Sen and Mead on Identity, Agency, and Economic Behavior

Abstract

The paper seeks to show the potentialities of a wider perspective concerning human economic behavior and decision-making processes intertwining Mead’s and Sen’s ideas on self-identity and social context. Emerging developments of my findings strengthen, at once, the principled commitment to freedom of choice, revealing from a “Mead-Sen” perspective the instrumental role of social behavioral patterns and socio-cultural environment (social group, community, nationality, race, sex, and now social media) in the orientation of persons’ (economic) behaviors. In particular, a Mead-Sen approach would help clarify how people develop their attitudes and dispositions to think and behave, namely examining the habits at the basis of everyday processes of evaluation and choice as manifestations of practical judgment.