CULTURAL MATERIALISM AND INSTITUTIONAL ECONOMICS

Economics and culture have usually been kept apart in academic discuss ion. The resulting division is damaging to economics, since important cultural questions such as the formation of preferences, the influence of ideology and the relation between the individual and society are s ystematically neglected. Outside economics, however, anthropologists a nd literary theorists have formulated a ''cultural materialism'' that seeks to reintegrate culture with the material world. This paper argue s that the cultural materialist perspective has strong affinities with institutional economics and can provide a framework for a more cultur ally sensitive approach to economic theorizing.