What the Hell is Praxeology?

Praxeology is the study of those aspects of human action that can be grasped a priori; in other words, it is concerned with the conceptual analysis and logical implications of preference, choice, means-end schemes, and so forth.

The basic principles of praxeology were first discovered by the Greek philosophers, who used them as a foundation for a eudaimonistic ethics. This approach was further developed by the Scholastics, who extended praxeological analysis to the foundations of economics and social science as well.

In the late nineteenth century, the praxeological approach to economics and social science was rediscovered by Carl Menger, founder of the Austrian School. The term praxeology was first applied to this approach by the later Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises (portrait at left). Along with his students (including Friedrich Hayek and Murray Rothbard), Mises employed praxeological principles to show that much existing economic and social theory was conceptually incoherent.

Independently of Mises, analytic philosophers in the ordinary language tradition – like Ludwig Wittgenstein, J. L. Austin, and Elizabeth Anscombe – were also making contributions to praxeological theory, though they did not use that term.

WHAT IS economic anthropology....?

In its narrow sense, economic anthropology is the anthropological study of economics. In a more specific sense, economic anthropology challenges classical notions of economics by using a broader, ethnographically based, understanding of ‘economic forces’. This broader understanding includes an analysis of the nature of exchange, and of the individual or social motivations behind economic act.

Economic anthropology challenges the conception that the market is the only driving force for human relationships. Economic anthropology also challenges the idea that capitalism emerges from a natural need. Capitalist behaviour is rooted in historically specific types of cultural patterns. Capitalism is not a natural human development but a cultural institution, which has been imposed and adopted worldwide.

Economic anthropologists focus on:
-Detailed (ethnographic) descriptions of economic activity, including those activities that classical economy would not consider ‘economics’.

-The beliefs underpinning ‘ways of life’ we may call or not economic, but which consider the nature of goods, their production, distribution and consumption.

-The way gender, religion, kinship, politics relate to the nature of ‘economic systems’.


The most important thing about studying economic anthropology is that it is a field that is placed at the crossroad of all social events.
Economic anthropology also looks at the root of the things that matter most to people: access to labour, inequality, alienation, the nature of power, and the reproduction of social systems.

You will notice that thorough this course many terms such as ‘economics’ and ‘poverty’ are in italics. The reason for this is because in many societies these terms mean something totally different from ours. It is also the case with the idea of ‘economic rational’ behind exchange, barter, or debt, to cite a few, which differs very much from society to society.

One of the problems we will address is how to analyse economic life. From an anthropological point of view ‘economics’ is not a category of western ‘rational’ actions to do with money, demand and market, what Sahlins (1972) calls ‘a category of bourgeois science’? This ‘bourgeois science’ of economics is the direct heir of the Enlightenment, with their philosophy of ‘Homo ecomicus’. From an anthropological point of view, economic life is embedded in all aspects of society, from ritual and gender to religion and power. Economic anthropology broadens classic notions of both, the economy and economic behaviour. It assumes that all knowledge is culturally specific and it questions why and what people do in their own social context instead of looking for a ‘separate’ economic domain....“At the most basic,economic anthropology is the description and analysis of economic life, using an anthropological perspective”