Book contents
- Identity, Capabilities, and Changing Economics
- Identity, Capabilities, and Changing Economics
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Tables
- Boxes
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Part I The Failed Pathway and Exit Strategies
- Part II Building a Socially Embedded Individual Conception
- Part III Value and Subjectivity
- 7 Economics as a Normative Discipline
- 8 Individual Realization?
- 9 Change in and Changing Economics
- References
- Index
8 - Individual Realization?
Rethinking Subjectivity in Economics
from Part III - Value and Subjectivity
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 January 2024
- Identity, Capabilities, and Changing Economics
- Identity, Capabilities, and Changing Economics
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Tables
- Boxes
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Part I The Failed Pathway and Exit Strategies
- Part II Building a Socially Embedded Individual Conception
- Part III Value and Subjectivity
- 7 Economics as a Normative Discipline
- 8 Individual Realization?
- 9 Change in and Changing Economics
- References
- Index
Summary
Chapter 8 takes up what the subjectivity of socially embedded individuals involves. On the externalist view of individual autonomy, subjectivity is an embodied subjectivity because institutions and social relationships affect people’s choices and actions. To explain this idea, the chapter reviews the situated cognition and the embodied and distributed cognition literatures in cognitive science and psychology to explain the connection between social embeddedness and subjectivity. It then returns to the capability conception of individuals and what individual and personal identity involves. Using a two-level view of people’s capabilities, it argues that socially embedded individuals develop first-order capabilities regarding specific kinds of things that they can be and do and also a second-order self-concept or self-narrative capabilities in conjunction with one another, and rely on the latter to evaluate themselves in relation to their capability development. This discussion draws on the thinking of developmental psychologist Carl Rogers. How, and the extent to which, this understanding of individuals allows us to explain them as distinct and re-identifiable individuals closes the chapter.
Keywords
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- Information
- Identity, Capabilities, and Changing EconomicsReflexive, Adaptive, Socially Embedded Individuals, pp. 192 - 218Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024