TY  - CHAP
AB  - Purpose This conceptual paper examines the claim of ahistorical, transcultural universality in aspects of Enlightenment thinking as it has been embedded in the assumptions of classical economic theory. Specifically, with respect we query to presupposing rationality and maximization, that all nations are on an evolutionary course to betterment conceptualized as development and progress.Design/methodology/approach Using historical data, examined from a cross-cultural perspective, the arguments put forth in England in the late seventeenth century to justify the enclosures and private property, that led to revolution, are shown to have introduced new institutions, including private property, entrepreneurship and self-regulating markets.Findings Maximizing behavior is shown to be the result of successive generations being socialized under the new institutional arrangements that, conflated with modernity, were then taken to the Americas and South Asia as part of British colonial/imperial expansion.Theoretical implications When economic theory is examined in its cultural and historical context it is just one of a large number of possible cultural patterns.Practical implications If contemporary economic and social institutions, and the behaviors they produce, are but one of a number of alternative possibilities, many of the problems facing so many can be rethought and perhaps ameliorated with new institutional arrangements.
VL  - 34
SN  - 978-1-78441-055-1, 978-1-78441-056-8/0190-1281
DO  - 10.1108/S0190-128120140000034001
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1108/S0190-128120140000034001
AU  - Greenfield Sidney M.
PY  - 2014
Y1  - 2014/01/01
TI  - The English Enlightenment and “The Economy”: How Some Men with a Vision Created the Modern World and Its Problems
T2  - Production, Consumption, Business and the Economy: Structural Ideals and Moral Realities
T3  - Research in Economic Anthropology
PB  - Emerald Group Publishing Limited
SP  - 1
EP  - 28
Y2  - 2024/04/18
ER  -