Conclusion

This chapter describes the pluralism of cultural political economy and use methodology to express the shared orientation – a concern with the making and remaking of capitalism. Closer to the social scientific home, the positivist bastions of Psychology and Economics have similarly, although much more reluctantly, been called out on their own scientific failings. The current dominance of positivism, empiricism and orthodox economics means that the language of 'empirical research' uses an idiom of large quantitative data sets, abstract axiomatic assumptions and models to make quite fantastical leaps from the tacit links of actual human experience or observation to generalisable or universalising claims about human nature. Unpacking the 'how' of cultural political economy analysis means addressing the real trade-offs of interrogating something as complex as capitalism. It involves a dual movement of being reflexive about who 'does' methods and what methods 'do'.