The proposal has been put forward that ecological economics seek to become substantive
economics (Gerber and Scheidel 2018). This raises important issues about the content and
direction of ecological economics. The division of economics into either substantive or
formal derives from the work of Karl Polanyi. In developing his ideas Polanyi employed a
definition from Menger and combined this with Tönnies theory of historical evolution. In this
paper I explore why the resulting substantive vs. formal dichotomy is problematic. In
particular the article exposes the way in which trying to impose this dichotomy on history of
economic thought and epistemology leads to further false dichotomies. Besides Polanyi, the
positions of other important thinkers informing social ecological economics (SEE) are
discussed including Neurath, Kapp and Georgescu-Roegen. The aim is to clarify the future
direction of ecological economics and the role, in that future, of ideas raised under the topic of
substantive economics. / Series: SRE - Discussion Papers
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VIENNA/oai:epub.wu-wien.ac.at:7045 |
| Date | January 2019 |
| Creators | Spash, Clive L. |
| Publisher | WU Vienna University of Economics and Business |
| Source Sets | Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Paper, NonPeerReviewed |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Relation | http://www-sre.wu.ac.at/sre-disc/sre-disc-2019_05.pdf, https://www.wu.ac.at/mlgd, http://epub.wu.ac.at/7045/ |
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