The book’s closing Chapter 9 on change in economics begins with an examination of the methodological problem of explaining what counts as change, and argues change in economics needs to be explained in terms of economics’ relationships to other disciplines. It argues that economics’ core–periphery structure works to insulate its core from other disciplines’ influences upon it, minimizing their influences. This raises the question: Can other disciplines influence economics’ core and potentially produce change in economics? To investigate this question, the chapter develops an open–closed systems model of disciplinary boundary crossings and argues that economics’ core is only incompletely closed and consequently its adopting other disciplines’ contents can change its interpretation. Using the different forms of relationships between disciplines distinguished in Chapter 7, mainstream economics’ relations to other disciplines are argued to currently be interdisciplinarity, but may also be unstable and can break down. When and under what circumstances? Moving from what happens within social science, two sets of external forces influencing change in economics – change in how research is done and historical changes in social values and social expectations regarding what economics is and should be about – are argued likely to increase boundary crossings between economics and other disciplines, undermine the insularity of its core, and move economics toward being a multidisciplinary, more pluralistic discipline. What would then be especially different about economics would be that individuals are seen as socially embedded and an objective economics is seen as a normative, value-entangled science.

This chapter returns to a long-standing issue in in language and identity research based on life story interviews - the need for theoretical and methodological rigour (Pavlenko, 2007). It begins with background: first a brief discussion of identity that highlights those aspects of the construct that later come to the fore, and second, presentation of a version of positioning theory (PT) recently developed by the author (Block, 2017). This version draws on the original PT model developed by Rom Harré and his associates but importantly, it expands on this model with the addition of constructs taken from sociolinguistics, sociology and social theory, including authenticity and authentication (Bucholtz, 2003), belonging (Guibernau, 2013), field and habitus (Bourdieu, 1993, 2000), discourse formations and gaze (Foucault, 1989, 2003) and resistance (Seymour, 2006). The second half of the chapter examines an excerpt from an interview with an English-medium instruction lecturer, drawing on constructs developed in the first part. The aim is to show how the version of PT presented can lead to a detailed and nuanced interpretation of the construction of identity, turn by turn, in an interaction.