Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Introduction -- 2. Darwin and Marx at the crossroads -- 3. Social Darwinism in Anglophone academic journals -- 4. Institutionalism versus Marxism : a debate with Alex Callinicos -- 5. The uncritical political affinities of critical realism -- 6. Contestable claims by critical realism in economics -- 7. The problem of formalism in economics -- 8. What are institutions? -- 9. The hidden persuaders -- 10. The complex evolution of a simple traffic convention -- 11. The nature and replication of routines.

"Economics in the Shadows of Darwin and Marx examines the legacies of these two giants of thought for the social sciences in the twenty-first century. Darwin and Marx stand out as the supreme theorists of structural change in complex living systems. Yet their analytical approaches are very different, and the idea that Darwinism has application to the social sciences is not widely appreciated. This collection of essays establishes the importance of Darwinism for economics and other social sciences, and compares the Darwinian legacy with that of Marx. Critical realism is just one of the tendencies within economics influenced by Marxism that is discussed here. The final part of the book adopts a Darwinian evolutionary approach to the analysis of institutions and routines. Geoffrey Hodgson's new book will be warmly welcomed and received by evolutionary and institutional economists, methodologists of economics and other social sciences, heterodox economists as well as other social scientists including economic sociologists, organisation scientists and political scientists."--BOOK JACKET.