This cross-disciplinary special issue focuses on economic knowledge in social countries during the second half of the twentieth century. Through a series of historical case studies, the issue embraces a wide variety of perspectives on the ways economy and society were conceptualized behind the Iron Curtain. Contributors explored the entanglement of ideology and economic discourse, the political dimensions of cybernetic technocracy, and the various faces of Cold War rationality of socialism.

Contributors. Oleg Ananyin, Johanna Bockman, Ivan Boldyrev, Till Düppe, Richard Ericson, Yakov Feygin, Olessia Kirtchik, Martha Lampland, Adam Leeds, Denis Melnik, Chris Miller, György Peteri, Eglė Rindzevičiūtė, Vítězslav Sommer, Joachim Zweynert

Traces the early history of economic knowledge developed by thinkers between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries.

Tracking the pre-history of economic thought starting in the sixteenth century, The Lost Forms of Economic Knowledge investigates its origins prior to the emergence of political economy as an autonomous discipline in the late eighteenth century. French historian Arnaud Orain reconstructs the “lost forms” of economic knowledge that led to a world very different from our modern system of numerical abstraction and market regulation. As Orain shows, older approaches to the economy defined it as a relationship between humans and the environment. These earlier forms of economic thought relied on and sought to advance vernacular knowledge from figures such as naturalists, artisans, farmers, and merchants on how to harness the environment to our advantage. Nonetheless, the goal was not to maximize profit, but to satisfy our needs and live in harmony with nature. At a time in which natural resources are fast depleting, Orain argues, we could do worse than to consider alternative approaches to “economics” that lie in our past.