IASS 2025

Session

A.3 SESSION: NORMATIVITY AND ECONOMIC PROGRESS

28 Mar 2025, 09:10

ROOM 3

79. The Normative Benchmark of Economic Progress: Adam Smith’s Use of the Stadial Theory

Huahui Zhu (Tsinghua University)

28/03/2025, 09:10

Recently there has been a revival of interest in the apparent inconsistency between Smith’s conjectural stadial model and the various historical cases of social stagnation, and even retrograde order, as presented in his works. Most scholars tend to adopt an ‘either-or’ approach, suggesting that we must either discard the stadial model or acknowledge Smith’s theoretical incongruence. This...

73. The natural and the social: description and normativity in Adam Smith’s thought

Leo Steeds (University of Glasgow)

28/03/2025, 09:40

Smith does not conceive of a “state of nature” as such, which societies exit in the course of development. Rather, as Michel Foucault noted, society, for Smith and his Scottish contemporaries, is a “historical-natural constant”. In Smith’s descriptive account of societies, much emphasis, too, is placed on the naturalness of certain kinds of institutions – institutions of government, for...

89. The other of progress: Adam Smith on native American societies and European settler colonies

Ivan Sternick (UFMG)

28/03/2025, 10:10

In this paper, I contrast Smith’s description of the condition and character of native American peoples with his view of the progress made by European settler colonies in the Americas. In doing so, I intend to show that there is a tension between, on the one hand, the recognition of the crimes committed by the European conquerors against pre-Columbian populations and, on the other hand, the...