60 FACULTY OF HUMANITIES ANNUAL REPORT 2021 Student highlights A final highlight of this incredibly busy and fruitful year has been the graduation of our first cohort of students on the Interdisciplinary Masters in Social Policy and Development. This programme, targeted mainly at working students, has seen this cohort developing valuable skills in policy analysis, and research to inform and assess social development problems and solutions. We wish these students well in their future studies and careers. Looking ahead In 2022 we will continue to build on the successes of 2021. The two flagship projects will continue allowing us to further test the solutions and deepen our knowledge. Academic publications from the projects will be a priority in the new year. The CSDA continues to invest in early career staff members, supporting them to gain exposure to collaborative research and involving them in all aspects of research. This will continue in 2022 with an emphasis on supporting them to publish in academic forums. Having run the Interdisciplinary Masters in Social Policy and Development for three years, 2022 will see a review process being undertaken to understand how we can improve on this programme going forward. The Karl Mittermaier Centre for Philosophy of Economics The Karl Mittermaier Centre for Philosophy of Economics (www.kmcpe.co.za) was founded in 2021 with external financial support, and is affiliated to Faculty of Humanities and the Johannesburg Institute of Advanced Study. Its founding inspiration is taken from the South African and German economist Karl Mittermaier (born 1938; died 2016), who stressed the need to distinguish between the subject matter of economics and the tools employed in economics, arguing that much had been accomplished in developing the tools, but little in understanding the subject matter. The very sophisticated tools of economics are now employed in different fields of investigation, and so we have what has been coined the ‘imperialism of economics’. In contrast to this ‘imperialism of economics’ the agenda of the Centre’s philosophy of economics is not to develop new ‘markets’ for economics, but to develop new ways of looking at the subject matter; developing novel tools of economic thought, rather than applying the existing tools in novel ways. The Centre is one of only a few such centres for the philosophy of economics worldwide - though their numbers are growing – putting the University “ahead of the curve” in this regard. Philosophy of economics matters, if by it is meant ‘thinking philosophically about economics and about the economy’. It is not the application of new trends in philosophy (and in the philosophy of science) to economics, prescribing a methodology for the subject; that was the practice 50 years ago, when positivism had been ‘legislated’ for economics. In reaction to this, various international movements – e.g. ‘Rethinking Economics’ and ‘Post-autistic economics’ – have expressed the appetite and need to think about the economy in a novel way. The Karl Mittermaier Centre for Philosophy of Economics aspires to make important contributions in this regard. Its contributions will be in various forms. For example, in 2022 the Centre is organising an international symposium in Johannesburg with select global leaders in the field, many of them having confirmed participation at the event (assuming that there are no Covid related travel restrictions and no travel hesitancy). The symposium themes are those aligned to the research focus areas of the Centre, one of which is “The Empirical Content of Economics”. This theme inquires into the nature of facts in economics, for – although economics makes extensive use of data and also big data – there is no discussion about the nature of the data that is being used. Contrary to the measurements found in the ‘hard’ sciences, which economics often aspires to emulate, economic data is not in the form of measurements, but in the form of ‘records’ of past events. Other focus areas for the Centre - and hence Symposium themes - are the following: ‘market order’, ‘history and philosophy of economic thought’, ‘nominalism and realism in economics’. and ‘institutions as empirical content in economics’. A particular aim is the development of a theoretical framework, which could ultimately enable the economic theorist to use institutions as a means of empirical orientation. The continent of Africa, and some of its institutions, may provide empirical material for an early application of this theoretical framework.
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