Towards Understanding the Post Colonial in the Development of Irish Economics

This conference contribution is prompted by recent work where theories used to understand the economists in countries like France, Britain, Germany, and the USA (Fourcade, 2009; Maesse, 2015) were used to study the development of Irish economics profession. Work on Ireland (FitzGerald & O’Rourke, 2023), though using these frameworks, revealed the importance of Ireland’s colonial and post-colonial experiences in the social status of economics in today’s Ireland. Escobar (2011) points to the power of economists in development discourses focussing particularly on the case of Columbia and the interaction between USA economics with its southern neighbours in the period since the World War II. This conference contribution aims to focus on the development of economics in Ireland in a way that seeks conversation with the colonial and postcolonial experiences of the profession in other countries while not obscuring the particularities of the Irish case or denying its close connections with core countries in the development of the globalized profession.