Capes’ evaluation and the field of Economics: the primacy of the American orthodox mainstream

ABSTRACT Using the Bourdieusian concept of Field, this article looks at Capes’ evaluation of graduate programs as an expression of the disputes surrounding the very definition of what constitutes Economics. Based on extensive documentary analysis, it demonstrates how the criteria in place are markedly exclusionary. On the one hand, they encourage researchers to adopt the assumptions of neoclassical liberalism, tested by econometric models, in line with American mainstream; on the other hand, they punish, in more or less extent, all other possible theoretical, methodological and thematic approaches, hindering the development of studies built upon the many diverse local Brazilian realities.