Tony Lawson

University of Cambridge | Cam · Faculty of Economics

The theory of social positioning is an account of social constitution in which organising structure is key. A core component of the theory is a conception of the nature of specifically community structure and the manner whereby human beings and other phenomena are organised through it. The primary objective of this paper is simply to systematise th...

Proponents of historical epistemology have highlighted how named concepts are amongst the most fundamental features of successful science. Advances in understanding, not least through the development of critically oriented projects, can be significantly boosted by way of key aspects being formed into named concepts, given the attention the latter t...

Can forms of cryptocurrency become money? To pursue this question, it is necessary first to be clear on what is meant by money, on what precisely is required for something to be, or to become, money. The concern of this opening chapter is precisely with this issue, to identify conditions that must be met for a form of cryptocurrency to qualify.

The focus of this note is the nature of money and related issues. Its objective is simply to clarify the more significant differences on these matters between the conceptions of proponents of modern money theory (MMT) and those of contributors to social positioning theory.

Recently there have been a number of papers written on the Cambridge tradition in economics. These papers have reminded me that back in the early 2000s many and perhaps all economists in the Cambridge Faculty of Economics were invited to write a paper on their own research in relation to the Cambridge tradition, intended for a volume called somethi...

In Part 1 of this wide-ranging interview, Tony Lawson discussed his role in, and relationship to, Critical Realism as well as various defences of mathematical modelling in economics. In Part 2 he turns more explicitly to social ontology, his social positioning theory, related concepts and various aspects of particular social phenomena. He discusses...

In Part 1 of this wide-ranging interview Tony Lawson first discusses his role in the formation of IACR and how he relates to the generalized use of the term ‘Critical Realism’. He then provides comment responding to a series of possible defences of mathematical modelling, both in the context of economics and of the Covid-19 pandemic. In Part 2 he e...

This is not an abstract but an explanation. The attached is a chapter from my recent (2019) book. In it, I argue that emancipatory developments will be community based and especially focused on those referred to as communities of care. Among the factors likely to contribute to the emergence and sustainability of these, I suggest, are external event...

Tony Lawson interviewed by Andrew Mearman at Cambridge University in August 2017.

Although it is widely recognised that the modern discipline of economics is short on explanatory successes, there is little sign that ongoing critical assessments of the situation are leading to any improvements. The reason for this lack of progress, I argue, is a prevalence of a set of fallacies maintained very often by mainstream practitioners an...

Money is positioned bank debt. This is a thesis I have previously defended in this journal. In the current paper, I elaborate the thesis and provide further grounding for it, especially in the light of criticism by others. In so doing, I examine how positioned bank debt as money works and how, in one case at least, it originally emerged

The versions of positivism that are critically assessed in Bruce Caldwell’s Beyond Positivism bear two dominant sets of implications. One is that knowledge growth is monistic in nature; the other is that science has a specific deductivist structure. Caldwell focuses mainly on the former and its critics. I argue here that the second set of implicati...

I take the opportunity to elaborate and clarify the positioning theory of money in response to the critique of it provided by Geoffrey Ingham. © The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Cambridge Political Economy Society. All rights reserved.

An interview of Tony Lawson by Ivano Cardinale conducted in Cambridge in September 2017. Video of interview: http://www.economicsppf.com/tony-lawson.html

Eudaimonia is a term for a society in which we all flourish in our differences. The world we live in is far from that, even though, I argue, there are persistent tendencies pushing us in its direction. A fundamental question that arises is whether we can achieve a degree of flourishing along one set of axes at least, in the here and now. To this en...

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Wiley via https://doi.org/10.1111/jtsb.12126.

The question of the nature of money is pursued drawing on results generated in the field of social ontology as well as on observations from history. The conception of the nature of money found in this manner to be the most sustainable is compared to various other prominent, if usually held to be mutually incompatible, theories.

The widespread and long-lived failings of academic economics are due to an over-reliance on largely inappropriate mathematical methods of analysis. This is an assessment I have long maintained. Many heterodox economists, however, appear to hold instead that the central problem is a form of political-economic ideology. Specifically, it is widely con...

Social positioning applies not just to people, artefacts and communities but also to practices. This is a proposition I investigate in the current paper. I do so in the context of examining how relative stability is often maintained even in the midst of intense social morphogenesis.

In this essay I tease out the notion of social order that underpins Veblen’s numerous contributions and examine its development over time. In piecing together various components of Veblen’s conception, in particular his notions of habit, institution and habituation, I challenge various existing interpretations of Veblen’s thinking on these and rela...

Although it is widely recognised that the modern discipline of economics is short on explanatory successes, there is little sign that ongoing critical assessments of the situation are leading to any improvements. The reason for this lack of progress, I argue, is a prevalence of a set of fallacies maintained very often by mainstream practitioners an...

What do modern academic economists do? What currently is mainstream economics? What is neoclassical economics? And how about heterodox economics? How do the central concerns of modern economists, whatever their associations or allegiances, relate to those traditionally taken up in the discipline? And how did economics arrive at its current state? T...

The modern corporation, in particular the multinational, is assessed by many as being the site of an unstoppable mechanism of frequently unwanted, very often far-ranging, social change. My concern here is to identify the structural conditions that underpin the workings of the corporation that ground these assessments. Specifically, my concern is to...

Insights from social ontology are utilised to provide a novel, or at least clarified, conception of the firm. The latter is shown to be a particular form of social entity that is both of an economic and legal nature. The limited company or ‘corporation’ is shown to be a specific form of firm. A central distinguishing feature of the argument is that...

Various commentators express the view that society is accelerating in some manner. In this chapter I assess what this might mean and seek to identify factors that could explain the widespread acceptance of this view. In the course of so doing I elaborate an account of social reality that allows me to identify the nature of social stability and ther...

Las fallas generalizadas y duraderas de la economía académica se deben a la excesiva confianza en métodos de análisis matemáticos inapropiados. Muchos economistas heterodoxos piensan que el problema central es una forma de ideología político-económica, que la disciplina va por mal camino porque muchos economistas describen la economía de mercado co...

The widespread and long-lived failings of academic economics are due to an over-reliance on largely inappropriate mathematical methods of analysis. Many heterodox economists, however, appear to hold instead that the central problem is a form of political-economic ideology. Specifically, it is widely contended in heterodox circles that the disciplin...

What is the relation between the causal powers of complex systems and those of their organised components? Whilst causal reductionists tend to contend that the former powers can be accounted for in terms of the latter, certain advocates of downward causation have it that causal powers of systems can act back on their own components. Focussing upon...

What is this school called neoclassical economics? Does it exist? Should it? Where does the term ‘neoclassical economics’ come from, and is there any connection between any of the current interpretations of the term and its original meaning? How do we make sense of competing current interpretations? Is there a sustainable formulation? These and rel...

Modern academic economics is not explanatorily successful. Although this situation has long been evident, it has become widely recognised only with the onset of the recent economic crisis. With the situation now widely acknowledged, however, various initiatives have been launched in the hope of achieving something better. One highly significant suc...

Interview found at: http://www.worldeconomicsassociation.org/newsletterarticles/interview-with-tony-lawson

The conception of social reality I have previously defended (and here extend), positing features such as social relations, positions and powers, is thoroughly naturalistic and even consistent with modern interpretations of quantum field theory. It also serves to ground a social science that can be scientific in the sense of natural science. This is...

The widespread and long-lived failings of academic economics are due to an over-reliance on largely inappropriate mathematical methods of analysis. This is an assessment I have long maintained. Many heterodox economists, however, appear to hold instead that the central problem is a form of political-economic ideology. Specifically, it is widely con...

The fundamental failing of modern economics, or at least of its dominant mainstream project, is not that it was unable successfully to predict the recent crisis but that it is ill-equipped to illuminate much that happens in the economy at any time. The latter is an assessment that I have advanced and defended on numerous occasions (e.g., Lawson, 19...

The current crisis has triggered significant debate concerning economic theory and policy. Largely absent from this debate is an informed discussion of the methods used by economists in analysing the economy and formulating their proposals. But method matters. Here I argue that current academic research practices need to be transformed before real...

Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics,

Over the past two decades the Cambridge economist Tony Lawson has been a leading advocate for an ontological turn in economics, as well as a main contributor to the specific methodological framework sometimes systematised as critical realism. On a sunny afternoon on 17 June 2000, Lawson and I talked at length in his Cambridge garden about his own i...

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the workings of an explanatory method for applied economics. It is a method that is rarely explicitly examined or defended in the discipline, but which, I believe, has a lot of promise for the sorts of contexts that economists must address. My strategy is to show that, and how, the method in question effec...

How in the context of the currently developing global order (and consequent ever-changing local political frameworks) might feminists most sensibly seek to transform the gendered features of society in such a manner as to facilitate a less discriminating scenario than is currently in evidence? This is a question that motivates much of the thinking...

This paper argues that any successful project in economics will need to adopt a philosophical orientation that is rather different to that of the current mathematical mainstream. In particular, it argues that explicit, systematic and sustained ontological analysis is required. The possibilities and limits of ontology are elaborated. The paper also...

Modern economics is recognised by many as being in a rather unhealthy state (see sources in Lawson: 2003, chapter 1). An often unnoticed manifestation of this, I argue, is a degree of confusion in the employment of central categories. A major source of this confusion, I further argue, is a recurring failure to distinguish properties of models from...

This paper considers some methodological issues central to the study of gender. Methods carry their own ontologies. The sorts of mathematical modelling methods employed by mainstream modellers force their users to consider worlds of isolated atoms and closed systems. However, a resolution of some of the problems involved with the conceptualisation...

Heterodoxy serves as an umbrella term to cover the coming together of separate projects or traditions. In answering the question, 'what distinguishes heterodoxy from the orthodoxy?', the author argues that matters of ontology are central. In answering the question, 'how are the various traditions that make up the modern heterodoxy to be distinguish...

My purpose here is to question the nature of the economics project of old institutionalism. I first critically examine a conception of it that is currently prominent in the literature before advancing and defending an alternative.

Modern economics produces many interpretations of the category of equilibrium as well as competing views of its relevance or worth for economic theorizing. In particular, interpretations and valuations often differ systematically between mainstream and heterodox contributions. I argue that these differences are best explained through understanding...

In his response to my original paper "The (Confused) State of Equilibrium Analysis in Modern Economics: An Explanation," Weintraub sets forth a competing account of the nature of equilibrium theorizing in economics. Weintraub supposes (1) his account is better because (2) his approach to understanding economics is more historical than my own. I sug...