Relational Complexity and Economics

Abstract

Economic science has intentionally adopted a simplified vision of “economic agents”. This is particularly true with regard to the relationships between such agents: attention is focused on instrumental and calculative aspects of these relationships, in which exchange is the prototype. More recently, however, economic science has opened a new space for the consideration of more complex interpersonal relationships, which had previously been thought to be of interest only to other social sciences. This widening of focus has the effect, on the one hand, of permitting explanation of certain phenomena that would otherwise be incomprehensible, and, on the other hand, of modifying the worldview of economics itself, allowing for a relaxation of the traditional opposition between moral and economic values.