In Economics Imperialism and Interdisciplinarity: Before the Watershed, visionary economist Ben Fine offers a selection of his key articles charting the rise of economics imperialism. Each article is accompanied by a preamble that sets the context in which it appeared, providing an overall introduction that draws out the lasting significance for contemporary scholarship.

Ranging over mainstream and heterodox economics, the disputes between them, the relationship between economics and other disciplines, and thinkers as diverse as Kuhn, Becker and Bourdieu, the collection offers a unique and compelling account of how mainstream economics has both changed dramatically while its core and narrow principles have remained as sacrosanct as they are invalid. Economics Imperialism is imperative for those engaging in political economy across the social sciences.

Ben Fine is Emeritus Professor of Economics at SOAS University of and Visiting Professor at Wits School of Governance, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa. His most recent books include Material Cultures of Financialisation, co-edited with Kate Bayliss and Mary Robertson (Routledge, 2018); Race, Class and the Post-Apartheid Democratic State, co-edited with John Reynolds and Robert van Niekerk (University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2019); and A Guide to the Systems of Provision Approach: Who Gets What, How and Why, with Kate Bayliss (Palgrave, 2021). His Marx’s ‘Capital’ (Pluto, 2016) is now in its sixth edition (with co-author Alfredo Saad-Filho). He was founding Chair of the International Initiative for Promoting Political Economy (iippe.org) until June 2023.