ABSTRACT
All scientific inquiry involves a relationship between an inquiring subject and an object of inquiry. Contemporary economic inquiry largely construes its object as a mechanism that operates in predictable fashion, as noted in Mirowski (1989, 2002). In contrast, this book designates its object as a social economy and, moreover, treats that object as a living organism that is not adequately apprehended by the image of mechanism. This reference to social economy, the contours of which are explored more fully in Chapter 2, harkens back to the nineteenth century when Sozialökonomik designated a field of inquiry that spanned what we now understand as economics and sociology. A program of social economy differs from mechanism-based economic theory in two significant respects. First, the object of analytical interest is society and not individuals or households. Consequently, the central analytical framework entails interaction among individuals, as distinct from optimizing choice by individuals (Buchanan 1964). There is no reduction of society to some representative agent. Nor is social-level explanation confined to the articulation of relationships among societal averages, for significant explanatory work is done by the structured pattern of relationships that exist within a society.
