Cognitive Systems of Economic Anthropology

Abstract

A new light of neo-constructivism is cast on the controversy of competing approaches to economic anthropology. The controversy among the competing approaches reveals that they represent some of the major cognitive systems of social science. The cognitive systems are formed in the development of social science over two types of antagonism: (1) the methodological antagonism between individualism and collectivism and (2) the epistemological antagonism between materialism and idealism. An epistemological understanding of the competing approaches to economic anthropology can be achieved by locating them within a broader configuration of the cognitive systems of social science. An examination of the competing cognitive systems of economic anthropology under the new light of neo-constructivism helps us to understand the nature of the theoretical schism of economic anthropology as well as cultural anthropology.