The profession of economics periodically finds itself under rhetorical attack from sociologists. Part of this is due to the differing political slants of the disciplines -- sociology tends to lean heavily to the left, while economics, being fairly well balanced between liberals and conservatives, is thus the most right-wing discipline in academia. Part of the rivalry is due to the attempts by some economists, such as Gary Becker, to model phenomena such as discrimination and family life that were traditionally in the realm of sociologists. In the siloed social sciences, people fear such “imperialism.”
Sociologists often feel that economics holds itself out as “dominant” or “supreme” among the social sciences. That’s the upshot of a new discussion paper from the Max Planck Sciences Po Center on Coping with Instability in Market Societies. The paper, called “The Superiority of Economists,” claims that economics reigns over the social sciences, and that economists are supremely arrogant, insular and hierarchical:
