The Preface briefly sets out the contrast between anthropology, psychology and economics as three human science disciplines with overlapping subject matters but very different ways of approaching reality. It touches on the question of human self-education in history and also alludes to the comparison between (notionally communist) China and (capitalist) Taiwan.

takes up the issue of human ‘self-education’ first raised in the Preface. The Marxist theory of self-education is compared with the approach of utilitarians/consequentialists to human agency that underpins (at least to some extent) much of the recent work in the field of economic psychology. It is argued that these two approaches are not as incompatible as is often assumed. More broadly, the author engages with recent work in the psychology of cooperation, which intersects in important ways with both Marxist and consequentialist approaches.

examines the politics of cognition – but also the politics of cognitive anthropology. It is noted that anthropologists treat psychological approaches to social life as being somehow apolitical or even politically dubious, but this position is based on a rather strange reading of actual work in cognitive anthropology. The text also engages with the politics of self-education in both Taiwan and China.