Abstract
During the last ten or fifteen years the old separation between economics and other social sciences has increasingly been challenged by economists applying the neoclassical paradigm to problems that traditionally concern the other social sciences. The main thesis of this paper is that this so-called “economic imperialism” threatens to unleash a new paradigmatic struggle in the social sciences, which is likely to be just as destructive as the old Methodenstreit . It is in this situation that socioeconomics emerges as a viable alternative since it emphasizes the need for a systhesis of the findings of several social sciences when an economic problem is analyzed. The article stresses the original battle of the methods at the turn of the century that gave birth to a set of ideas, analogous to those of Etzioni on socioeconomics, namely what Max Weber called Sozialökonomik . The emergence of “economic imperialism” is described, and the essay ends with a plea for a socioeconomics in the sense of a broad, overarching approach to economic analysis. Economic imperialism, it is concluded, threatens to close the door to new developments in economics; socioeconomics, on the other hand, tries to keep it open.
Published Version
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