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.
By Viktor J Vanberg
December 20, 1994
Using an analysis which draws on economics, law, moral philosophy, sociology and political science, Vanberg demonstrates how the rules and institutions which are the basis of cooperation in society can be systematically explained....
Edited
By Roger E. Backhouse
July 27, 1994
In recent years there has been a flowering of work on economic methodology. However there is no longer any consensus about which direction this should take or, indeed, even what the role and content of economic methodology should be. This book reflects this diversity. Its contributors are ...
By Nancy Folbre
January 27, 1994
Three paradoxes surround the division of the costs of social reproduction:* Women have entered the paid labour force in growing numbers, but they continue to perform most of the unpaid labour of housework and childcare.* Birth rates have fallen but more and more mothers are supporting children on ...
Edited
By Bo Gustafsson, Christian Knudsen, Uskali Mäki
July 14, 1993
Looks at ways to increase the scope and power of institutional economics. Different approaches to economic methodology are considered and the broader notions of rationality offered by institutional economics are discussed....
Edited
By Roger E. Backhouse, Tony Dudley-Evans, Willie Henderson
January 19, 1993
The importance of language in economics has been neglected and dominated by techniques from other disciplines. This looks at the wider methological implications of language within economics in a practical and theoretical way...