khoover/

Advanced reviews:

"An important book and a fascinating, absorbing read." —G. C. Harcourt, Jesus College, Cambridge University

"The idea is simply splendid. It does make supreme sense to construct a history
of theories of political economy in the 20th century around Keynes, Laski, and
Hayek and the three do, in fact, succeed one another in 'hegemony' as the century unfolds. Inasmuch as Keynes and Hayek were interlocutors and rivals and
duelists their relationship bears considerable drama and the fact that Hayek
appears to have had the last laugh makes for high irony. It is a major
achievement of this volume that Hoover never loses sight of the intellectual
stakes in these debates." — James Scott, Yale University

"Economics as Ideology is a most engrossing book. It tells an important tale of
the development of economic thinking through the stories of three giants of
political economic thought. Lives intersected at the nexus of theory and
practice told in a compelling, even dramatic, narrative makes for better reading
than a novel. I kept wanting to know how it was going to turn out--even though I
knew the general contours from the start. The book offers important background
for understanding economic thinking as it has evolved. It will be greatly
prized." — Sanford F. Schram, author of Praxis for the Poor: Piven and Cloward
and the Future of Social Science in Social Welfare

"I enormously enjoyed reading Economics as Ideology. The tradition of parallel
and interacting biography is small but distinguished. Hoover adds a further
dimension with his examination of the role of opposition, and his investigation
of the link between social situation, individual circumstances, and thinking." —
Rodney Barker, London School of Economics

"This is a very credible work of prodigious scholarship, with frequent keen
analyses and insights, and written in a lively, attractive style." — Kenneth
Dolbeare, editor of American Political Thought