ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the separative/soluble habit of thought and describes how analysis of our economic lives can be transformed, deepened, and made more rigorous when its simplistic categories are resisted. Economists’ own self-image, as well as our image of the “economic agent,” has tended to follow a separative ideal. Economists often think of ourselves as rigorous, tough researchers whose scientific stature and claims to objectivity are based on our use of the precise and value-free language of mathematics. Workers are portrayed as separative when negotiating their contract with an employer, but once employed tend to be portrayed as soluble, simply becoming hands that carry out the decisions of their employer. Firms are portrayed as separative agents as they make their (presumed) profit-maximizing decisions but then become soluble, with no decisions to be made, when faced with competitive markets.
