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There is a growing consensus in social sciences that there is a need for interdisciplinary research on the complexity of human behavior. At an age of crisis for both the economy and economic theory, economics is called upon to fruitfully cooperate with contiguous social disciplines. The term èconomics imperialism' refers to the expansion of economics to territories that lie outside the traditional domain of the discipline. Its critics argue that in starting with the assumption of maximizing behaviour, economics excludes the nuances of rival disciplines and has problems in interpreting real-world phenomena. This book focuses on a territory that persists to be largely intractable using the postulates of economics: that of primitive societies. In retracing the origins of economics imperialism back to the birth of the discipline, this volume argues that it offers a reductionist interpretation that is poor in interpretative power. By engaging with the neglected traditions of sociological and anthropological studies, the analysis offers suggestions for a more democratic cooperation between the social sciences. Economics as Social Science is of great interest to those who study history of economic thought, political economy and the history of economic anthropology, as well as history of social sciences and economic methodology.

pt. 1. At the roots of economics imperialism : classical and neoclassical economics and the issue of primitive societies -- pt. 2. Economics and the challenge of primitieve societies : anthropological non-formalist approaches -- pt. 3. The problem of the 'other' : economics and unselfish behaviour -- pt. 4. The theoretical and practical relevance of Mauss's gift to the development of a non-imperialist economics.

This paper argues for a closer association between economics & sociology. The latter could benefit from the intellectual rigor of the former. Building a unified socioeconomics requires an intellectual rapprochement between the sociologist conception of social interaction & a relaxed version of rational choice. Evolutionary game theory may provide one way forward. 2 Figures, 42 References. Adapted from the source document.

PART I. Introduction and Overview -- Introduction: Bioeconomy and Sustainability -- PART II. Energy and Land Use -- "Global Shifting Agriculture" and Bioeconomy: Challenges for the Sustainable Use of Global Land Resources -- Sustainable Resources: From Plants to Products -- PART III. Nutrition and Food Ethics -- Food as a Moral Problem -- Bioeconomy and Food Security -- Acceptance of Insects and In Vitro Meat as a Sustainable Meat Substitute in Germany: In Search of the Decisive Nutritional-Psychological Factors -- PART IV. Technology and Governance -- Characteristics of Innovation in Bioeconomy -- Spatial Implications of the Leitmotif Shift from Biotechnology to Bioeconomy -- Problem Structures of Bioenergy Policy in the Power and Heat Sector in Germany -- The Bioeconomy Transformation in the German Rheinische Revier: Stakeholders and Discourses in Media Coverage -- PART V. Regulation and Economics -- Bioeconomy and Genome Editing: A Comparison Between Germany and the Netherlands -- Monitoring and Measuring Bioeconomy -- Resource Sufficiency in a Sustainable Bioeconomy: A Predator-Prey Perspective -- Agriculture in the Bioeconomy: Economics and Policies -- PART VI. Normativity and Ethics -- Bioeconomy and Ethics -- Bioeconomy from the Perspective of Environmental Ethics -- Conditions for an Ethically Responsible and Sustainable Bioeconomy Based on Hans Jonas' Ethics of Responsibility -- Bioeconomy as a Normative Concept of Resilience: Challenges and Opportunities -- PART VII. Conclusions and Outlook -- Bioeconomy: Challenges and Conflicts from an Interdisciplinary Perspective -- Bioeconomy Beneath and Beyond: Persisting Challenges from a Philosophical and Ethical Perspective.

This paper considers the actual problem of correlation of economics with other sciences, and namely with social sciences. The evolution of processes to solve the provisioning problem takes place in a social context. As a result, the economy is a subsystem and is interrelated with a variety of other social subsystems. These subsystems include economic, political, religious, social, geographic, demographic, legal, and moral systems. From the ancient times economics was treated as part of philosophy and religion.

The paper discusses measurement, primarily in economics, from both analytical and historical perspectives. The historical section traces the commitment to ordinalism on the part of economic theorists from the doctrinal disputes between classical economics and marginalism, through the struggle of orthodox economics against socialism down to the cold-war alliance between mathematical social science and anti-communist ideology. In economics the commitment to ordinalism led to the separation of theory from the quantitative measures that are computed in practice: price and quantity indexes, consumer surplus and real national product. The commitment to ordinality entered political science, via Arrow's 'impossibility theorem', effectively merging it with economics, and ensuring its sterility. How can a field that has as its central result the impossibility of democracy contribute to the design of democratic institutions? The analytical part of the paper deals with the quantitative measures mentioned above. I begin with the conceptual clarification that what these measures try to achieve is a restoration of the money metric that is lost when prices are variable. I conclude that there is only one measure that can be embedded in a satisfactory economic theory, free from unreasonable restrictions. It is the Törnqvist index as an approximation to its theoretical counterpart the Divisia index. The statistical agencies have at various times produced different measures for real national product and its components, as well as related concepts. I argue that all of these are flawed and that a single deflator should be used for the aggregate and the components. Ideally this should be a chained Törnqvist price index defined on aggregate consumption. The social sciences are split. The economic approach is abstract, focused on the assumption of rational and informed behavior, and tends to the political right. The sociological approach is empirical, stresses the non-rational aspects of human behavior and tends to the political left. I argue that the split is due to the fact that the empirical and theoretical traditions were never joined in the social sciences as they were in the natural sciences. I also argue that measurement can potentially help in healing this split.

Economics is far more versatile than its critics believe. It is a method of analysis and not just a field of study. The method is to combine two core assumptions-individual optimization and equilibrium-with various sets of specific assumptions adapted to different fields of application. The method is applicable not only to the market system but also the social and political environment within which this system is embedded. Social and psychological insights can be encapsulated in the specification of interdependent preferences, which hold the key to modelling all kinds of institutional behavior in rational terms.

Nietzsche distinguished between two forces in art: Apollonian, which represents order and reason, and Dionysian, which represents chaos and energy. An ideal work of art combines these two characteristics in a believable, relatable balance. Economists, Ward argues, have operated for too long under the assumption that their work reflects scientific, Apollonian principals when these simply do not or cannot apply: "constants" in economics stand in for variables, mathematical equations represent the simplified ideal rather than the complex reality, and the core scientific principal of replication is all but ignored. In Dionysian Economics, Ward encourages economists to reintegrate the standard rigor of the scientific method into their work while embracing the fact that their prime indicators come from notoriously chaotic and changeable human beings. Rather than emphasizing its shortfalls compared to an extremely Apollonian science, such as physics, economics can aspire to the standards of a science that accounts for considerable Dionysian variation, such as biology. The book proposes that economists get closer to their dynamic objects of study, that they avoid the temptation to wish away dynamic complexity by using simplifying assumptions, and that they recognize the desire to take risks as fundamentally human.