Economics as Social Theory
About the Book Series
Social Theory is experiencing something of a revival within economics. Critical analyses of the particular nature of the subject matter of social studies and of the types of method, categories and modes of explanation that can legitimately be endorsed for the scientific study of social objects, are re-emerging. Economists are again addressing such issues as the relationship between agency and structure, between economy and the rest of society, and between the enquirer and the object of enquiry. There is a renewed interest in elaborating basic categories such as causation, competition, culture, discrimination, evolution, money, need, order, organization, power probability, process, rationality, technology, time, truth, uncertainty, value etc.
The objective for this series is to facilitate this revival further. In contemporary economics the label “theory” has been appropriated by a group that confines itself to largely asocial, ahistorical, mathematical “modelling”. Economics as Social Theory thus reclaims the “Theory” label, offering a platform for alternative rigorous, but broader and more critical conceptions of theorizing.
Legal and Political Foundations of Capitalism: The End of Laissez Faire?
1st Edition
By Jamee K. Moudud
March 19, 2025
“Institutions matter” is a common refrain among all economists—including many who have proposed progressive alternatives to free market fundamentalism. However, this sentiment does not go far enough. This book draws principally on the Original Institutional Economics and American Legal Realist ...
Cambridge Social Ontology: An Introduction to Social Positioning Theory
1st Edition
By Yannick Slade-Caffarel
April 30, 2024
Social ontology is the study of the nature and basic structure of social reality. It is a rapidly growing field at the intersection of philosophy and social science that has the potential to greatly assist social researchers of all kinds. One of the longest running projects in social ontology has ...
The Origins and Evolution of Consumer Capitalism: A Veblenian-Keynesian Perspective
1st Edition
By John P. Watkins
April 11, 2023
Consumer capitalism arose with the second industrial revolution, the application of continuous-mass production to consumer goods during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This book adopts a Veblenian, Keynesian viewpoint, presenting an evolutionary view of consumption combined with ...
Evolutionary Social Theory and Political Economy: Philosophy and Applications
1st Edition
By Clifford S. Poirot Jr.
February 27, 2023
Evolutionary Social Theory and Political Economy traces the origins, extension, marginalization and revival of evolutionary approaches to social theory from the Enlightenment through the beginning of the 21st century. It demonstrates how changes in understandings of social evolution corresponded to...
The Evolutionary Origins of Markets: How Evolution, Psychology and Biology Have Shaped the Economy
1st Edition
By Rojhat Avşar
November 21, 2019
Our elaborate market exchange system owes its existence not to our calculating brain or insatiable self-centeredness, but rather to our sophisticated and nuanced human sociality and to the inherent rationality built into our emotions. The modern economic system is helped a lot more than hindered by...
The Nature of Social Reality: Issues in Social Ontology
1st Edition
By Tony Lawson
June 10, 2019
The social sciences often fail to examine in any systematic way the nature of their subject matter. Demonstrating that this is a central explanation of the widely acknowledged failings of the social sciences, not least of modern economics, this book sets about rectifying matters. Providing an ...
Keynes Against Capitalism: His Economic Case for Liberal Socialism
1st Edition
By James Crotty
May 14, 2019
Keynes is one of the most important and influential economists who ever lived. It is almost universally believed that Keynes wrote his magnum opus, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, to save capitalism from the socialist, communist, and fascist forces that were rising up during ...
Markets: Perspectives from Economic and Social Theory
1st Edition
By William A. Jackson
May 08, 2019
Defining markets has never been an easy task. Despite their importance for economic theory and practice, they are hard to pin down as a concept and economists have tended to adopt simplified axiomatic models or rely on piecemeal case studies. This book argues that an extended range of theory, ...
Knowledge, Class, and Economics: Marxism without Guarantees
1st Edition
Edited
By Theodore Burczak, Robert F Garnett Jr, Richard McIntyre
October 13, 2017
Knowledge, Class, and Economics: Marxism without Guarantees surveys the "Amherst School" of non-determinist Marxist political economy, 40 years on: its core concepts, intellectual origins, diverse pathways, and enduring tensions. The volume’s 30 original essays reflect the range of perspectives and...
Rethinking Economic Policy for Social Justice: The radical potential of human rights
1st Edition
By Radhika Balakrishnan, James Heintz, Diane Elson
April 01, 2016
The dominant approach to economic policy has so far failed to adequately address the pressing challenges the world faces today: extreme poverty, widespread joblessness and precarious employment, burgeoning inequality, and large-scale environmental threats. This message was brought home forcibly by ...
A Corporate Welfare Economy
1st Edition
By James Angresano
February 24, 2016
Although political rhetoric and public perception continue to assume that the United States is the very definition of a free market economy, a different system entirely has in actuality come to prominence over the past half century. This Corporate Welfare Economy (CWE) has come about as government ...
What is Neoclassical Economics?: Debating the origins, meaning and significance
1st Edition
Edited
By Jamie Morgan
December 02, 2015
Despite some diversification modern economics still attracts a great deal of criticism. This is largely due to highly unrealistic assumptions underpinning economic theory, explanatory failure, poor policy framing, and a dubious focus on prediction. Many argue that flaws continue to owe much of ...