Economics as Social Science

Roberto Marchionatti is Professor of Economics at the University of Torino, Italy, where he teaches economics, history of economic theory and economic anthropology.Mario Cedrini is Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Turin, Italy, where he teaches macroeconomics, international economics, history of economic thought and economic anthropology.

• INTRODUCTION PART I AT THE ROOTS OF ECONOMICS IMPERIALISM. CLASSICAL AND NEOCLASSICAL ECONOMICS AND THE ISSUE OF PRIMITIVE SOCIETIES1 The distant origins of economics imperialism. Classical economists and primitive societies2 Economics imperialism revealed. Neoclassical economists and the primitive man3 Primitive society in the interpretation of classical and neoclassical economics: a common modelPART II ECONOMICS AND THE CHALLENGE OF PRIMITIVE SOCIETIES: ANTHROPOLOGICAL NON-FORMALIST APPROACHES4 The primitive system of gift-exchange discovered: Marcel Mauss’s Essai sur le don 5 The substantivist perspective on the role of the economy in societies: Karl Polanyi’s and Marshall Sahlins’s contributions6 The intelligibility of primitive economic organization: Sahlins, Lévi-Strauss and Clastres on Mauss’s political philosophyPART III THE PROBLEM OF THE ‘OTHER’: ECONOMICS AND UNSELFISH BEHAVIOR 7 Economics on altruism, giving and reciprocity 8 A unified framework for behavioral sciences? On Herbert Gintis’s proposalPART IV THE THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL RELEVANCE OF MAUSS’S GIFT TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF A NON-IMPERIALIST ECONOMICS9 The gift in social sciences10 Mauss’s research programme revisited: the Mouvement anti-utilitariste dans les sciences sociales (M.A.U.S.S.)11 A new Maussian perspective in economicsCONCLUSIONS