The economic approach to human behaviour under scrutiny: an overview of arguments for the autonomy of social action

Abstract

The article reviews and re-examines some arguments against the treatment of social action within the economic approach as an extension of economic behaviour/rationality and thus against its denial of the specific, irreducible nature of the extra-economic. A major argument is that social action is a sui generis phenomenon that cannot be reduced with theoretical impunity to its economic modalities. Social action is characterized by substantial autonomy relative to economic behaviour/rationality. Arguments about the autonomous character of social action seek to remedy the indiscriminate extension of the economic approach beyond the field of economy to all human behaviour construed as consistent utility maximization. These arguments adduce certain classes of factors (socio-psychological, socio-cultural, socio-systemic and others) contributing toward the autonomy of social action. In addition, the economic-approach treatment of the human actor as Homo economicus is reversed by conceiving the economy as a domain of social action of which economic behaviour is a special case.