Contested identities: The history of economics since 1945

In 2007, when the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) proposed a new classification in which “history of economic thought” was moved from “economics” to “history, archeology, religion and philosophy,” some in the field were up in arms, protesting that this amounted to its destruction (see Kates and Millmow 2008a, b). As most Australian historians of economics are affiliated to economics departments, this change threatened to render their research worthless within their institutions. However, their reaction also reflected a belief that what they were doing fell under the jurisdiction of economics and that it could not therefore be considered a form of the history and philosophy of science.