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.