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Substantivism
Substantivism is an economic position that helps to explain the social relations embedded within the economy. It was first proposed by Karl Polanyi, who argues that the term "economics" has two meanings. The formal meaning, used by today's neoclassical economists, refers to economics as the logic of rational action and decision-making, as rational choice between the alternative uses of limited (scarce) means, as "economizing", "maximizing", or "optimizing".Polanyi, Karl. (1944) ''The Great Transformation: the Political and Economic Origins of Our Time'', Farrar and Rinehart, New York The second, substantive meaning presupposes neither rational decision-making nor conditions of scarcity. It refers to how humans make a living interacting within their social and natural environments. A society's livelihood strategy is seen as an adaptation to its environment and material conditions, a process which may or may not involve utility maximization. The substantive meaning of 'economics' is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Economic Anthropology
Economic anthropology is a field that attempts to explain human economic behavior in its widest historic, geographic and cultural scope. It is an amalgamation of economics and anthropology. It is practiced by anthropologists and has a complex relationship with the discipline of economics, of which it is highly critical. Its origins as a sub-field of anthropology began with work by the Polish founder of anthropology Bronislaw Malinowski and the French Marcel Mauss on the nature of reciprocity as an alternative to market exchange. In an earlier German context, Heinrich Schurtz has been cited as a “founder of economic anthropology" for his pioneering inquiries into money and exchange across different cultural settings. Post-World War II, economic anthropology was highly influenced by the work of economic historian Karl Polanyi. Polanyi drew on anthropological studies to argue that true market exchange was limited to a restricted number of western, industrial societies. Apply ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Formalist–substantivist Debate
The opposition between substantivist and formalist economic models was first proposed by Karl Polanyi in his work '' The Great Transformation'' (1944). Overview Polanyi argued that the term ''economics'' has two meanings: the formal meaning refers to economics as the logic of rational action and decision-making, as a rational choice between the alternative uses of limited (scarce) means. The second, substantive meaning, however, presupposes neither rational decision-making nor conditions of scarcity. It simply refers to the study of how humans make a living from their social and natural environment. A society's livelihood strategy is seen as an adaptation to its environment and material conditions, a process that may or may not involve utility maximisation. The substantive meaning of ''economics'' is seen in the broader sense of ''provisioning''. Economics is simply the way society meets its material needs. Anthropologists embraced the substantive position as empirically orient ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Embeddedness
In economics and economic sociology, embeddedness refers to the degree to which economic activity is constrained by non-economic institutions. The term was created by economic historian Karl Polanyi as part of his substantivist approach. Polanyi argued that in non-market societies there are no pure economic institutions to which formal economic models can be applied. In these cases economic activities such as "provisioning" are "embedded" in non-economic kinship, religious and political institutions. In market societies, in contrast, economic activities have been rationalized, and economic action is "disembedded" from society and able to follow its own distinctive logic, captured in economic modeling. Polanyi's ideas were widely adopted and discussed in anthropology in what has been called the formalist–substantivist debate. Subsequently, the term "embeddedness" was further developed by economic sociologist Mark Granovetter, who argued that even in market societies, economic a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Karl Polanyi
Karl Paul Polanyi (; ; 25 October 1886 – 23 April 1964)''Encyclopædia Britannica'' (Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. 2003) vol 9. p. 554 was an Austro-Hungarian economic anthropologist, economic sociologist, and politician, best known for his book '' The Great Transformation,'' which questions the conceptual validity of self-regulating markets. In his writings, Polanyi advances the concept of the Double Movement, which refers to the dialectical process of marketization and push for social protection against that marketization. He argues that market-based societies in modern Europe were not inevitable but historically contingent. Polanyi is remembered best as the originator of substantivism, a cultural version of economics, which emphasizes the way economies are embedded in society and culture. This opinion is counter to mainstream economics but is popular in anthropology, economic history, economic sociology and political science. Polanyi's approach to the ancie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Economics
Economics () is a behavioral science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of Agent (economics), economic agents and how economy, economies work. Microeconomics analyses what is viewed as basic elements within economy, economies, including individual agents and market (economics), markets, their interactions, and the outcomes of interactions. Individual agents may include, for example, households, firms, buyers, and sellers. Macroeconomics analyses economies as systems where production, distribution, consumption, savings, and Expenditure, investment expenditure interact; and the factors of production affecting them, such as: Labour (human activity), labour, Capital (economics), capital, Land (economics), land, and Entrepreneurship, enterprise, inflation, economic growth, and public policies that impact gloss ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Neoclassical Economists
Neoclassical economics is an approach to economics in which the production, consumption, and valuation (pricing) of goods and services are observed as driven by the supply and demand model. According to this line of thought, the value of a good or service is determined through a hypothetical maximization of utility by income-constrained individuals and of profits by firms facing production costs and employing available information and factors of production. This approach has often been justified by appealing to rational choice theory. Neoclassical economics is the dominant approach to microeconomics and, together with Keynesian economics, formed the neoclassical synthesis which dominated mainstream economics as "neo-Keynesian economics" from the 1950s onward. Classification The term was originally introduced by Thorstein Veblen in his 1900 article "Preconceptions of Economic Science", in which he related marginalists in the tradition of Alfred Marshall ''et al.'' to those ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scarcity
In economics, scarcity "refers to the basic fact of life that there exists only a finite amount of human and nonhuman resources which the best technical knowledge is capable of using to produce only limited maximum amounts of each economic good."Samuelson, P. Anthony., Samuelson, W. (1980). Economics. 11th ed. / New York: McGraw-Hill. If the conditions of scarcity did not exist and an "infinite amount of every good could be produced or human wants fully satisfied ... there would be no economic goods, i.e. goods that are relatively scarce..." Scarcity is the limited availability of a commodity, which may be in demand in the market or by the commons. Scarcity also includes an individual's lack of resources to buy commodities. The opposite of scarcity is abundance. Scarcity plays a key role in economic theory, and it is essential for a "proper definition of economics itself".Montani G. (1987) Scarcity. In: Palgrave Macmillan (eds) ''The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics''. Palgr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
