I spent the whole of Chapter 1 mapping out the particularly ambiguous nature of madness in this period and the high stakes of choosing one interpretation over another, because both account for the tentative or multiple reactions of characters to madness. It is no coincidence that, in his creation of Don Quixote and his adventures, Cervantes emphasises exactly what I take to be the defi ning characteristic of madness at this time: the confusing and contradictory outward signs. In this chapter I will concentrate on how persons from various strata of Spanish society, when presented with persons about whom they had limited information, came to diagnose the irrational actors in their midst; how those diagnoses (or the resistance to diagnose) affected the ethical choices they made; and how Cervantes builds upon these dilemmas and decisions in the episodic encounters among strangers, mad and sane, found (primarily) in the fi rst part of Don Quixote.

Faced with a spectacle of apparent unreason, the early modern Spaniard had to choose between many possible interpretations. What is perhaps most remarkable in the Inquisitional testimonies of witnesses of irrational behaviour is the general reluctance to make defi nitive judgements. Since the nature of the judgement almost always would determine a particular course of action with the irrational actor in question, the suspension of diagnosis could lead to one of two outcomes. Either the person attempting to judge withdrew from interaction altogether, having been unable to decide the proper way to respond, or he/she adopted multiple courses of action and pursued them simultaneously. Often early modern Spaniards did not, in the presence of someone they suspected of madness, feel it necessary to choose between ridiculing and caring for this ambiguous subject.

This short history has elucidated a key strength of heterodox economics: its pluralism. Since the Methodenstreit (battle of methods) in the nineteenth century, neoclassical economics has tended to separate itself from other disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. Although Schmoller, as a leading representative of the German historical school, was open to the embryonic neoclassical focus on utility maximization, he was resistant to it being used to address all economic questions: a charge he levelled at theorist Carl Menger, who sought to narrowly define selfish economic man in isolation from any historical context. No matter, for example, that women are absent from the discussion and large parts of the world population continue to suffer from the legacy of colonialism and slavery, as exemplified by the Black wealth gap; its history is expunged from narrowly defined economics.

In addition, for pioneering institutionalist Thorstein Veblen, economic man is asocial, a solitary Robinson Crusoe character stripped of his social being. To develop a fully rounded treatment of economic activity requires consideration of the community in which people live, incorporating the interface between economics and sociology. This porous approach is taken by feminist economics with, for example, an analysis of the power inequalities between men and women in the allocation of caring responsibilities. Similarly, ecological economists use sociological theories drawn from the institutional tradition of thought to examine excessive carbon use because of overconsumption. As argued by Wrenn (2018: 262), heterodox economics offers a richer and fuller “description of and explanation of the diverse range of human behaviour than that of the calculative individual in mainstream economics”.

When the previous edition of this book was published, the commercial airline industry was in the middle of the deepest crisis it had ever faced. The Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent severe travel restrictions that had been introduced by governments to attempt to limit the spread of the virus yielded a drastic reduction in passenger air travel volume across the world. According to IATA, 2020 passenger volume was around one third of that in 2019, and a recovery to the level of the last full pre-pandemic year was not expected until 2024. The increase in air cargo business had not for most airlines been enough to offset the revenues lost due to the drastic fall in passenger operations. The industry was kept afloat thanks to approximately $250 billion of government support (representing about 30 per cent of the industry's global revenue in 2019).

Some experts and commentators suggested at the time that the pandemic would change the airline industry “forever”. I was more inclined to subscribe to the view that most of the effects of this disruption would dissipate within the next decade. At the beginning of 2025, passenger volume has fully recovered to the pre-pandemic level, and the global industry revenue is expected to reach $1 trillion for the first time ever (adjusted for inflation, 2025 airline industry revenue will be about the same as it was in 2019). The pandemic did however impact the aviation sector – delays in aircraft manufacturing continue, and we have yet to fully recover from the workforce disruption caused by the pandemic.

Our story so far is of heterodox economics that is pluralist: drawing on ideas from different schools of thought (from Marxian to post- Keynesian and institutionalist) and different disciplines (from history to sociology and philosophy), and using alternative methods (qualitative and quantitative). A diversity of scholarly approaches is explored in contrast to the narrow confines of neoclassical orthodoxy. As it stands, delivering on this pluralism presents a considerable challenge to heterodox economists operating on the margins of mainstream economics; but there is an additional challenge that needs to be faced. If heterodox economics is to become truly plural, it has to be open to the needs and voices of marginalized and unrepresented groups (Strassmann & Starr 2009: 61). This is a challenge for all economists, heterodox or otherwise. In investigating the openness of economics to postcolonial ideas, Kayatekin (2009: 1113) finds “economics to be the discipline most resistant to change”.

As argued by Kvangraven and Kesar (2022), a decolonization of economics requires two main things. First, there needs to be a consideration of colonial history in order to understand how societal imbalances of power came into being. Second, there needs to be a consideration of the subjection of women to these power imbalances, requiring a feminist response. Both dimensions are argued here to be core to heterodox economics.

In addition to covering strands of heterodox economics that incorporate different voices, the chapter also considers the critical role of the planet: the natural environment that has no voice.

The 1832 Reform Act established a new system of two-party politics. At this time, most party organization took place in individual constituencies and aimed at winning a particular election contest. Once elected, MPs expected to enjoy a considerable degree of independence in their voting habits, and governments could not take their loyalty for granted. However, by the time that Lord Melbourne formed his government of 1835, after the election early that year, it was clear that MPs at Westminster were dividing into two camps, one of which – Melbourne's supporters – was much more sympathetic than the other to demands for further reform, from urban Britain and from religious minorities. Journalists did not always agree on how to describe the political tribes at Westminster. The specific term “Liberal Party” to describe the reformist camp was widely adopted by commentators from the mid- 1830s, although other names, especially “Reformer” and “Whig”, also continued in use, reflecting the importance of the Reform Act and the role of the old Whig aristocratic party in passing it (Coohill 2011). The same was true for the Liberals’ opponents, increasingly known as the Conservative Party but still often called Tories.

The 1832 Act was primarily a renewed attack on excessive Crown power, by making parliament better able to express “public opinion”. It also attacked the bribery and corruption which self-interested lobby groups had used to buy their way into parliament. Reformers argued that the Act would strengthen the social structure and protect Britain from revolution, but that leaders would now have to show consistent willingness to take popular grievances seriously. The Whig aristocrats behind the Act saw themselves as public-spirited leaders of that type.

What are airline alliances?

As extensive as some of the airlines’ networks have recently grown, there are still many city-pairs, travel between which will inevitably require a change of carrier. I travelled regularly on one such route during my graduate school years. At that time, no single airline could take me from Kyiv, Ukraine to Tucson, Arizona. I could, instead, travel to Phoenix – British Airways could take me there all the way from Kyiv with an overnight stay in London, and Tucson is only two hours’ drive from Phoenix Sky Harbour Airport. But when I chose to travel to or from Tucson, I had to switch airlines along the way. That is when I first learned about airline alliances, codesharing, and other interesting practices. I ended up writing a good chunk of my doctoral dissertation on this very topic.

The jargon for a trip requiring a change of operating carrier is an interline trip. Interline trips can be tricky for both the passenger and the airlines involved. For the airlines, there are two main issues: how the revenue is shared, and who is responsible for getting the passenger and their luggage to the destination in case that interline connection does not go smoothly. The passenger will of course worry about missed connections, and hope that the luggage will show up at the destination (sometimes the passenger will have to collect the luggage when making the connection). The passenger's biggest worry is of course being stuck at an intermediate airport with no airline willing to take responsibility for his or her onward journey – something that nearly happened to me on my very first trip to the United States.

Neoclassical economics starts with an individual economic being, like Robinson Crusoe, making decisions in isolation. As observed by Henry (1990: 174), in his history of the making of neoclassical economics in the nineteenth century, “a non-social perspective” is established. Economic man is not influenced by the behaviour of other men (or women); his behaviour does not depend on societal influences. And it does not matter if he is the son of a king or a pauper; history has no role in the natural proclivity of economic man to make his own decisions.

By isolating economic man in this way, both sociology (the study of social interactions) and history (the study of change over time) are expunged from the new science of economics. Economics becomes a separate discipline from the social sciences and humanities. Heterodox economics, on the other hand, champions the importance of other disciplines and seeks to bring economics back to its historical and social roots.

A key starting point for looking at the interface between economics and other disciplines is “institutional economics”: a school of thought that emerged in the US around the start of the twentieth century. As summarized by a leading proponent, Geoffrey Hodgson: “Institutionalism offered an approach to the study of economic phenomena that drew from not one discipline but several. It appealed to psychology, anthropology, sociology and elsewhere, in attempt to explain the world as it is, has been, and may be” (Hodgson 2004: 5). Indeed, Lee (2009: 189) reveals that it was the institutional economists that first used the term heterodox “to identify their own dissent from the orthodox mainstream”.

Most attempts to defi ne the novel make United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's defi nition of pornography seem scientific. Yet while the land of the novel is impossible to map with precision, we can make some general observations about the territory. The novel is ‘a prose fi ction in which the characters, plot and/or themes develop through the work’ and through each other. Acknowledging that any more precise defi nition inevitably opens itself to counterexamples and exceptions, we can state that as a rule the novel separates itself from its literary forebears (the epic, the romance, the satire) by its realism, complexity of characters and formal experimentation. The ambiguity of the novel is an element and a result of all of these: complex characters interacting in a complex social world and represented by unstable narrators all contribute to the novel's resistance to univocal interpretation. The novel evokes the real world, but it destabilises the concept of a single, representable reality, both from within (ambiguous characters) and without (ambiguous narrators). In Don Quixote, both of these stem not only from Cervantes's choice of a mad protagonist but also from Cervantes's choice of a protagonist whose madness is that of Cervantes's own time and place.

Madness From Without: What Is He Thinking?

Put yourself in the place of Anamaría Ballesteros, a woman living in a boarding house in Toledo. At seven o’clock in the evening, she hears strange shouting and pounding noises coming from the fl oor below, and peeks through a hole into the room.