ECONOMIC HETERODOXY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT MID-TWENTIETH CENTURY

Abstract

Universities traditionally have had two primary cultural functions. One is to maintain the “eternal verities” of the tribe. The other is to “advance the frontiers of knowledge.” While not wholly antithetical, these two functions do at times pose a delicate balancing act. To advance the so-called frontiers of knowledge may well undermine the very foundations of conventional tribal wisdom and appear to undermine the instituted hierarchy or status system of the society. This can provoke outrage on the part of the beneficiaries of the hierarchy; it may also disturb the cultural contentment of all the rest of the tribe upon whom complicity in the faith is essential for domestic tranquility. Although one might wonder at the outrage of those who might well be viewed as victims of the system, on reflection it is easily understood. To admit that which they believe is a hoax would mean that they were dupes. And no one likes to think that he or she has been taken. In other words, the British people do not like to be reminded of the cultural sham of a Royal Family.

Citation

Hamilton, D. (2004), "ECONOMIC HETERODOXY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT MID-TWENTIETH CENTURY", Samuels, W.J. (Ed.) Wisconsin "Government and Business" and the History of Heterodox Economic Thought (Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, Vol. 22), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 261-271. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0743-4154(03)22053-8