Abstract
Abstract Unrealistic assumptions underlying neo-classical economic theory have been challenged by both behavioral economics and studies of moral economy. But both challengers share certain features with neo-classical theory. Complementing them, recent work in the anthropology of ethics shows that economic behavior is not reducible to either individual psychology or collective norms. This approach is illustrated with studies of transactions taking place at the borders between market rationality and ethically fraught relationships among persons—organ donation and sex work. The paper argues that the inherent value accorded to social relations tends to resist instrumentalization and that the biases that dealing with other people introduce into reasoning are not flaws but part of the core functions of rationality.
Highlights
Neo-classical economic theory has been challenged on various grounds
The other concern has to do with behavioral economics’ focus on discrete choices—should I buy the car or pay a year’s tuition at a private college? If the car, should I go for energy efficiency or speed or comfort or visual pizzazz? In its barest approach, this treatment of decisions retains a key feature of rational choice optimization models: it tends to treat economic action on the model of clear-cut, pre-formed options, measurable along a single scale allowing for zero sum calculations
The very nature of rationality, and of the self, are such that biases such as those expressed in tipping and gift wrapping, are built into what it is to be a person because social relations are not something added onto a self that pre-exists them, but are essential contributions to, and constituents of, personhood
Summary
Neo-classical economic theory has been challenged on various grounds. Those of us working in the more historically or ethnographically grounded social sciences tend to worry in particular about the unreality of the assumptions built into rational choice models and the Homo Economicus that lies at their heart. Behavioral economics mutes other aspects of human life, such as obligation, as well as other features of economic life, such as the qualities of one’s work-life, or the fact that different choices take place over different stretches of time, some with very short term outcomes, others unfolding over a lifetime or, in the case of inheritance, beyond.. Behavioral economics mutes other aspects of human life, such as obligation, as well as other features of economic life, such as the qualities of one’s work-life, or the fact that different choices take place over different stretches of time, some with very short term outcomes, others unfolding over a lifetime or, in the case of inheritance, beyond.1 It takes as given certain options as ideal—after all, it’s against those that we measure the irrationality of what people do. Will suggest that looking at this level of sociality will both show something fundamental about the nature of individual preferences, and something about collective existence
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