Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Denying Human Homogeneity: Eugenics & Making Of Post-Classical Economics, Sandra J. Peart, David M. Levy

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

The question we propose to address is how did economics move from the classical period characterized by the hardest possible doctrine of initial human homogeneity—all the observed differences among people arise from incentives, luck, and history¹—to become comfortable with accounts of human behavior which alleged foundational differences among and within races of people? (Darity 1995) In this paper, we shall argue that early British eugenics thinkers racialized economics in the post-classical period.²