Substantivism is a position, first proposed by
Karl Polanyi
Karl Paul Polanyi (; hu, Polányi Károly ; 25 October 1886 – 23 April 1964),''Encyclopædia Britannica'' (Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. 2003) vol 9. p. 554 was an Austro-Hungarian economic anthropologist and politician, best known ...
in his work ''
The Great Transformation'' (1944), which argues that the term '
economics
Economics () is the social science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services.
Economics focuses on the behaviour and intera ...
' has two meanings. The formal meaning, used by today's
neoclassical economists
Neoclassical economics is an approach to economics in which the production, consumption and valuation (pricing) of goods and services are observed as driven by the supply and demand model. According to this line of thought, the value of a good ...
, refers to economics as the logic of rational action and decision-making, as rational choice between the alternative uses of limited (scarce) means, as 'economising,' 'maximizing,' or 'optimizing.'
[Polanyi, Karl. (1944) ''The Great Transformation: the Political and Economic Origins of Our Time'', Farrar and Rinehart, New York]
The second, substantive meaning presupposes neither rational decision-making nor conditions of
scarcity
In economics, scarcity "refers to the basic fact of life that there exists only a finite amount of human and nonhuman resources which the best technical knowledge is capable of using to produce only limited maximum amounts of each economic good. ...
. It refers to how humans make a living interacting within their social and natural environments. A society's livelihood strategy is seen as an adaptation to its environment and material conditions, a process which may or may not involve utility maximisation. The substantive meaning of 'economics' is seen in the broader sense of 'provisioning.' Economics is the way society meets material needs.
See also
*
Economic anthropology
Economic anthropology is a field that attempts to explain human economic behavior in its widest historic, geographic and cultural scope. It is an amalgamation of economics and anthropology. It is practiced by anthropologists and has a complex re ...
*
Formalist–substantivist debate
The opposition between substantivist and formalist economic models was first proposed by Karl Polanyi in his work '' The Great Transformation'' (1944).
Overview
Polanyi argued that the term ''economics'' has two meanings: the formal meaning re ...
References
Economic anthropology
Philosophy of economics
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