Roberto Marchionatti, Mario Cedrini

Economics as Social Science

Economics imperialism and the challenge of interdisciplinarity

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

This book focuses on a territory that persists to be largely intractable using the postulates of economics: that of primitive societies. In retracing the origins of economics imperialism back to the birth of the discipline, this volume argues that it offers a reductionist interpretation that is poor in interpretative power. By engaging with the neglected traditions of sociological and anthropological studies, the analysis offers suggestions for a more democratic cooperation between the social sciences.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Taylor & Francis
• Seitenzahl: 220
• Erscheinungstermin: 24. November 2016
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 234mm x 152mm x 18mm
• Gewicht: 454g
• ISBN-13: 9781138909298
• ISBN-10: 1138909297
• Artikelnr.: 43680429

Autorenporträt

Roberto Marchionatti is Professor of Economics at the University of Torino, Italy, where he teaches economics, history of economic theory and economic anthropology. Mario Cedrini is Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Turin, Italy, where he teaches macroeconomics, international economics, history of economic thought and economic anthropology.

Inhaltsangabe

Contents
Acknowledgements viii
Introduction: origins, evolution and metamorphoses of economics
imperialism, or the need for an interdisciplinary research programme on
human behaviour
PART I: At the roots of economics imperialism: classical and neoclassical
economics and the issue of primitive societies
1 The distant origins of economics imperialism: classical economists and
primitive societies
1.1 Travellers, philosophers and the savages
1.2 Adam Smith: a conjectural primitive economy, or the model of the "early
and rude state of society"
1.3 In "the realm of necessity": Karl Marx's theory of pre-capitalist
societies
2 Economics imperialism revealed: neoclassical economists and primitive man
2.1 Occupy anthropology: Lionel Robbins, Raymond Firth and the formalist
school
2.2 Beyond the formalist approach: Clifford Geertz's and Richard Posner's
informational approach for peasant and primitive societies
2.3 Beyond the formalist approach: Jack Hirshleifer's bioeconomics and the
human behavioural ecology of primitive economies
3 Primitive societies in the interpretation of classical and neoclassical
economics: a common model
PART II: Economics and the challenge of primitive societies:
anthropological non-formalist approaches
4 The primitive system of gift exchange discovered: Marcel Mauss's Essai
sur le don
4.1 Anthropologists and 'real' primitive economies
4.2 Mauss's Essai sur le don
4.3 Mauss's critique of the homo oeconomicus
5 The substantivist perspective on the role of the economy in societies:
Karl Polanyi's and Marshall Sahlins's contributions
5.1 Karl Polanyi's substantivism
5.2 Marshall Sahlins's neo-substantivism
5.3 The debate on Stone Age Economics in the 1980s and 1990s
6 The intelligibility of primitive economic organization: Sahlins,
Lévi-Strauss and Clastres on Mauss's political philosophy
6.1 Claude Lévi-Strauss and Marshall Sahlins on the primitive social
contract
6.2 Pierre Clastres on the relationship between war and gift exchange in
societies "against the state"
6.3 Primitive economic organization in the light of Mauss's political
philosophy
PART III: The problem of the 'other': economics and unselfish behaviour
7 Economics on altruism, giving and reciprocity
7.1 From philanthropy to altruism
7.2 Richard Titmuss's The Gift Relationship and economists' embarrassment
7.3 Mainstream economics and the gift
7.4 The economics of reciprocity
A note on the origins of human cooperation: Samuel Bowles and Herbert
Gintis on primitive societies
8 A unified framework for behavioural sciences? On Herbert Gintis's
proposal
8.1 How to remedy the "scandalous" pluralism of social sciences
8.2 The socio(bio)logy of homo socialis
PART IV: The theoretical and practical relevance of Mauss's gift to the
development of a non-imperialist economics
9 The gift in social sciences
9.1 Jacques Derrida's philosophy of the impossibility of the (modern) gift
9.2 Alvin Gouldner's sociology: the norm of reciprocity and the principle
of 'something for nothing'
9.3 On Mauss again: anthropology in the 1980s and 1990s
10 Mauss's research programme revisited: the Mouvement anti-utilitariste
dans les sciences sociales (MAUSS)
10.1 Utilitarianism and anti-utilitarianism
10.2 The gift as a new paradigm for social sciences
11 A new Maussian perspective in economics
11.1 On complexity and economics
11.2 Back to the future with Mauss
Conclusions: the myth of economics imperialism and the possibility of a
non-imperialist economics
Bibliography
Index