Transforming economics into what? Heterodox economics and critical realism

Abstract

The volume under review consists of comments on critical realism by heterodox economists. This paper addresses a number of themes from the book, e.g., history and reflexivity, sometimes expanding on the authors' comments on critical realism, other times responding to them on behalf of critical realists. It considers the goals of critical realism and ask to what extent the book furthers them. It concludes that the high level of abstraction at which critical realism operates encourages those commenting on it to do so at a similarly high level of abstraction. As it stands, critical realism and the contributions to the book are too divorced from the concerns of concrete economic theorising to be of great use to practising heterodox economists.