Transformation, Agency and the Economy: The Case for a Grounded Economics

Producing, buying, selling, inventing, destroying, caring, imagining, failing with their everyday practices, people bring about what we call the economy. In order to both understand and transform these practices in the context of mounting socio-ecological challenges, respective knowledge on economic practices becomes crucial. Yet, when it comes to the respective scientific discipline economics such knowledge is limited due to a long-standing tradition of favouring abstraction and modelling over assessing real-world economic action. By contrast, this book draws the contours of an economics grounded in real-world phenomena and experiences by outlining the foundations of a Grounded Economics. Building on the philosophical traditions of pragmatism, phenomenology and critical realism, and basic concepts from institutional thought and social scientific practice theories, the book provides a consistent framework to grasp the economy as an unfolding process. By putting forward a strong account of economic agency, the framework allows to identify and differentiate between multiple pathways for social transformations. The book addresses readers from all branches of the social sciences seeking a new vision for economic research, particularly within political economy, heterodox economics, science studies and economic sociology.