In the social sciences people frequently counterpose methodological purity to indulging "softer" concerns. But I would argue that in economics at least the reluctance to face squarely up to the complexities of culture and a truly rich vision of psychology has led to its own methodological problems. The desire to keep culture outside the theoretical system -- to stuff it in the ceteris paribus clauses if possible -- have led to what one might call the "parameterization" of culture. Some economists' response to the "culture of poverty" debate was to essentially load the whole thing on to discount rates. People were poor because they had high discount rates for the future. Why they did was some other disciplines' business. That is legitimate in one sense, but also a rather embarassing evasion of the central question. If most of the variance in poverty (after all an economic question) is due to a factor that economists can't theorize but can only rename, how far have we really gotten methodologically?
The problem is even greater in the more recent "social capital" debates. Here we sometimes seem to see an attempt to reduce all of sociology and social interaction into a single parameter to be stuffed into a regression equation. Presumably the parameter represents "all the other cultural stuff" that affects economic interaction. (See Ben Fine's book "Social Capital Versus Social Theory" for some discussion of what I am getting at). This is in its own way just as "ad hoc" methodologically as any hand-waving ascription of economic differences to cultural character would be, perhaps worse because of the veneer of scientific rhetoric.
Again, in fairness there is much interesting work in this area starting to happen within economics that I do not have time to discuss here. Frankly that is true across the areas I have discussed in my last few posts -- economics is starting to make exciting moves toward the other social sciences in ways that go beyond boring extensions of stripped down rational actor models. At times I think that some of this work is still too individualistic and continues to "evade culture" (in the sense that it does not try to look at the the structure of shared interpretive meanings that communities develop), but it is worthwhile and innovative stuff.
Well, there is much more to be said but not the time to really develop it. For example, some economists have for a while been trying to develop evolutionary psychology as a way to give some kind of behavioral backbone to "homo economicus" while still appearing sufficiently scientific. (This goes back to Gary Becker in the 1970s). This is also an attempt that I think is doomed to fail. Mainly because I think that evolutionary psychology done correctly will itself turn out to be a social and cultural discipline rather than the key to a comprehensive set of universal biological human desires and drives. But perhaps more on that elsewhere...thanks for listening!
Marcus Stanley
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