Humor in Heterodox Economics: Why Cartoons Are a Valuable Learning Resource (HEN Editorial 336)

Dis­co­ver how car­toons can make hete­ro­dox eco­no­mics fun, insightful, and engaging—perfect for boos­ting crea­ti­vity and learning!

We maybe talk too rarely and too little about how tea­ching and thin­king on hete­ro­dox eco­no­mics could be more funny. While this might not seem totally apt for what is some­ti­mes cal­led the ‚dis­mal sci­ence’, I still wan­ted to point out for once that car­toons can serve as a core entry point for doing so. Human crea­ti­vity is a beau­tiful resource, that can be employed for many pur­po­ses, and I am con­fi­dent many will agree dra­wing funny car­toons is among the bet­ter of those pur­po­ses; one that unde­ni­ably con­tri­bu­tes to social wel­fare (and resilience ;-)).

As I am try­ing to nudge you here to use more car­toons in your diverse com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons, this should hop­efully give some push to the demand for car­toons, which lea­ves with us with the quint­essen­tial ques­tion where to get adquate sup­ply. My first sug­ges­tion on this is to have a look (or maybe sub­scribe to) www.smbc-comics.com, which regu­larly covers eco­no­mic issues from various angles. The diverse con­tri­bu­ti­ons include funny sum­ma­ries of basic models, spe­ci­fic inter­pre­ta­ti­ons in the history of eco­no­mic thought, les­sons on invest­ment stra­te­gies, per­fect fore­sight and finan­cial sta­bi­lity, rele­vent basics on socialphi­lo­so­phy and eco­no­mic expe­ri­ments as well as some advan­ced lear­nings in beha­vi­oral eco­no­mics.

My second recom­men­da­tion is to resort to the more abs­tract, but no less inge­nious www.xkcd.com, which comes more from a natu­ral sci­ence per­spec­tive. It some­ti­mes fea­tures very forceful and inven­tive car­toons (like the one on cli­mate change), but often adres­ses core issues of con­cern to hete­ro­dox eco­no­mists with beau­tifully simple and clear aes­the­tics. The car­toons are really hel­pful for map­ping some phi­lo­so­phi­cal foun­da­ti­ons, key insights from the stu­dies of sci­ence and clear-cut les­sons inmetho­do­logy. It even helps us defi­ning eco­no­mics as a disci­pline and peri­odi­cally sug­gests metho­do­lo­gi­cal inno­va­tions of great interest.

A final option is to have a look at www.existentialcomics.com, which comes from a more phi­lo­so­phi­cal van­tage point. It’s car­toons are often close to the stan­dard inter­pre­ta­ti­ons asso­cia­ted with diverse phi­lo­so­phers, which endows it with a cer­tain peda­g­ago­gi­cal vir­tue. As there are huge over­laps bet­ween the history of phi­lo­so­phy and eco­no­mic history or the history of eco­no­mic thought, the inte­res­ted rea­der will occa­sio­nally find car­toons that per­tain to core topics of inte­rest, like the upbrin­ging of major eco­no­mic­sts, ideo­lo­gi­cal clas­hes in hypo­the­ti­cal sce­na­rios or empi­ri­cal updates on men’s state of nature.

While I hope you had some fun with my pri­mary resour­ces I would be happy to hear whe­ther you might have some com­ple­men­tary sugg­ges­ti­ons to my preli­mi­nary list of car­toon pro­vi­ders ;-) If so, sim­ply write a short note to newsletter@heterodoxnews.com. Many thanks in advance!

Best