Rival Views of Market Society

This chapter tackles the core vocabulary of economics: if there is to be an expanded economics, it would need a more complex vocabulary or discourse. This would also mean giving up one of the sacred cows of the discipline: the preference for parsimony—simple explanations of more complicated phenomena—so simple they can be more easily tested under conditions of the intellectual's making. Doing this might allow economists to admit otherwise forbidden topics for analysis—like love, avarice, and jealousy. Hirschman anticipates, in this sense, the importance of bridging the divide between emotions and behavior. To conclude, the chapter examines whether the various complications have some element in common.