ABSTRACT
Scholars have attempted to build a deeper understanding of the complexities of markets and economic interactions – trade, production, and consumption – by imagining and constructing a hegemonic discourse that has systematically served to disconnect, or compartmentalize, not only the study of markets but also people into narrowly defined sets of motivations. The disciplines of Economics and Political Science in particular come out of a tradition of compartmentalizing human motivation through the construction of metaphorical Economic and Political Man. The logic of modern economic thought has downplayed, and often denied, human connectedness for centuries. The idea of community scarcely exists in the world of atomistic individuals assumed throughout the economics discourse. This chapter will demonstrate the ways in which social science discourses, especially economics, have promoted disconnectedness by severing 1) the individual from the community; 2) the market from society; and finally, 3) the present from the past.
