Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-5xszh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-29T12:06:55.327Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Reflexivity, relative autonomy and the embedded individual in economics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2013

CHRIS FULLER*
Affiliation:
Royal Docks Business School, University of East London, London, UK

Abstract:

This paper is about the mind of the embedded individual in heterodox economics. Beginning from Margaret Archer's analysis of modes of reflexivity and following the respective contributions of Geoff Hodgson and John Davis, the paper seeks to integrate into Archer's approach a place for habitual beliefs and an analysis of the ‘relative autonomy’ of the embedded individual. Archer's identification of modes of reflexivity is endorsed but her avoidance of any dispositional place for habit in the mind is questioned. It is argued that by excluding habits in this way, Archer, unlike Davis, implausibly assumes most individuals have achieved relative autonomy in their group associations. The essay develops an approach to the mind that articulates underlying relationships between habits and internal conversation, potentially enriching Archer's explanation of modes of reflexivity while locating Davis's notion of relative autonomy within that framework. Specific economic implications are then briefly considered.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Millennium Economics Ltd 2013

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Archer, M. S. (1995), Realist Social Theory: A Morphogenetic Approach, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Archer, M. S. (2003), Structure, Agency and the Internal Conversation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Archer, M. S. (2007), Making Our Way Through the World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Davis, J. (2003), The Theory of the Individual in Economics, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Doyal, L. and Gough, I. (1991), A Theory of Human Need, London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Fleetwood, S. (2008), ‘Structure, Institution, Agency, Habit and Reflexive Deliberation’, Journal of Institutional Economics, 4 (2): 183203.Google Scholar
Giddens, A. (1984), The Constitution of Society, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Giddens, A. (1991), Modernity and Self Identity, Oxford: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Giddens, A. (1994), ‘Living in a Post-Traditional Society’, in Beck, U., Giddens, A. and Lash, S. (eds.), Reflexive Modernization, Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Granovetter, M. (1985), ‘Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness’, American Journal of Sociology, 91: 481510.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hodgson, G. M. (1993), Economics and Evolution, Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Hodgson, G. M. (1998), ‘The Approach of Institutional Economics’, Journal of Economic Literature, 36 (March): 166192.Google Scholar
Hodgson, G. M. (1999), Economics and Utopia: Why the Learning Economy Is Not the End of History, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hodgson, G. M. (2001), How Economics Forgot History: The Problem of Historical Specificity in Social Science, London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hodgson, G. M. (2002), ‘Reconstitutive Downward Causation: Social Structure and the Development of Individual Agency’, in Fullbrook, E. (ed.), Intersubjectivity in Economics: Agents and Structures, London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hodgson, G. M. (2003), ‘The Hidden Persuaders: Institutions and Individuals in Economic Theory’, Cambridge Journal of Economics, 27: 159175.Google Scholar
Hodgson, G. M. (2004a), ‘Reclaiming Habit for Institutional Economics’, Journal of Economic Psychology, 25: 651660.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hodgson, G. M. (2004b), ‘Darwinism, Causality and the Social Sciences’, Journal of Economic Methodology, 11 (2): 175194.Google Scholar
Hodgson, G. M. (2004c), The Evolution of Institutional Economics: Agency, Structure and Darwinism in American Institutionalism, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hodgson, G. M. (2010), ‘Choice, Habit and Evolution’, Journal of Evolutionary Economics, 20 (1): 118.Google Scholar
Lawson, T. (1997), Economics and Reality, London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mouzelis, N. (1995), Sociological Theory: What Went Wrong?, London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Sen, A. (1985), Commodities and Capabilities, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Sweetman, P. (2003), ‘Twenty-First Century Dis-ease? Habitual Reflexivity or the Reflexive Habitus’, Sociological Review, 51 (4): 528549.CrossRefGoogle Scholar