Conceptual Displacement: From the Natural to the Social

Abstract

This paper distinguishes between epistemological naturalism, which it supports, and ontological naturalism, which it opposes. It sketches the emergence of anti-naturalist social theory among nineteenth-century African-American intellectuals and its refinement by twentieth-century feminists. These movements challenged ontological naturalism in the social sciences by substituting social constructionist concepts of race and gender for naturalist ones. Economics awaits a similar liberation. The paper identifies four naturalist concepts—atomism, determinism and biologically determined race and gender differences—as structuring mainstream economic theory. It concludes that ontological naturalism is inconsistent with the application of the epistemology of the natural sciences to the social sciences.Race And Gender, Methodology, Naturalism, Social Theory, Atomism, Determinism, Neoclassical Economics,

COVID-19: From health crises to food security anxiety and policy implications

“…Debates between economics and sociology have led to an understanding of the social embeddedness of individuals, advocating for a socioeconomic profile of the economy and its behaviour. FET and socioeconomists have a similar agenda in ensuring gender-aware practices in labour economics, household economics and socioeconomics (Fullbrook 2001 ). Counting food worries among men and women as individuals may fail to capture the full spectrum of social relationships in which the man or woman is embedded.…”