ABSTRACT

The first six chapters track the development of persuasive representations of the “national economy” and “world economy.” There are three conceptual stages: (1) the splitting of human activity into “economic” and “non-economic” parts, (2) the collecting of the “economic” parts into a representable “national economy”, and (3) the confecting of a “world economy” summing across those “national economies” and structuring the empty spaces between them. Each stage builds atop the previous stage and absorbs its assumptions.