INTRODUCTION

The case for economics imperialism is a specific example of the broader argument for scientific unification. But it is not a matter of using similar means of observation and measurement to adjudicate on the similarity between the causal processes in operation. The explanation does not follow careful empirical investigation of the causes at work; rather, it comes first. Every social situation is reduced to an instrumentally rational individual ignoring conflicting social stimuli to always maximize their market gains, and an explanatory narrative is then built around those actions. Explanatory notions are thus allowed to overpower causal notions, and scientific unification very quickly becomes the search for new social situations to submit to a single structure of explanation (Kitcher 1989: 495). The boundary-hopping activities in which economics imperialists engage are one-way transgressions enacted via the imposition of mathematical market models (Nik-Khah & Van Horn 2015: 72).

These are circumstances in which no invitation to appropriate new subject matter is ever sought, and what might otherwise be a negotiated coming together instead gives way to the law of the jungle. Economics imperialists are easy to convince that their side will be the last one standing in any ensuing battle for supremacy (Van Bouwel 2011: 47). Listening only to them, the sense of an imminent takeover is never far away (Fine 2004: 121). Looking at the practice in social science journals, the same feeling can also quite easily take hold. It is one of the curiosities of economics imperialism that very few members of its club make the case explicitly for it. But for every economist who has spoken loudly in support of transgressive mathematical market models, there are many more who have followed their prescriptions but without the fanfare. Even if they are concerned not to openly ruffle feathers, they are equally intent on pushing the parameters of insisting on strict obedience to an abstract market logic.