My first presentation at an ASSA annual meeting took place in an 8-10 a.m. session on Sunday, December 30, 1979 in Atlanta, Georgia. At “my” session were three paper authors together with the chair. Across from the four economists sitting at the panelists’ table was a public of three. Sitting in the first row of chairs was the thesis advisor of my fellow panelist Robert Scott Gassler, Professor Kenneth Boulding. So considering the product of quality and quantity of attendees, I was pretty fortunate with that early Sunday morning public. Most of the economists following Economics in the Rear-view Mirror have their own stories of brushes with legendary economists and that was mine with Kenneth Boulding. But let’s get to the Boulding content of today’s post.
Kenneth Boulding has always been a favorite of economists with interdisciplinary leanings. Fewer probably remember him as the John Bates Clark medalist (1949) who followed Samuelson and preceded Friedman, Tobin, Arrow, Klein, and Solow. He was one of a dying breed of economists having a range and depth of interests that spanned the social sciences. He has no single method or empirical finding that has survived in the textbooks that I am familiar with. However, in most every random foray into his writings I have usually found some nugget of insight or wisdom to keep.
This post began as an exploration of the University of Michigan student newspaper archives. I stumbled upon an account of a 1961 lecture given by Kenneth Boulding. The newspaper story included a photo of him that I had not ever seen. Most images one finds are typically of the later, American bald eagle look that was iconic Boulding and how he is etched on my memory. The image from the newspaper article is presumably from 1960 or 1961 and worth including among the economist mugshots shared by Economics in the Rear-view Mirror.
Prefacing the transcribed newspaper report of Kenneth Boulding’s 1961 lecture “Economic Theory and Sociological Theory” are (i) an interdisciplinary verse composed by Boulding (included in his contribution to the 1963 AEA Papers and Proceedings); (ii) the University of Michigan’s tribute to him on the occasion of the award of an honorary doctor of laws degree (1978); (iii) a brief biographical sketch from the finding aid to Boulding’s papers at the University of Michigan.
Links to four published works from 1962 have been appended to the post to provide some meat to the skeleton of a lecture reported in the University of Michigan newspaper account.
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A Boulding Verse
Four things that give mankind a shove
Are threats, exchange, persuasion, love;
But taken in the wrong proportions
These give us cultural abortions.
For threats bring manifold abuses
In games where everybody loses;
Exchange enriches every nation
But leads to dangerous alienation;
Persuaders organize their brothers
But fool themselves as well as others;
And love, with longer pull than hate,
Is slow indeed to propagate.
Source: Boulding, Kenneth E. “Towards a Pure Theory of Threat Systems.” The American Economic Review 53, no. 2 (1963): 424–34. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1823883.
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Honorary Degree
University of Michigan
(December 17, 1978)
Since Kenneth Boulding, of the University of Colorado at Boulder, was Professor of Economics at The University of Michigan for twenty years, we may claim him as our own. Here, stimulated by our Institute for Social Research, he was able to go “beyond economics” into the philosophical and psychological problems, ranging from consumer-behavior to war-and-peace, of conflict resolution.
Honors soon followed: the John B. Clark medal for Economics, the American Council of Learned Societies’ prize in the Humanities, the Presidency of the American Association, memberships in the National Academy of Science and the American Philosophical Society. He has been visiting Professor at the University College of Kingston, Jamaica; the University of Natal; the University of Edinburgh; and the International Christian University in Tokyo. He is at home in the world as well as the universe.
A member of the Society of Friends, Professor Boulding has carried his religious commitment into the practice of love to achieve through his more than thirty challenging books goals heretofore deemed unattainable. Early he discovered that the actual writing of poetry is a whetstone with which to sharpen one’s English prose. Out of his discipline, his humanity, and his
faith, Kenneth Boulding, to quote one of his own “eiconic” phrases from The Image, has built a true “Temple of the Mind.”With admiration and love, therefore, The University of Michigan bestows upon him the degree Doctor of Laws.
Source: University of Michigan. Faculty History Project.
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Biographical Note from the Boulding papers at Michigan
Kenneth Ewart Boulding, professor of economics and pacifist, was born in Liverpool, England, January 18, 1910. He was educated at New College, Oxford, England (1928-1932) and the University of Chicago (1932-1934). Boulding taught economics at Colgate (1937-1941), Fisk (1942-1943), Iowa State (1943-1946), and McGill University (1946-1947) before joining the University of Michigan as a professor of economics, 1949-1967. Since 1968, Boulding has been associated with the University of Colorado at Boulder as a professor of economics and director for the Program on General Social and Economic Dynamics and the Institute of Behavioral Science.
Some of his related activities and honors included receiving the John Bates Clark Medal for Economics for 1949; a fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, 1954-1955; visiting professorships in Jamaica (1959-1960) and Japan (1963-1964); and directing the University of Michigan Center for Research in Conflict Resolution (1964-1966). Boulding also wrote numerous books, articles, and book reviews. Boulding was active in several peace, anti-nuclear, and disarmament groups, notably the Society of Friends and the National Council of Churches Department of the Church and Economic Life, and UNESCO. His wife, Elise (Biorn-Hansen) Boulding, was a sociologist and also very active in the international peace movement, women’s issues, and Quaker activities.
Kenneth Boulding viewed economics as a creative and philosophical integration of various disciplines–political science, sociology and anthropology. He coined the word “eiconics” to describe the weaving together and restructuring of interdisciplinary knowledge.
Source: Finding aid for the Kenneth Ewart Boulding Papers, 1880-1968, University of Michigan Library.
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Boulding Cites Passage To ‘Post Civilization Era’
By PHILIP SUTIN
The Michigan Daily (March 2, 1961)
“The world is passing from the civilization era to a post civilization era,” Prof. Kenneth Boulding of the economics department said yesterday in, his lecture on “Economic Theory and Sociological Theory.”
He noted that many of the characteristics of civilization are disintegrating. Cities, national defense, poverty, and exploitation which distinguishes this order are now changing.
National Defense
As an example he cited national defense. “National defense as a social system ended in 1945,” he said.
He explained his hypothesis by the theory of oligopoly. In a bipolar situation, for example, each nation has a certain basic home strength and declining foreign power as the distance from that nation increases. A boundary of equal strength exists between the two which shifts with variations in power until one is no longer viable.
However, today nations are at a point where they are no longer unconditionally viable due to their lack of desire or inability to reduce the power of the opposition, he said.
“Oligopoly can be demonstrated by two firms, A and B, which produce identical commodities. The total costs of transportation increase with increasing distance from the firm.
“A boundary of indifference exists between them where the consumer goes equally to both.
Push Boundary
“If A should cut his price, the boundary will be pushed toward B. This price cutting and shifting of boundaries will continue until one cannot cut his price. He can then no longer be viable,” Boulding explained.
“This is analogous to the arms race,” he said.
In discussing social theory, Boulding noted that all social sciences are essentially one. Each discipline takes pieces of the social system, often in incompatible ways.
In their studies social scientists take different levels of abstraction and parcel out the various institutions. The first action, he said, is laudable while the second is deplorable.
However, social scientists cannot study people, as they are much too complicated. So they try to develop a series of abstractions which are relevant to reality.
Meet Difficulties
They run into difficulties, however, in trying to find the level of abstraction. Society encompasses the entire social systems which is fundamentally symbolic, he explained.
“Social scientists have never succeeded in developing a level of abstraction to deal with symbolic systems. They do not know what to abstract out of them or what gives these symbolic systems power,” Boulding said.
Sociology can learn a great deal from economics as many social phenomena have exchange relationships like those that occur in economics.
The basic unit of economics, he noted is the commodity. This world of commodity is seen in terms of price. “It is only accidental to the economist that people move commodities,” Boulding noted,
Generalize Exchange
However, exchange can be generalized, missing important factors in social relationships. As an example, Boulding cited labor relations. “The economist pulls out the commodity from labor, but leaves a great residue. Group relations and alternative uses of time are important factors. A great cloud of reality overshadows- the economic framework of labor relations,” Boulding said.
He noted other comparisons between economics and sociology. The economist, he said, looks at behavior as fundamentally a problem of choice.
The individual looks over the field of alternatives, puts an evaluation in terms of ordinal numbers on each possibility, and chooses number one.
However, “rational behavior may not be sensible behavior” as rationality is merely ordering the field.
The economists view people in terms of this field theory, Boulding explained. Behavorial action tends toward the point of highest utility.
Source: The Michigan Daily, vol. 71, issue 105 (March 2, 1961), p. 5.
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Sample of Boulding’s Writings
(1962)
- Boulding, Kenneth E. Conflict and Defense. New York: Harper & Bros., 1962.
- Boulding, Kenneth E. “Where Are We Going If Anywhere? A Look at Post-Civilization.” Human Organization 21, no. 2 (1962): 162–67. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44127756 .
- Boulding, Kenneth E. “The Death of the City: A Frightened Look at Post-Civilization.” Ekistics 13, no. 75 (1962): 19–22. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43617612 .
- Davis, James A., and Kenneth E. Boulding. Review of Two Critiques of Homans’ Social Behavior: Its Elementary Forms, by George Caspar Homans. American Journal of Sociology 67, no. 4 (1962): 454–61. http://www.jstor.org/stable/2775146.
Image Source: The Michigan Daily, vol. 71, issue 105 (March 2, 1961), p. 5.